Lego goes all in on Formulation 1, including F1 Academy workforce sponsorship

Lego is rebuilding how customers interact with motorsport brick by brick.

In 2025, Lego kicked off a partnership with Formulation 1 that introduced formally licensed units to world retail cabinets and immersive experiences to races around the globe. Within the almost yr since launch, the collaboration has bolstered fan engagement for each manufacturers, result in promotional gross sales of Lego merchandise and expanded the demographic attain for the toy firm and the racing group.

In August, Lego CEO Niels Christiansen touted the corporate’s Formulation 1 units as one of many improvements that fueled report first-half income and working revenue. The corporate, which is privately held, reported a 12% year-over-year income bump to 34.6 billion Danish kroner, or $5.4 billion, for the primary six months of 2025.

“It’s a massively rising fan base,” Julia Goldin, chief product and advertising officer at Lego, advised CNBC. “It’s the largest motorsport now when it comes to its fandom. … We felt that we might actually faucet into that and ship one thing very distinctive.”

With Formulation 1, Lego is not simply leveraging an current fandom, it is increasing it, bringing underserved demographics into the world of racing and interesting new clients.

“Lego has an awesome repute for choosing out the correct traits to turn into part of, and motorsports in recent times has been on an actual upswing,” stated James Zahn, editor in chief of The Toy E-book.

“F1, as we have seen, has simply turn into a cultural juggernaut the place it’s attracting an viewers that is not your typical motorsports fan,” he stated. “It appears to transcend ages and pursuits.”

ESPN, which broadcast the 2025 F1 season within the U.S., reported report viewership numbers for the races. The Disney-owned sports activities community noticed a mean of 1.3 million viewers throughout its stations and platforms by way of nearly all of the racing calendar. That was up from a earlier report of 1.21 million viewers set in 2022 and up from simply 554,000 in 2018, the primary yr of ESPN’s broadcasting cope with F1.

Subsequent yr, U.S. broadcasting rights transfer to Apple TV following the success of the Apple-distributed “F1: The Film,” which hit cinemas in June.

In increasing its catalog of merchandise — introducing meticulously designed F1 automotive brick units, full with team-accurate liveries — Lego has constructed gateways into the model for newcomers.

“On the coronary heart of it was understanding our viewers’s ardour factors,” Goldin stated. “After we select to enter a partnership, might we see ourselves doing one thing distinctive that might provide actual worth … we felt like we had an actual alternative to ship experiences that they’d actually love.”

The F1 portfolio included merchandise for Lego’s Duplo line for preschool youngsters, conventional units for informal builders and Lego Technic units for extra superior builders.

Lego was additionally current at F1 races through the season, internet hosting in-person activations that included useful, life-size Formulation 1 automobiles and even crafting trophies out of bricks for podium finishers of the British Grand Prix at Silverstone.

On the Las Vegas Grand Prix in November, the highest three drivers have been chauffeured to a media availability space following the race in a life-size pink Lego Cadillac, a nod to the Cadillac F1 workforce that is becoming a member of the grid in 2026.

With the 2025 season wrapped, Lego is already constructing into subsequent yr.

As a part of the continuing relationship between the 2 manufacturers, Lego has signed on as a workforce sponsor for an F1 Academy automotive beginning in 2026. Behind the wheel is Esmee Kosterman, a 20-year-old Dutch driver.

Lego’s Goldin stated whereas the F1 Academy partnership is an extension of the prevailing racing partnership, “they’re doing it in a novel manner, as a result of they’re really partnering as much as help a life-size automotive and the motive force.”

“That is an important aspect of bringing extra consideration and form of underscoring the credibility and authenticity of ladies taking part in motorsports and, importantly, for his or her dad and mom to see the chance [and] potential for them to be engaged within the sport,” Goldin stated.

Zahn of The Toy E-book described the collaboration between Lego and Formulation 1, notably the F1 Academy, as a “good partnership.”

“[The] Feminine motorsports fan has all the time been there, however they have not essentially been embraced on the patron product facet of issues,” he stated.

Wolff and Goldin each famous that one of many fastest-growing segments of the Formulation 1 fan base is ladies.

“We’re tapping precisely into the the pattern of this fandom and we’re including worth to the accomplice, as properly,” Goldin stated. “We see from our information that not solely are we participating extra F1 followers with the Lego model, however vice versa. There are extra Lego model followers that at the moment are turning into followers of Formulation 1.”