Lego goes all-in on Formula 1, adds F1 Academy team sponsorship

Lego is rebuilding the way consumers engage with motorsport, brick by brick.

In 2025, Lego launched a partnership with Formula 1 that brought officially licensed sets to global retail shelves and immersive experiences at races around the world. Nearly a year after its launch, the collaboration has increased fan engagement for both brands, led to promotional sales of Lego products and expanded the demographic reach of the toy company and race organization.

In August, Lego CEO Niels Christiansen highlighted the company’s Formula 1 sets as one of the innovations that generated record revenue and operating profit in the first half of the year. The company, which is privately held, reported a 12% year-on-year increase in revenue to 34.6 billion Danish crowns, or $5.4 billion, for the first six months of 2025.

“This is a massively growing fan base,” Julia Goldin, Lego’s director of product and marketing, told CNBC. “It’s currently the biggest motorsport in terms of fandom. … We felt like we could really tap into that and come up with something very unique.”

With Formula 1, Lego isn’t just leveraging an existing fandom, it’s expanding it, bringing underserved demographics into the racing world and attracting new customers.

“Lego has a reputation for picking the right trends to jump into, and motorsport has been booming in recent years,” said James Zahn, editor-in-chief of The Toy Book.

“F1, as we have seen, has just become a cultural juggernaut where it attracts an audience that is not the typical motorsport fan,” he said. “It seems to transcend ages and interests.”

ESPN, which broadcasts the 2025 F1 season in the United States, reported record viewership numbers for the races. THE DisneyThe chain-owned sports network averaged 1.3 million viewers across its stations and platforms during most of the racing calendar. That’s up from the previous record of 1.21 million viewers set in 2022 and just 554,000 in 2018, the first year of ESPN’s broadcast deal with F1.

Next year, U.S. broadcast rights will transfer to Apple TV following the success of “F1: The Movie”, distributed by Apple, released in theaters in June.

By expanding its product catalog – introducing sets of meticulously designed F1 car bricks, complete with team-accurate liveries – Lego has built gateways to the brand for newcomers.

“At the heart of the project was understanding the passions of our audience,” Goldin said. “When we chose to enter into a partnership, could we imagine ourselves doing something unique that would provide real value…we felt like we had a real opportunity to provide them with experiences that they would really love.”

The F1 portfolio included products from the Lego Duplo range for preschoolers, traditional sets for casual builders, and Lego Technic sets for more advanced builders.

Lego also had a presence at F1 races during the season, hosting in-person activations featuring life-size working Formula 1 cars and even making brick-built trophies for the British Grand Prix podiums at Silverstone.

At the Las Vegas Grand Prix in November, the top three drivers were driven to a post-race media availability area in a life-size pink Lego Cadillac, a nod to the Cadillac F1 team that will join the grid in 2026.

With the 2025 season over, Lego is already preparing for next year.

“Lego is one of our dream partners,” said Susie Wolff, chief executive of the F1 Academy, an all-female racing league under the broader F1 umbrella.

“When they joined Formula 1, I immediately contacted Julia [Goldin]THE [chief product and marketing officer]”, Wolff told CNBC. “There are so many synergies between what they’re trying to do and what our core mission is.”

The F1 Academy held its inaugural season in 2023. The division was created to address the lack of female drivers in the F1 series and aims to develop young female drivers and prepare them for higher levels of competition.

“We’re trying to break preconceived notions that motorsport is a male-dominated environment,” Wolff said, noting that Lego has also made strides to promote inclusiveness with its brick sets.

As part of the ongoing relationship between the two brands, Lego has signed on as a team sponsor for an F1 Academy car from 2026. At the wheel is Esmee Kosterman, a 20-year-old Dutch driver.

Lego’s Goldin said that while the F1 Academy partnership is an extension of the existing racing partnership, “they’re doing it in a unique way, because they’re actually partnering to support a full-scale car and its driver.”

“It’s a very important part of bringing more attention and sort of highlighting the credibility and authenticity of women participating in motorsport and, most importantly, for their parents to see the opportunity [and] potential for them to get involved in the sport,” Goldin said.

Zahn of The Toy Book described the collaboration between Lego and Formula 1, particularly the F1 Academy, as a “perfect partnership”.

“[The] Motorsport fans have always been there, but they haven’t necessarily been adopted on the consumer product side,” he said.

Both Wolff and Goldin noted that one of the fastest growing segments of Formula 1 fans is women.

“We are exactly tapping into the trend of this fandom and we are also adding value to the partner,” Goldin said. “We see from our data that not only are we engaging more F1 fans with the Lego brand, but vice versa. More and more fans of the Lego brand are now becoming Formula 1 fans.”