The F1 Driver as a Modern Media Empire
Twenty men carry a $25 billion brand. That reality has changed the job of driver.
Baku delivered in a big way and, all of a sudden, Max Verstappen is starting to look unbeatable again. Leading from lights to flag, and clearing a scrambled-up grid by more than 14 seconds is dominance personified, but it’s also just Max being Max.
You’d be foolish to doubt that Verstappen, of all people, could make a late run, but, in all likelihood, the Driver’s Championship is a two-man race between the McLarens. But farther down the grid, there are other battles to watch closely these last seven races. That’s because a handful of drivers are fighting hard for the right to be one of the 22 on the Formula 1 grid in 2026.
As Tiggy Valen, co-host of the Paddock Project podcast, writes this week for Esses, having one of those seats transforms a driver into more than an athlete; in the nearly $25-billion modern Formula 1, drivers have basically become personal media empires.
The F1 Driver as a Modern Media Empire
By Tiggy Valen
It’s worth remembering: when Liberty Media acquired Formula 1 in 2017, it wasn’t a healthy sport. The American company viewed F1 as a turnaround project that could be repositioned as global entertainment. Since then, Liberty has rolled out Formula 1: Drive to Survive, tripled the U.S. calendar, loosened social media rules, and embraced lifestyle marketing. The result: a $4 billion purchase now valued near $25 billion less than a decade later.
Crucially, that value is concentrated in just 20 athletes. To put that in context: The NBA and Premier League have over 500 players; the NFL has more than 1,500.
That concentration of value has elevated the drivers from competitors into mini-media empires. On today’s grid, racing is only one line on the resume. Most drivers juggle businesses, sponsorships, and media partnerships, with every spare minute monetized. Collectively, the grid commands a nine-figure audience across platforms, turning drivers into global broadcast channels. Even their pets draw attention: Sir Lewis Hamilton’s bulldog, Roscoe, has more Instagram followers than every NHL player except Alex Ovechkin. It’s a reminder that F1’s attention economy outpaces almost every other sport — and in sports and media alike, money follows the eyeballs.
Hamilton is the blueprint
Hamilton remains the blueprint. His 40 million Instagram followers eclipse the NFL’s 31 million. He’s helped define brands from Tommy Hilfiger and Rimowa to Perplexity AI and Lululemon. Collaborations with Dior frame him as a lifestyle figure as much as a champion. He served as this year’s Met Gala co-chair and graced the cover of Vogue (don’t worry, Roscoe has too). His switch to Ferrari triggered a near‑10% jump in stock price — roughly $7 billion in market value — before he ever drove a single lap. His identity off track has become as commercially significant as his success on it.
While Hamilton remains in a league of his own, the next generation is following suit. Pierre Gasly appears at Paris Fashion Week and fronts Givenchy’s fragrance campaigns. Charles Leclerc represents Bang & Olufsen and Richard Mille. Lando Norris acts as the face of TUMI and Ralph Lauren Fragrances. The thing is: these aren’t ancillary marketing plays — they’re core to how drivers are positioned.
Drivers in founder mode
Many drivers have gone further, turning themselves into entrepreneurs. Hamilton has founded nonalcoholic beverage brand Almave, production company Dawn Apollo Films, apparel house Plus 44, charitable foundation Mission 44, and newly rebranded Lewis Hamilton Ventures. He’s built an off-track portfolio that rivals a small holding company.
Norris has Quadrant, a gaming, apparel, and lifestyle collective. This year, it sold a majority stake to Veloce Media Group, proof that driver-founded ventures can generate standalone enterprise value. Leclerc has ice cream brand LEC and creative studio SIDEQUEST. Valtteri Bottas created gin company OATH. Gasly just announced a new beverage brand, Secret Stuff. Together, they show how deeply the founder instinct has seeped into the culture of F1.
The founder model is significant because it moves beyond sponsorship. Drivers are no longer just renting their image to brands. They are creating companies, media platforms, and IP they control. In a sport where careers can be short and uncertain, these businesses are long-term bets that extend their relevance beyond racing.
Daniel Ricciardo proves the point. The Drive to Survive favorite rose to cultural prominence even as his peak racing years slipped behind him, launching ventures like his apparel brand Enchanté and his DR3 wine label. On-track results may have faltered, but for teams, the commercial upside of signing a driver with his personality and following was undeniable. Those ventures have also kept him present in the broader F1 ecosystem, from an Australian GP pop-up to Enchanté’s role as the lifestyle apparel partner of VCARB’s F1 Academy Program. The off-track ventures helped both to prolong his time on the track and give him an off-ramp for life beyond it.
But the obvious risk is oversaturation. An audience that is fed constant product placement eventually tunes out, and drivers themselves aren’t immune to the fatigue. Norris has spoken openly about mental health and pulled back from certain platforms. Hamilton has periodically gone dark on Instagram to reset. Max Verstappen has been blunter still, saying that his future in the sport depends on F1 “keep[ing] in mind that the actual sport comes first, instead of the show.”
For a sport that now markets drivers as full-time entertainers, the tension is clear: attention is lucrative, but it’s also corrosive. Managing that contradiction has become a defining challenge for the modern F1 driver.
Lessons beyond F1
In a sport where just 20 athletes carry a $20-plus billion enterprise, drivers have learned to monetize every facet of themselves. They’re competitors, but also entrepreneurs, endorsers, and content producers. Few leagues are as global, as glamorous, or as visible as Formula 1. The ecosystem Liberty has built around those structural advantages ensures drivers are amplified as personalities as much as athletes.
Other sports can take note. The NBA and international soccer leagues already lean into player brands — LeBron fans and Ronaldo fans follow wherever their favorite players go — but F1 shows what happens when the system itself is structured to reward multidimensional athletes. Tennis, golf, and women’s soccer — all pushing to grow global audiences — face the same reality: fans are drawn to identity as much as performance.
The lesson isn’t that every athlete needs a fashion line or a gaming startup. It’s that in the modern attention economy, narrative and presence drive value. Formula 1 has made that explicit, creating one of the most concentrated and lucrative ecosystems in global sport. The degree to which the strategy has worked in growing the sport means the other leagues would be foolish not to follow suit.
Read of the week
Over the summer, Esses sent journalist and photographer Noa Avishag Schnall out to Lagos, Nigeria for a week to shadow adventure biker Ebaide Joy Udoh as she prepares for the third leg of her record-setting journey across Africa. Ebaide’s story is a fascinating and thorny one, and Noa’s writing brings it to life on the page.
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