Netflix F1 show slammed over tobacco advertising

Netflix's popular Formula One show is providing tobacco giants with a fast and effective marketing vehicle to swerve past bans on advertising their product, industry monitors have said.

The behind-the-scenes Formula One streaming series "Drive to Survive" has been hugely popular on Netflix, which recently released the fifth season.

But campaigners warn that beyond boosting the motor sport's popularity, the show is also delivering into homes worldwide the branding of cigarette companies that sponsor F1 teams, including in countries where tobacco advertising is banned.

In a fresh report, F1 industry monitor Formula Money and tobacco industry watchdog STOP charged that in just the fourth season of "Drive to Survive", "a total of 1.1 billion minutes of footage streamed around the world contained tobacco-related content."

Half of all episodes during that season contained tobacco-related branding in the opening minute, according to the report, entitled: "Driving Addiction: F1, Netflix and Cigarette Company Advertising".

The product branding of Ferrari sponsor Philip Morris International (PMI) and McLaren sponsor British American Tobacco (BAT) has "heavily featured in the series, with extended plotlines following the teams' drivers," the report said.

"Research suggests that PMI and BAT are reaching new audiences through the show, including people who don't otherwise watch F1 races," it added.

Younger audiences

Today's report showed that the viewers of "Drive to Survive" were younger than typical F1 audiences, and also suggested it had contributed towards significantly increasing viewership of F1 races beyond the Netflix series.

"This increase in viewers means more people see the branding F1 sponsors place on the cars and livery," it