Sky Sports has today announced a new multi-year broadcast partnership with W Series, the international single-seater motor racing championship for women. W Series will include ten races across eight Formula 1 Grand Prix weekends in 2022, and Sky Sports will broadcast live coverage of every qualifying and race session. The three-year partnership - through to the end of W Series' fifth on track season in 2024 - represents W Series' largest media investment to date and will include distribution of W Series content across Sky's channels, including linear, digital, and social.
The deal also increases the footprint of W Series coverage across Sky's global platforms. As well as the UK, W Series will begin a new partnership with Sky Italia this season, adding to the series' existing agreement with Sky Deutschland.
Sky is committed to the marketing and promotion of W Series coverage through its network of channels, as well as joint initiatives to promote women in motorsport. W Series will sit alongside Sky's premium sports portfolio, including elite women's sport such as the FA Women's Super League.
The W Series broadcast talent team for the 2022 season - which begins with a double-header in Miami, USA, on 6-8 May - will be announced in due course.
Jonathan Licht, Managing Director of Sky Sports said: In addition to Sky Italia and Sky Deutschland, Sky Sports are delighted to be growing our motorsport portfolio with this recently established elite women's series. It feels like Sky Sports is a natural home for W Series, given we have such a dedicated motorsport audience and a dedicated motorsport genre channel.
We pride ourselves in being a good partner to sport and it's been a privilege to work alongside Catherine and her team to come up with a broadcast offering that works for everyone. It is clearly a very exciting time to be a part of this journey.
At Sky Sports we are committed to making sport more inclusive and I can now proudly say that with the addition of W Series, every genre channel at Sky Sports now has both men's and women's sports coverage.
We look forward to sharing the excitement of this upcoming season with our viewers.
Catherine Bond Muir, Chief Executive Officer, W Series said: "Im delighted to announce our landmark broadcast partnership with Sky Sports, which is another significant step in W Series' continued rapid expansion. Throughout our conversations with Sky, I've been impressed by their commitment to women's sport and plans to amplify coverage of W Series across their vast portfolio of distribution channels, which will add real weight to our offering across broadcast, digital, and social platforms.
This partnership enables W Series to continue to expand its viewership within the UK. Alongside Sky, Channel 4 will continue its free-to-air coverage of the entire W Series season with highlights of every race and will also broadcast live our home race at the British Grand Prix at Silverstone in July. With this broad broadcast offering, we have the perfect mix of coverage across our UK audience.
W Series is an increasingly international series - more than half of the races during the 2022 season will take place outside Europe, including our first-ever race in Asia in support of the Japanese Grand Prix at Suzuka. Our broadcast partnership with Sky Sports reflects this, giving us great breadth of coverage across Sky's global platforms and we're excited to showcase incredibly exciting racing through fantastic content, direct to our fans.
Motorsports fans can tune in to watch coverage of every race of the W Series championship live on Sky Sports F1 as well as qualifying, weekly preview shows and everything else W Series across Sky Sports' linear and digital platforms.
In addition, Channel 4 will broadcast live and free-to-air coverage of the fourth race of the 2022 W Series season, the British Grand Prix at Silverstone, UK, and show highlights of the other nine races from season three.
Notes to editors
W Series is a free-to-enter motor racing championship, which provides equal opportunities for women and eliminates the financial barriers that have historically prevented them from progressing to the upper tiers of motorsport.
All W Series cars and corresponding equipment are the same specification and managed by the series, ensuring that our races and championships are won by the most talented drivers, rather than those with the wealthiest backers or the fastest cars. W Series was the second most-watched women's sport in the UK behind football during its inaugural season in 2019, and since then the series has created the greatest number of professional women racing drivers of all time.
W Series aims to create a pathway for women racing drivers, encouraging more girls into junior karting and more sponsors to support women racing drivers as they progress into the upper tiers of motorsport. The more high-profile role models it can create, the more W Series believes it will inspire young girls to go karting - if you can see it, you can be it.
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