Disney Consumer Products and Formula 1 are expanding their partnership to include F1 Academy, the all-women feeder series that runs support events at select grands prix. The move, disclosed ahead of this weekend's Chinese Grand Prix in Shanghai, gives Disney licensing rights across two tiers of the F1 ecosystem for the first time.
The original Disney–F1 deal, announced last year, covered merchandise and apparel tied to the main championship. Adding F1 Academy broadens the IP footprint and creates a second testing ground for retail distribution. F1 Academy debuted in 2023 with backing from Formula 1 itself and runs a seven-round calendar attached to F1 weekends. The series fields five teams and 15 drivers, all competing in identical Tatuus F4 chassis. Viewership is modest—each race streams free on YouTube, with television distribution handled regionally—but the demo skews younger and more female than F1's core audience, a profile Disney's consumer unit watches closely.
The timing is deliberate. Shanghai marks the first Chinese Grand Prix since 2019, after a three-year pandemic hiatus and a one-year calendar shuffle. F1 has sold out the 56,000-capacity grandstands at Shanghai International Circuit, and the paddock is crowded with new sponsor activations, most of them China-local brands trying to justify eight-figure commitments. Disney's licensing team will use the weekend to preview apparel samples with retail buyers from Alibaba's Tmall platform and test pricing on co-branded merchandise in the circuit's official stores. If the take rate clears internal hurdles, the Academy line rolls out globally in Q3, likely timed to the August break when F1's content calendar slows and merchandising windows open.
What Disney gets is optionality. F1 Academy merchandise costs less to produce than F1-branded goods—the teams lack the motorsport heritage that commands premium pricing, and the drivers carry minimal individual Q-score outside niche fanbases. But the series offers Disney a low-risk channel to test designs, supply-chain partners, and retail concepts before committing capital to the main championship's higher-margin, higher-expectation products. The Academy deal also deepens Disney's relationship with F1 Commercial, the Liberty Media unit that controls all commercial rights. Liberty has pushed hard to verticalize F1's off-track revenue—ownership stakes in hospitality, direct-to-consumer apparel, even circuit concessions—and views Disney's consumer team as a credible partner that can move volume without damaging the brand.
The expansion also matters for F1 Academy itself, which has struggled to secure independent sponsorship. The series launched with $150,000 per-driver budgets funded mostly by F1, and team operating costs run $2 million to $3 million annually. Only two of the five teams have signed title sponsors. Disney's licensing deal won't generate direct revenue for the series, but it signals that F1 Academy has cleared the threshold where major consumer brands see merchandising upside. That perception helps when teams pitch prospective sponsors, who want proof that the series can generate ancillary value beyond track time.
Disney's broader F1 strategy remains unclear. The company divested ESPN's direct stake in F1 media rights years ago, and its current consumer-products deal doesn't include broadcast or streaming commitments. But the Academy expansion suggests Disney is sizing the franchise's full commercial surface area. Tasia Filippatos, president of Disney Consumer Products, has spent the past 18 months rebuilding the unit's sports portfolio after a period of retrenchment under prior leadership. She has added deals with the NBA, MLB, and now two tiers of Formula 1. The Academy deal gives her team a proving ground to iterate on design, pricing, and distribution before the main F1 partnership comes up for renewal, likely in late 2025 or early 2026.
Watch for product launches in August, timed to the summer break. Disney's retail partners—Target in the U.S., Sports Direct in the UK—will run limited SKU tests in Q3, with full rollouts contingent on sell-through rates. F1 Academy's next race is Monaco in late May, where Disney's team will again be trackside, this time measuring crowd engagement and photo rates with co-branded merchandise. The series is also in quiet talks to add a sixth team for 2027, which would require Disney to renegotiate SKU counts and royalty tiers.
Shanghai's sold-out grandstands give Disney a high-visibility weekend to debut the partnership. The Chinese market represents F1's largest growth opportunity outside the U.S., and Liberty has committed $200 million to paddock infrastructure and local activations over the next three years. Disney's consumer team knows that if F1 Academy merchandise moves in Shanghai, the business case for deeper investment writes itself.
The takeaway
Disney adds F1 Academy licensing to test merchandising depth and retail distribution before its main F1 deal renewal in late 2025.
formula 1disneylicensingf1 academymedia rightsmerchandising
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