The green flag at the start of the Australian Grand Prix this Saturday (March 7) won’t just mark the beginning of the first Formula 1 race of the 2026 season. It also launches the first official race covered by Apple TV under a five-year deal that makes the streaming service the home of F1 coverage in the U.S. And we can expect a few things to happen as people tune in for that first race.
Viewers are likely to be impressed by the picture quality, at least if past reactions to Apple TV’s baseball and Major League Soccer coverage are anything to go by. Features like multiview will prove popular, and past broadcasts suggest that stats will plentiful if not always pertinent.
And you can also expect to hear a lot of complaints.
That’s par for the course when any new broadcaster takes over the reins of beaming a sport into people’s homes — something Apple knows all too well. Previous Apple TV forays into sports streaming have been met with criticism, from the quality of the announcers to just how easy it is for fans to find the actual broadcasts.
But F1 fans worried about how Apple will treat their sport over the course of the next five years can take comfort in a recurring pattern for the company — even if F1 on Apple TV stalls at the starting line, the company has often showed an ability to correct course going forward. And that goes for more than just its streaming service.
Apple’s tech track record
It’s something I’ve noticed covering the Cupertino, Calif.-based company’s comings and goings for the last quarter-century. Despite its undeniable track record of producing some truly ground-breaking devices over the course of its 50-year history, even some of Apple’s biggest hits needed fine-tuning before truly taking off.
Few people may remember now, but the first iPhone launched only with the apps Apple pre-installed on the smartphone, with no easy way to add apps from outside the ones built at Apple HQ. That changed with the introduction of the App Store a year after the iPhone’s 2007 debut, giving Apple a leg up on the mobile competition for years to come.
Similarly, the Apple Watch was first pitched as an extension of the iPhone — something you’d turn to for notifications, text messages and maybe even phone calls when you didn’t want to take your phone out of your pocket. But when users started making use of the watch’s health- and fitness-tracking capabilities, Apple pivoted hard in that direction, emphasizing those tools in future iterations of the product.
Shifting sports coverage
We’ve seen that same pivoting with Apple’s early efforts at sports streaming. At one point last year, it seemed like Apple was in danger of losing its slate of Friday night baseball games; instead, those will return for the 2026 season. Maybe that’s a reflection of other Major League Baseball broadcast partners like NBC not willing to pay out for Apple TV’s slice of the TV rights, but moves like Apple TV’s partnership with EverPass Media certainly have improved their position.
EverPass brings live sports to bars, restaurants and other commercial spaces, and the addition of Apple TV to that package certainly tackles the complaint from baseball fans who grumble about having to pay for another streaming service if they wanted to watch one of Apple’s Friday night games.
Apple’s made more drastic changes with its MLS coverage — no doubt spurred by MLS team executives suggesting the league needed to end their deal. The biggest hurdle to watch MLS via Apple — a separate Season Pass for MLS matches on top of the Apple TV monthly fee you were already paying — is gone for the 2026 season. Now, any Apple TV subscriber can watch any match available on the streaming service. A new Walmart Saturday Showdown match adds a marquee match-up to the weekend schedule, promising enhancements to the broadcast.
What it means for F1 — and beyond
From the sound of it, Apple is already applying the lessons it’s learned from other sports to its F1 package. As explained by Apple ahead of the first official broadcast, F1 viewers will have a choice of feeds — the F1 feed as well as video from Sky Sports – with both available for Apple TV’s Multiview feature. Other feeds will offer a race tracker, podium cameras that focus on the cars in the lead and individual driver cams.
Uncharacteristically, Apple is turning to others for F1 content, too, including Netflix, its long-time rival in the streaming game. The eighth season of “Drive to Survive” is airing on both Apple TV and Netflix, and select races will be shown on Netflix and Tubi in addition to Apple’s streaming service. Clearly, Apple doesn’t want the same complaints about its MLS coverage to find their way to the new F1 deal.
That emphasizes the importance of F1 coverage specifically and sports coverage in general to Apple TV’s future. While opinion is divided on just how crucial live sports are to driving subscriptions to streaming services, there’s a strong belief in some quarters that it’s having some benefits for Apple. As an example, a December 2025 report from data research firm Antenna claimed that a Los Angeles Dodgers-New York Yankees match-up airing on Apple TV generated 198,000 more sign-ups than the new season of The Morning Show, one of the service’s original series.
And that’s happening even as Apple TV’s sports portfolio contains fairly niche sports. F1 is certainly growing in popularity in the U.S., but it doesn’t garner the attention of more mainstream sports. MLS isn’t even the most watched soccer league in its own country, trailing Liga MX and England’s Premier League for viewers. And while baseball may be one of the Big 4 sports in the U.S., interest is stronger for broadcasts featuring local teams than it is for nationally broadcast games, at least until the postseason rolls around..
As a company, Apple’s not known for resting on its laurels. Even with a full lineup of Mac computers, it still branched out into phones, tablets, smartwatches and more. So it’s natural to assume that the company’s tendency to search for what’s next might also drive it to add more streaming sports to their arsenal, perhaps even expanding into true audience boosters like football and basketball.
If that’s part of Apple’s plans, though, don’t expect the company to tip its hand. Apple is notoriously tight-lipped about the future direction of all its products, and you would assume that applies to Apple TV as well. For now, it all comes down to watching how this season of F1 racing unfolds, noting what adjustments Apple makes to its broadcasts over time and imagining how that might inform future sports coverage on the streaming service.