Where there's smoke... Netflix under fire for tobacco advertising in F1 'Drive to Survive' series

Industry monitors said that Netflix's popular Formula 1 show, 'Drive to Survive', provides tobacco giants with a fast and effective marketing vehicle to swerve past bans on advertising their products.

The behind-the-scenes F1 streaming series has been hugely popular on Netflix, which recently released its fifth season.

But campaigners warn that, beyond boosting the motorsport code'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."

And 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

The report, released on Wednesday, showed that the viewers of "Drive to Survive" were younger than typical F1 audiences. It also suggested it contributed significantly to 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,"