Liberty Media’s Derek Chang has told Formula 1’s core audience it no longer has to show up for every grand prix to count as a fan. The pitch landed badly.

“You no longer think about F1 as sort of something that you’ve got to go to every race or watch every race on television to be a fan, right?” Chang told Axios’ Sara Fischer at an event in Austin ahead of last weekend’s US Grand Prix.

The remarks were reported this week alongside Chang’s broader defence of the sport’s US distribution deal with Apple, which replaced ESPN this season.

The number Chang is leaning on

Chang’s case rests on an engagement figure: 60 per cent of what Liberty puts at “hundreds of millions” of F1 fans interact with the sport’s content on a daily basis, through highlights, previews and lifestyle output rather than through sitting down for the full race.

Read also: Lamine Yamal shares emotional message after 68 killed in Spain train disaster

That reframing matters because the headline numbers on race-day viewership have not been kind. Third-party analysis cited by Awful Announcing suggests F1’s live audience has fallen considerably in year one on Apple against its final ESPN season, with the outlet noting the data warrants some scepticism but still pointing to a dip. Apple is paying roughly $140m a year for the US rights, compared with the $90m ESPN previously paid annually.

Apple senior vice-president Eddy Cue has countered with his own figures, telling the same event that race-day and Saturday viewership on Apple TV is up by a “significant double-digit percentage” on a comparable basis, and that the audience skews younger and more female than it did on ESPN.

The pushback

Reaction on social media was swift. Longtime supporters wrote that the Apple switch had already pushed them away from live viewing, and that telling existing fans they can skip races is a strange way to grow an audience that stuck with F1 through the ESPN years. Chang’s 60 per cent figure counts fans who read a preview, watch a highlights clip or scroll past lifestyle content on Apple News, not only those who sit through a grand prix live.

Apple deal set to run until 2030

Chang is not retreating from any of it. He told the same audience that Liberty intends to see the Apple partnership through its 2030 expiration and hopefully beyond it, dismissing any question of an opt-out. Apple’s Cue said he could see the deal running “forever”.

Read also: Tottenham will not see a penny from Kane’s Ballon d’Or

The next grand prix is in Mexico City on Sunday, 1 November, with lights out at 2pm local time.

Read also: Kylian Mbappe gets unexpected backing from French presidential candidate after China apology