Formula E has signed a multi-year deal making Disney+ its global streaming home from the 2026-27 season, across 144 territories, with ESPN and ESPN+ handling the US. Every race weekend is included, practice and qualifying as well as the races, plus on-demand replays and the usual behind-the-scenes filler. The season starts in December with 21 rounds across 13 events, and it lines up with the GEN4 cars arriving, which Formula E says will run up to 600kW.
The rights side is not really what I care about. Motorsport is the single hardest thing you can hand an encoder. The camera pans constantly, half the frame is grass and gravel and crowd, and every one of those is a detail nightmare at a constrained bitrate. Any sport where the picture holds still is easy by comparison. So the question for anyone here is what Disney+ actually delivers on the feed, and specifically what frame rate. A racing broadcast at 25 or 30fps looks like a slideshow whenever the car passes close to a fixed camera, and no amount of resolution rescues it. Frame rate matters more than pixel count on this content and it is the spec nobody publishes clearly.
Worth noting that existing local broadcast arrangements continue, so depending on where you are, the terrestrial or cable feed may still be the better-looking option even if the app is more convenient. That has been true for football in a lot of markets for years.
Anyone who watches motorsport on Disney+ already for other series, what does the picture actually hold up like when the field goes past the start line?
The rights side is not really what I care about. Motorsport is the single hardest thing you can hand an encoder. The camera pans constantly, half the frame is grass and gravel and crowd, and every one of those is a detail nightmare at a constrained bitrate. Any sport where the picture holds still is easy by comparison. So the question for anyone here is what Disney+ actually delivers on the feed, and specifically what frame rate. A racing broadcast at 25 or 30fps looks like a slideshow whenever the car passes close to a fixed camera, and no amount of resolution rescues it. Frame rate matters more than pixel count on this content and it is the spec nobody publishes clearly.
Worth noting that existing local broadcast arrangements continue, so depending on where you are, the terrestrial or cable feed may still be the better-looking option even if the app is more convenient. That has been true for football in a lot of markets for years.
Anyone who watches motorsport on Disney+ already for other series, what does the picture actually hold up like when the field goes past the start line?
