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Roku and the electric racing circuit Formula E have a relationship powered by potential, and it’s accelerating rapidly.
In June 2023, Roku announced its first live sports rights deal and joined Formula E as its streaming partner. Already coupled with CBS for linear broadcasts, Formula E sought a place where fans could find not only its races but also highlights, interviews, its behind-the-scenes show Formula E Unplugged and its women-in-racing initiative Girls on Track.
Meanwhile, Roku launched its Roku Sports vertical two years ago to help viewers on its platform navigate sports streaming fragmentation by pulling content for their favorite teams and sports into one location. It created zones for NFL and NBA content, launched an NBA FAST channel and, most recently, secured exclusive rights to Major League Baseball Sunday Leadoff live games for its Roku Channel to anchor its new MLB Zone.
Roku Sports is built to personalize offerings to fans based on their viewing habits and locations, which Formula E hopes will help like-minded viewers discover the circuit and drive growth. For Roku, meanwhile, live sports and the fan data they provide prove incredibly useful as the platform comes out of NewFronts more willing to share data from its 81 million households with partners, including demand-side platform The Trade Desk and measurement service iSpot.tv.
“What we’re going to do is a proper deep-dive workshop after the season to see what’s worked, what hasn’t, where can they help us, where can we help them,” said Aarti Dabas, Formula E’s chief media officer. “We said let the season roll out and see what user journeys fans are following, how they are discovering our product and what kind of fans are these.”
The partnership underlines Formula E’s innovative mindset as it heads into the final races of the season in London. Among new changes, Ellie Norman, who spent five years as Formula 1’s CMO and two with the Premier League’s Manchester United as its chief communications officer, will join Formula E as its new CMO at the end of September. That follows the recent announcement that Formula 1 owner Liberty Global would be purchasing a 65% stake in Formula E from cash-strapped Warner Bros. Discovery.
Revving up the partnership
At Formula E’s most recent live event, the Hankook Portland E-Prix in Portland, Oregon, there was little evidence of Roku’s presence beyond myriad cameras and an overhead helicopter. Formula E and Roku are still exploring features, including squeezeback graphics and personalized driver, camera and radio feeds, but the companies haven’t given them the green flag yet.
Yet in Formula E’s Emotion Club hospitality space on the Portland International Raceway’s infield, both Formula E and Roku officials say Roku’s visibility on the race circuit and the impact of its data and technology are changing at a rapid pace—and leaving its mark on Roku’s approach to sports.
“One of the interesting things about this whole era, and working with Formula E in particular, is how fast they seem to be absorbing data both in terms of the coverage of the sport and the performance of the athletes in the vehicles and then applying that,” said David Eilenberg, head of content at Roku Media. “It’s not on a seasonal basis, on a weekly basis … in interfacing with other sports, you start to look for the same attitude and see who is making the most of what they’re learning.”
Running test laps
Joe Franzetta heads up sports at Roku Media and was responsible for the launch of Roku Sports and the Formula E deal. He also brought The Rich Eisen Show onto The Roku Channel and worked with the NFL, UFC and WWE to create sports programming for Roku Originals.
When a fan visits Roku to watch sports, Franzetta wants “to create a comprehensive sports experience for that viewer.” With Formula E, that means building a complete ecosystem around each race. Fans have access to qualifying sessions, the Unplugged docuseries and the Recharge live show that Roku produces after each event to offer context for U.S. audiences.
While Franzetta noted that Roku wanted to ensure it spent its first year with Formula E emphasizing the benefits of its free platform and broad availability, he sees a lot more potential for Year 2.
“Our platform is interactive, so going forward, we’re looking at opportunities to do other things with other elements of the production that they bring to the table,” Franzetta said. “They’re capturing different types of videos or capturing cameras from the cars … there’s a lot of things that we’re looking at adding into the experience next year.”
To reserve room for those features, Franzetta and Roku have attempted to keep their platform and live sports broadcasts clear of “intrusive advertising.” For example, Franzetta noted that Roku has a banner ad on its home screen for sponsors that typically allows a viewer to tune into an event. The sponsor can be connected to that event, which makes the ad more useful to the viewer while creating more opportunities for sports partners and advertisers.
Formula E was the test case, but it’s a formula that Roku’s repeated successfully throughout its sports offerings.
“The most obvious way to see it on the screen is the fact that we’re building these dedicated destinations for specific partners, and we generally have a sense of what works within those experiences, and we’re applying that across multiple partners,” Franzetta said. “And each time we do one, five more calls come inbound, seeking similar experiences for their sports.”
Seeing the finish line
Formula E is in its 10th season and is largely unencumbered by the legacy and traditions that can constrain the presentation of other sports and leagues. Dabas noted that Formula E’s audience is divided nearly evenly between men and women, with half of its fans age 40 or below.
That’s led the circuit to view its partnership with Roku as a blueprint for what’s possible in other territories, but also approach advertisement opportunities within its broadcasts with an open mind.
“If Roku comes to us saying, ‘We need to create this spot like a squeezeback,’ we as a championship are very flexible because we know that advertising revenue is important to tell a better story,” Dabas said. “As long as it does not interfere with the fan experience and the storytelling, I think brands and advertisers are so critical to helping the sport grow, and we should accommodate them.”
Before joining Formula E, Dabas spent nearly 13 years managing media rights for the International Cricket Council. She noted that the commercialization of cricket in India included creative squeezebacks, replay bugs and other in-game elements because fans would rather tolerate the ads than pay for coverage. Formula E has already researched similar ads, and Dabas said virtual graphics within the race may not be out of the question.
“The fans accepted it, as long as they could watch the sport, the commentary was clear and they didn’t cut to breaks,” Dabas said. “If there is a replay bug or something, it’s in the corner, which is not covering the graphics or the storytelling. I think fans don’t mind.”
The opportunity still available to Formula E, Roku and advertisers during broadcasts is evident trackside at the circuit’s events.
On race day in Portland, the main race finished in less than 40 minutes. Between practice sessions and qualifying rounds, fans ran laps on simulators in a gaming arena, grazed dozens of local food carts, skated with the Rose City Rollers roller derby team, gawked at street performers, skated a half pipe and sat in on a set from pop singer Natalie Jane.
At an “always on” Roku-era Formula E, those are all extensions of the circuit’s story. The connections to cuisine, gaming, entertainment, culture and other sports are at the track, just waiting to be turned into race-day content.
As Eilenberg noted, all of the above are just some of what new generations of fans expect from their interaction with a sport. At the end of Year 1 of their partnership, Roku and Formula E are starting to see a path through the pack to a clearer road ahead.
“The fact that this is a generation that has known nothing but electric vehicles, so for them it’s completely natural and probably more comfortable that the car should be electric,” he said. “For much younger fans, the live experience is great in some part because of the noise, or lack thereof. Yeah. [Formula E] are successfully positioning themselves not only to capture existing motorsports fans within the core demo but, critically, the next generation of motorsports.”
