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if tv numbers are going down, then they have to raise the number of people who come into contact with the car, or team and their sponsors in other ways. for me that would be slacking off a bit on youtube and creating videos and stuff with real viral potential.
alternatively if you look away from sport at tv shows and dramas, a lot of those gain worldwide support by the actions of their fans on social media and blogging sites. f1 does gain from that to a point, but making the footage more available and engaging with the competitors more to create more things for the fandom to obsess over is really cheap and easy marketing. the 15 year old fangirls and fanboys on places like tumblr and blogspot are pretty creative, and instead of fighting the copywrite implications of their actions, it's easier to simply let the content to, and allow them to create with it. they then share the resulting creation, and the cumulative effect is that people get involved with a sport that they first saw on a strangers blog on tumblr, for example.
the popularity of the kimi "leave me alone, i know what i'm doing" moment and some of the resulting memes (which are then perpetuated by the team themselves) are a good demonstration of how you get people to engage with your brand. the tv channels like sky and the bbc do it by having these cute little segments where they do awkward competitive things with the drivers, sauber produce some pretty random stuff as well. we see mclaren diversifying their image too with their cartoon.
so yeah. i think f1 needs to stop trying to monetise directly (a very old-school approach) and accept that a more relaxed approach will benefit them in the long run.
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