Max Verstappen raced against 100 drivers at Silverstone last week, but the event’s biggest number was the 500 million people its participants could reach between them.
The Oracle Red Bull Racing driver took on a field of 100 competitors in a unique live karting event created with Disney and ESPN and produced by Whisper, with the participants bringing a combined social reach of more than half a billion people to the project.
For Red Bull, however, ‘Max vs 100’ was about more than putting Verstappen behind the wheel of a kart.
The event created a new entertainment format around one of Formula 1’s biggest stars, while giving Disney a live sports property and its participants a ready-made source of content.
As Scott Branch, Senior Vice President and Integrated Business Lead at THE·TEAM told Sector, the commercial proposition was built around both brands extracting value from the same investment.
“Red Bull and Disney got value from the same dollar. Red Bull generated new, owned IP and a repeatable format for future stunts, and Disney expanded its live sport and entertainment offering,” he said.
“You’ve got an athlete people already know and love, a challenge anyone can understand instantly, and 100 content-hungry participants clamouring to put their own unique spin on proceedings.
“This was built to generate a torrent of social content; a gift that will keep giving for both brands.”
Maximum accessibility
Appointed as the exclusive broadcast production partner, Whisper specialise in sports, documentaries, branded content, unscripted entertainment, events and esports.
An ever-present in the F1 paddock and a long-standing relationship with Red Bull gave Whisper a deep appreciation of the ambition of the project, while its e-sports pedigree allowed the team to understand how to reach a younger audience with sport content.
For this particular project, Whisper sat between Red Bull, Verstappen and Disney to turn the concept into a single live show.
Whisper’s Senior Executive Producer Simon Corney, said it was to key to identify what made Max vs 100 fundamentally different from a conventional motorsport broadcast and building the production around those differences.
“Working alongside our Disney and Red Bull colleagues, our job was to tease out everything that made this different from a normal motorsport broadcast and push the access as far as we could,” he told Sector.
“We were with Max right up until the start, inside his Race Director briefing, talking to him on the grid and then, crucially, we were able to speak to him, and have him speak to rival drivers, while he was actually racing.
“All things you simply don’t get in F1. We extended this further by creating mini ‘conference calls’ between drivers, giving us even more real-time reactions and interaction during the race.”
That level of access only mattered if casual viewers could actually follow what was happening, which meant stripping out the layers of technical detail that usually separate motorsport from mainstream entertainment.
Corney said the production deliberately moved away from the complexity associated with top-level motorsport, rebuilding the format from the ground up around instant comprehension rather than race craft.
“We deliberately ‘gamified’ and simplified the graphics so anyone tuning in could immediately understand what was happening and the jeopardy involved,” he explained.
“We worked hard to get as many of the 100 drivers and their personalities on screen as possible, ensuring their individual audiences felt served too.
“We paired Mo Gilligan’s broad entertainment appeal with motorsport expertise across the wider talent team, including co-host Nicki Shields, and localised the broadcast into five additional languages to make it as widely accessible as possible.”
That combination of simplified storytelling and a deliberately mixed talent line-up was designed to solve a specific problem – reaching people who would never sit through a full grand prix weekend.
“It was about taking all that incredible access, leaning into everything that was unique about the format and turning a motorsport event into a piece of live entertainment that could reach well beyond a traditional racing audience,” added Corney.
That approach also extended to the participants themselves.
Whisper said the 100 drivers had a combined social reach of more than 500 million, creating a distribution network that stretched beyond the channels of Red Bull, Disney and ESPN.
One of those to compete was Nate Saunders, F1 Senior Writer at ESPN, who said the content produced on the day reflected just how differently each participant approached the same access.
“The range of content was really diverse,” he told Sector.
“From ESPN’s perspective, we were limited to a degree in terms of long-form content, so my main output there was mainly on the editorial side from ESPN.com. But there were so many different content creators there it felt like they ticked off every box you could want.
For people whose livelihood is creating engaging content all focused around unique access most ordinary people could only dream of getting, it felt like a goldmine.
Nate Saunders
“There were some Olympians, some streamers, some gamers, some guys who have gained a following doing comedy dances, and a bunch of participants who are already part of the Red Bull family in some way, shape or form.
“The result of that was just a crazy range of content. Some did long YouTube videos on their race against Max, others had very high-energy short videos about the whole experience.
“It felt like the race list encompassed every type of content you see in the modern media landscape.”
Saunders said the format’s appeal, for those whose job is making content, came from access that would normally be tightly controlled.
“Coming from the world of the F1 paddock where there are restrictions on top of restrictions, there was a freeing, ‘Wild West’ kind of feel to what people were able to grab,” he added.
“For people whose livelihood is creating engaging content all focused around unique access most ordinary people could only dream of getting, it felt like a goldmine.”
Partnering up
The event also gave Red Bull’s commercial partners an opportunity to become part of the entertainment rather than simply appear around it.
Even title partners Oracle had been involved before a wheel had been turned in Northamptonshire.
“Oracle have been running the simulations for how long it would take Max to overtake everybody, and in the simulations we ran we thought it would take about 40 minutes,” explained Jack Harington, Partnerships Group Lead at Red Bull and one of the 100 drivers.
“Now as I understand it was closer to 30 minutes, so you can have all the data in the world, the best technology in Oracle to predict it, but sometimes you’ve got a Max Verstappen who’s just going to beat the data.
Verstappen himself said the event had delivered despite the uncertainty around how the unusual format would work.
“It’s something very unique and you never know how it’s going to go,” said the four-time world champion.
“But the first time went really well. So from there on, I could really have a lot of fun trying to hunt them all down. There was a lot of effort going into it and it was nice that they all had a lot of fun as well, like preparing and participating.”
A one-off?
The bigger commercial question is whether Max vs 100 can become something repeatable.
Whisper’s Corney said the company is already discussing where the concept could go next, both within motorsport and beyond it, treating this event less as a finished product and more as proof of a format that can be pointed at other sports and other talent.
“We had a brilliant experience working with Disney and Red Bull and they were great partners, so naturally we’re already discussing future opportunities together. This project is another example of the strength of that relationship,” he said.
“There are adjacent formats we’re exploring within motorsport, but the thinking goes much wider than that. I see no reason why the basic principle of taking elite sporting talent and putting them into an accessible entertainment format couldn’t work across other sports.
“Bringing creators and influencers into that mix, with their own personalities, communities and audiences, opens up even more possibilities.”
There are adjacent formats we’re exploring within motorsport, but the thinking goes much wider than that. I see no reason why the basic principle of taking elite sporting talent and putting them into an accessible entertainment format couldn’t work across other sports.
Simon Corney
That ambition extends beyond individual formats to how Whisper positions itself within the broader sport and entertainment landscape.
“Whisper is constantly developing in this space because ‘sport meets entertainment’ is very much our lane,” added Corney.
“Max vs 100 showed what’s possible when you bring those worlds together, and we’ve got plenty more ideas.”
The event therefore offers a useful case study in how the commercial value of an F1 driver can extend beyond the traditional race weekend.
Red Bull brought the star power and a new piece of owned IP while Disney gained a live sports and entertainment proposition and Whisper turned the concept into a broadcast format designed to reach a wider audience, while the 100 participants brought their own communities and distribution channels with them.
The kart race may have only lasted 14 laps but the commercial proposition surrounding it is likely to last considerably longer.
