When I was little, I remember that every Sunday afternoon I would visit my grandfather at his house and we would gather in his room around the TV to watch the Formula 1 races, which caught my attention. And what caught my attention was how boring it was watching a lot of cars running dozens of laps on the same racetrack. Also, I knew that a certain Schumacher always won so I didn’t understand what was the point of running the race if it was almost impossible for someone else to win.
I’m sure I’m not the only one who has felt the same way about Formula 1 racing, because according to The New York Times this sport was having a hard time attracting young audiences and they couldn’t find a solution to their problem. But everything changed in 2019 thanks to an audiovisual production that never imagined that it would generate such a great impact, not only in the audience of the series, but also in the growth of the sport’s audience itself. But also, they managed to get a person like me, who had no interest in Formula 1, to now follow all the details and to buy a membership to watch the races every weekend.
In March 2019, Netflix released its series “Formula 1: Drive to survive” in which they told the story behind the world of F1 racing, showing the dreams and frustrations of the car pilots, their directors and technical team. They narrate, with a first-class audiovisual production, what happens in the racing season of the previous year, which makes it clear to you who are the different teams, what are their objectives, what are their barriers and limitations, and how they feel throughout each race.
To date, this series already has 4 seasons which have managed to increase by 77% the F1 audience among young people from 16 to 35 years old in 2020 (one year after its launch). This represents approximately 2.7 million new viewers per month, and they estimate that there are one billion new viewers interested in watching the series in 2022, according to data from Nielsen Sports. Also, Audience Resources reported that in 2020 the F1 audience increased by 41% compared to the previous year, and in 2021 this figure increased again by 56%.
How did they do it?
I don’t know about you, but I’ve never seen a sport expand in this sudden way, and all thanks to a Netflix series. So, the big question behind all this would be how and why can a series achieve an effect like this in a sport that had already run out of ideas to become more popular? Is it because it shows the adrenaline and speed of the cars? Is it because of the glamour behind F1? Well, they must certainly have an influence, but what I think is that Netflix stumbled, probably without realizing it, with a formula for success that is based on certain psychological phenomena that, applied in the right way, could work for any sport.
I want to share with you 5 ideas that I think can explain why this series has had such an impact on the results of F1, and I will share them as “tips” that could be taken into consideration for a future production, since my hypothesis is that this is a formula that can be replicated for any other sport or human activity, and that it is not an exclusive phenomenon for F1.
5 tips on how to use psychology to try to replicate the phenomenon of “Formula 1: Drive to survive”
1. Communicate the meaning or purpose of your sport to your audience
It’s one thing to see a bunch of fast cars circling a racetrack and another thing to understand that behind those laps there is ambition, nerves, and dreams that can be shattered at any moment. The audience does not watch sports just because of the results of the match alone, but by what those points and results mean to the teams, and therefore to the audience itself.
According to Daniel Pink in his book “Drive”, humans have a natural need to find meaning or purpose in the things we do. In some cases that purpose can be very profound, such as helping another person or helping the community. But that doesn’t always have to be the case because we can find a purpose in everything we do. In our jobs, for example, we get more hooked when we feel that our effort is going to achieve something that transcends the organization or our clients. If we only work day by day because “our boss tells us so” or “because that’s my job” it is very likely that we will lose our motivation.
In the world of entertainment, we also need to have a clear idea of why we are watching a series or a sport. Just watching a team score points isn’t enough to keep us hooked. That is why the F1 series shows us the ambitions of all the race teams. Not everyone is aspiring to be 1st place because they know they don’t have the conditions yet, so they aspire to be in the top 10, or to lead the middle of the bunch, or to reach the podium. We understand that racing depends not only on the driver’s skill, but also on the entire mechanical team that has to ensure that the car is in the best condition, and on the leadership of the manager to make the whole team work in sync. We see that there are many people trying to fulfill their dreams and goals through those laps on the racetrack, and that is something we can get hooked on.
2. Build heroes that the audience can empathize with and relate to
One of the most basic rules when creating a narrative is to build heroes who connect with the audience. And the key to generating this connection lies in what psychologists call empathy. Empathy is the ability that humans have to put ourselves in other people’s situations and share thoughts and emotions. This connection is imperative when you want someone to get hooked on your story.
