It's an exciting time for Formula One, with new owners Liberty Media outlining a bold new vision for the sport. Though some seem worried about the new owners "Americanising" F1, ESPN looks not at what F1 can do for the U.S. but what the U.S. can do for F1.

Game Pass

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F1's viewing audience -- both at live races and those watching broadcasts -- is dwindling. There are many reasons for this, but the falling TV audience is largely down to the slow shift away from free-to-air TV. In Britain, Sky Sports recently announced it will have the exclusive rights for F1 from 2019 onwards -- meaning British fans will only be able to watch live races behind a paywall from that point. That will align the UK with Spain and France, which follow the same model, and is likely to be replicated elsewhere in Europe -- which accounts for around 60 percent of F1's current audience. There are many solutions to this, and one of them might be across the pond.

The NFL and NBA are exemplary in taking their sport to the fan, rather than making the fan come to them. NFL's Game Pass costs £139.99 but guarantees you every second of every game (including the play-offs and the Super Bowl), interview, training session, documentaries and pretty much any NFL game to have happened in the last 10 years. Compare that to the hefty amount to pay for Sky in the UK, for example, which spends much of its time between races (and even during race weekends) showing re-runs of this year's races or old interviews. Fans have no say what content is on but with Game Pass you watch what you want, when you want, and there's plenty of it. The model is replicated by the NBA -- a quick comparison between the NFL/NBA and F1 websites show the glaring difference the latter needs to address.

To its credit, F1's recent social media input has been much-improved but the sport has seemed scared of embracing the very fans it is also confused about losing in such big numbers. American sports are all about taking themselves to the phone or laptop of the viewer rather than expecting fans to pay a lot of money for a limited amount of third-party content -- it's about time F1 started doing the same.

Color Rush

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F1 should be the pinnacle of "cool" in sport. It's fast cars and beautiful people at glamorous locations but in recent years this seems to have been lost somewhat. Just look at the state of modern-day car launches compared to the ones of old. Nothing says sexy quite like a press release with renderings of your new car, does it? F1 appears to have gone backwards in recent years on that front. The NFL is one sport willing to think outside the box. Color -- or should that be colour? -- Rush is one example. The idea is simple -- teams wear match-up specific uniforms which are garish, alternate versions of their usual kits. Each team now has a kit for this purpose, giving the NFL perfect social media fodder and plenty of viral opportunities. Ditto to the 'throwback jerseys', which will see a team pick one week to wear a kit from a previous season in the NFL. Imagine this in F1.

A Mercedes running the inverted colours for Malaysia, with the green of sponsors Petronas for its home race, or Ferrari running a throwback livery for the Italian Grand Prix at Monza, or McLaren-Honda going red and white for the Japanese Grand Prix. The latter two, especially, would create enormous hype and attention. In the modern age of social media, this is what fans want to see. Red Bull's camouflaged livery for winter testing last year is a good example -- an image that probably reached a lot of people who didn't even know that testing was taking place in Barcelona that week or otherwise have no interest in F1.

This idea would also help the problem F1 seems to have recently of bland, unappealing liveries. Four of the teams run predominantly grey/black schemes which just do not look great on the race track. Haas is one of them. The team's sponsors are likely to get a fair amount of exposure in Austin this year but how much more would they get -- especially in America -- if they unveiled an unashamedly over-the-top star-spangled livery for that event? It may sound incredibly simple, but sometimes the key to winning fans over is getting them to say "Wow, that's cool". And funky liveries are much "cooler" to the casual fan than an MGU-H, new brake duct or a 60-place grid penalty...

A lottery

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One thing which keeps sports like the NFL and NBA so enjoyable is their changeable nature every year, with the Draft and Draft Lottery acting as a great leveller season on season. Now this isn't something that can be replicated for drivers in F1 but the idea could be used elsewhere -- for example, in shaking up the calendar. As Kate Walker has suggested on ESPN before, F1 should consider a lottery draft for places on the calendar. If the season is going to keep getting longer, then why shouldn't it look different every year?

For example, imagine not knowing where five of 2017's races will be until December. To make the end-of-season trophy presentation actually mean something other than a black tie event for a handful of guests, this would be a perfect time to hold a draw. Much like the Champions League, the season champion could pick names out of a hat to hold the races which have put themselves forward as candidates. Imagine 2017's European Grand Prix at Magny-Cours, or an African Grand Prix at Kyalami, or a second U.S. Grand Prix at Dallas, Laguna Seca or Long Beach, assuming all were brought up to FIA standards, of course.

Variation keeps sport interesting and this is something American sports are constantly reinvigorated by. It's a win-win -- old circuits get to pay for a one-off race, while fans get the chance to see F1 at new circuits and drivers get to visit circuits they've never been to before. Each season looks vastly different as a result. Baku was a special event this year, ditto Mexico last year, but the gloss and interest of new events can be quick to wear off if fan numbers drop off in the following years.

An event away from the event

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There's been a lot of talk about spicing up the whole format of the current F1 weekend. There's a lot that can change, but how about something that actually doesn't have any ramification on the season? The NBA holds an annual Slam Dunk Contest for players which now crowns an annual champion. It has no bearing on the season as a whole but is popular with fans, and did include fan voting to determine the winner until several years ago. It gives players additional bragging rights and gives lesser-known players a chance to create superstar status but, most importantly of all, it gives people another reason to watch other than who might win on Sunday -- especially if that question has only two probable answers...

F1 seems like the perfect place for this kind of competition. Last year Christian Horner suggested the revival of the Procar series, which saw F1 drivers race against each other in one-make machinery at grand prix weekends. This lends itself to celebrity drivers, or drivers from other series, pitting themselves against one another in equal machinery for what ostensibly would be competition with a bit of fun added to it as well. Imagine Lewis Hamilton going up against Jeff Gordon and Tom Kristensen, for example, or Mika Hakkinen rolling back the years to take on Kimi Raikkonen as part of a ten-lap sprint race. You know you'd watch it. If an idea is exciting to think about, then fans are going to want to watch it and that's something F1 cannot say about the current product.

America's Game

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F1 has an incredible history -- a mix of tragedy, bravery, legendary drives and quirky characters. The job of F1 should be to tell this story to the masses, rather than relying on individual television channels to do so. Again, America is great at doing this. I will use NFL as an example. The excellent "A Football Life" documentaries follow retired players and coaches and tell their life story, using footage of their career and interviews with friends, colleagues and family. This is often available in the Game Pass mentioned above and is perfect for filling a weekend without NFL -- think of all those quiet F1 weekends or summer breaks you could be spending watching a historic F1 race or documentary of your choosing at the click of a button. It doesn't just have to be old history, either.

The NFL also runs a documentary called "America's Game" at the start of each season, telling the story of the Super Bowl winners' campaign through the eyes of three key people. The Hard Knocks series is also excellent - following a team through training camp ahead of the season. It's an intimate story of a team and, though F1 teams would understandably be worried about revealing potentially secretive information to rivals, a documentary series following that season's championship contenders would be perfect material for the end of a season or the start of the next one. It could then be used by F1 to justify the cost of something like Game Pass, and give fans more reasons to pay to watch just F1 rather than opting against purchasing a channel just to see racing once every two weeks.