It should be noted that the original report also stated NBC, Disney and Amazon are circling the deal as well…
And honestly I would be surprised if the rights go anywhere than ESPN or (unless they table a huge bid) NBCU especially when the sport is still in a huge growth phase over in the US and locking it away on Netflix without a cable/broadcast presence could potentially impact that especially as they add races in the US which need prime time exposure and I think F1 will be considering that… I would never say never but I also think F1 will be very careful to allow their encouraging US growth to be treated as someone’s test case especially if they’ve not done sport before unlike Apple who are testing with MLB and Amazon who have slowly built up their capabilities before going for Thursday Night Football for a billion plus dollars a year.
This thread really gets into the pros and cons of it quite well I think -
https://twitter.com/sportspronick/st...KvT2crR8l4rAng