Formula E reveal crucial agreement in major global partnership

Formula E CEO Jeff Dodds has confirmed that there are agreements in place for Disney+ to advertise Formula E, following last month's announcement that it will become the official global streaming partner of the championship.

It was announced in August that, as part of a multi-year agreement, Formula E will be available on Disney+ across 144 territories, including the UK and the USA.

As part of the deal, every practice session, qualifying session and race will be available live, as will preview and review shows, highlights, on-demand replays and behind-the-scenes content.

It is one of, if not the biggest and most significant partnerships in the history of the all-electric series, and one which, with the exciting arrival of Gen4, should result in a substantial increase in global viewership.

Crucially, Disney+ will also advertise the series, something Amazon Prime failed to do for Formula E's 'Driver' docuseries. While the docuseries, which ran for two seasons, was impressive, it was practically impossible to find on the streaming site.

Finding it was only possible by specifically searching for 'Driver', creating an unwanted barrier to attracting new fans. Based on the agreements in place with Disney+, the same should be avoided.

Dodds is more than aware that Formula E will not be front and centre all the time on the platform, especially with significant movie releases coming up for Disney, but he has expressed that the American company is invested in and eager to grow the series.

"So yes, there are agreements with Disney about how they'll promote the racing," Dodds told RacingNews365 during an interview. "The difference being [from Amazon], this is an early sport for Disney+, and they have a very strong vested interest in this being really successful for them.

"They're investing a lot of resources into this, so I think we're mutually aligned that as you move into a race weekend, it's going to have prominence. People are going to know there's a race going on, and they're going to be directed, navigated through the platform to find it.

"On the other hand, they have a lot of new releases, right? So they'll be releasing big Marvel releases and things like that. It would be naive to think we're always going to be the most important thing on that platform because they have a lot of really important things on that platform.

"But yeah, we've talked to them about the promotion of the race series being really important to us, and they've given us all the reassurances we need that they will absolutely land that for us."