Although there was a huge amount of hype for season 6 of Drive to Survive (DTS), Netflix received an abysmal viewership. The new season features 10 episodes and was released on February 23, the last day of pre-season testing. According to Dave Nelson, a motorsport expert, the new DTS season only had an average audience of 2.9 million viewers after the first three days of its release.
This was a drastic drop of about 23.2 percent or 667,000 viewers when talking about numbers. This paints a bad picture of the show as season six witnessed a higher drop in viewership than what season five witnessed last year.
Furthermore, the statistics also revealed that 21.8 million hours of Drive to Survive were only consumed on the opening weekend. Meanwhile, in 2023, it was 25.76 million in the same duration. This equates to a massive dip of about 18 percent.
Nelson believes that the viewership has dropped because of longer duration of the episodes. Although the numbers in the first week have not been great, Nelson predicts that they might jump in the second week as there would still be plenty of viewers who would want to watch the new season.
Netflix will hope that the viewership for the latest season of Drive to Survive improves in the coming week since this show is one of the most popular ones on the streaming platform. DTS helped F1 reach a global audience over the past few years by providing a more thorough glimpse of what goes behind the scenes in the sport.
Despite recent criticism, DTS has been instrumental in inspiring new sports documentaries
One of the primary reasons for the reduced viewership of season 6 of DTS is regarded to be sensationalism. Fans, experts as well as drivers did not like how Netflix tried to dramatize events for the series. Citing the same, Max Verstappen once even boycotted an entire season of the show.
However, the Dutchman made his comeback to DTS a year later. Since then, reports have claimed that Netflix are trying to avoid sensationalism after repeated criticism. Nonetheless, Drive to Survive is still a show that is breaking barriers and adding new fans to the sport.
At the same time, it also paved the way for other sports documentaries. Documentaries like Full Swing, a golf-based series, and Break Point, another series based on Tennis, have undoubtedly taken inspiration from Formula 1: Drive to Survive.
Apart from them, documentaries like Quarterback of NBA, Tour de France: Unchained of Cycling, Cheer, and Sisters on Track also follow a similar pattern. Moreover, DTS also gave birth to the Netflix Cup, the streaming platform’s first-ever live sports broadcast event.