When I watched F1 from afar, I only saw a bunch of people with a lot of money competing in a sport that I will never get to practice and that I will probably never be able to see live. This made it a distant sport for me, and I even had a hard time understanding why it was considered a sport if the driver is just sitting around driving a car.
But the Netflix series shows us the opposite. We see drivers of different ages and personalities, and their team leaders, face their fears and pressures to achieve results. We see how, despite the effort and dedication, sometimes things that are out of our hands happen and sabotage their success, such as when a car ends up derailed due to heavy rain in the race.
The whole series does an excellent job to connect us with the different heroes in the sport, and it even invites us to choose which is our favorite team or hero. All this is possible thanks to the development of empathy between the spectator and the sport.
3. Make sure you show that your sport is unpredictable
In the book “Actionable Gamification”, Yu-kai Chou explains the importance of unpredictability as a key motivator when designing experiences that are engaging for people. It is no coincidence that we love watching movies or series with unexpected twists throughout the story. This happens because challenges and complications are the central axis of any drama and even more so when they happen suddenly and without anticipation.
When a person watches a live sporting event, they don’t know what’s going to happen. Maybe their favorite team wins or maybe something happens and the team that wins is the one that nobody anticipated. Sports feed themselves from the unpredictability of their results, and F1 is no exception. No matter what team it is, every race is a big question mark because anything can happen. We don’t know if the drivers will be having a good day, if the car is in the right mechanical condition, if the weather will be stable throughout the race, if a driver error can lead to a massive accident that disqualifies a certain number of cars, etc. The variables are infinite.
Simply put, no one wants to see a sport they can predict.
4. Create a loop of engagement between the series and the live sporting events
Unlike any other documentary or sports series, “Formula 1: Drive to survive” has generated a synergy between the series and the sport that has not been done before. They created an engagement loop that works the following way:
1. You start watching the series without knowing much about F1, but you get hooked on the characters, drama, and energy of the competition. This leads to you watching every season of the series to catch up on what’s happening in the current race season.
2. You start watching the races live every weekend to find out what’s going on and stay on top of the latest happenings.
3. When the live race season ends, Netflix launches the season of the series where you can see everything you did not see in the races, reliving moments you already saw, but emphasizing the drama of the characters, which complements your experience.
4. When you finish the Netflix season, the new racing season will be about to begin so that you can see how the story continues live.
5. Go back to step 2.
And so you get hooked on a loop between the live sporting events and Netflix series that makes sure to keep you entertained year-round for an indeterminate number of years. This is possible thanks to motivation and attention management of the viewer, that takes advantage of various elements such as the unpredictability of events, but also of our need to stay close to our heroes (do you notice how the formula begins to make sense?).
5. Make sure you have a strong viralization strategy
Although we associate the concept of “viralization” with digital media, this phenomenon has occurred throughout all the history of human beings, because it is not based on digital technology, but on a psychological concept called Social Influence.
Social influence emphasizes that humans are social beings, so it is natural for us to look at and imitate what other people do, as a mechanism of learning and preservation. It is practically impossible for a person to know everything there is to know about the world, so we rely on observing what other people do to make a decision about what we should do. It is because of this that Netflix shows you the Top 10 most watched productions by people living in your country, for example. They know you’re more likely to look at what others are watching.
On top of that, it is very difficult for us not to be curious about what others do and this generates another effect called FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) that means that humans get anxious when we feel we are missing out on something that the rest are enjoying. And this is the core of viralization. What digital technology does is accelerate this viralization process and scale it to levels that other media could not.
In the F1 series case, this was achieved thanks to the Netflix platform. While the series is very good in itself, if they had released it on another platform or on a channel like ESPN, I would think it would not have had the same success. This is because ESPN is already a specialized channel for sports lovers, while Netflix reaches all people. And the audience growth figures we saw are mainly supported by people who didn’t normally watch the sport in the beginning.
A good story works in any context, but it needs a massive platform for it to reach as many people as possible. Once that is achieved, social influence kicks in and snowballs with more and more audiences not wanting to miss out on something everyone is watching.
And that’s how I believe we can try to replicate the success of Netflix and F1. Surely there are more elements that we could analyze, but I think that if you follow these 5 tips, you can start on the right track. Maybe “Formula 1: Drive to survive” is the start of a new marketing strategy that Netflix discovered intentionally or accidentally.
