That Formula 1 surpasses football is a good sign, it means that our sporting results are very good.
Fernando Alonso once again has a competitive Formula 1 car and, with it, the illusion of the Spanish fans returns. The television hearings on Sunday demonstrate this. As was the case in the past with the races of the Asturian, who came to surpass a Classic in audience when F1 was seen in the open, this Sunday the Bahrain run stood up to football.
The game that coincided with the exciting career of Alonso and Sainz in Bahrain was Barça-Valencia, a match with a lot at stake, since the Catalan team fought to maintain the leadership of LaLiga and its rival, to escape relegation. According to the data, Formula 1 managed to attract more people, and be careful, because there has also been controversy.
According to the data published by the specialized account @MedF1osTV on Twitter, Formula 1 brought together 653,000 viewers and had a 5.8 share, while football drew 599,000 viewers. These audiences only respond to the DAZN F1 broadcast on Movistar, since it is the only one that can be measured by the traditional method.
In the global pay television day, the Bahrain F1 race was the second most watched event, only surpassed by the match between Real Betis and Real Madrid, which took place at 9:00 p.m. at night.
It is the second best start to a season on pay television, with 686,000 viewers. And we can only rely on the broadcast on Movistar, since DAZN does not offer data on subscriptions or audiences for its streaming platform.
LaLiga says that football surpassed F1
After these data came to light and there was open talk that Formula 1 had once again surpassed football, LaLiga published a Tweet in which it pointed out that football audiences had been higher, arguing that Valencia-Barça had gathered an average of 776,362 spectators.
To obtain this figure, LaLiga added the audiences of both Movistar TV’s LaLiga TV channel and LaLigaTV 2, the multi-screen channel. Between the two, they add up to more than 100,000 spectators more than Formula 1, but of course, it is biased information, since we do not have the data on the emissions of the F1 race through DAZN.
Be that as it may, and controversies aside, it is clear that the F1 audience was very good and that, so many years later, Fernando Alonso returns to fight with football.