system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: How in the world is Formula 1 profitable for the teams?

Teams like Ferrari and Mercedez have a budget of over a billion dollars, what the hell? They're losing money in order to compete in F1, right? I can't fathom they'd make it back... It's not that big of a spectator sport in comparison to other sports and so..so much money goes into it. How does that work?
gpt
F1 is actually one of the biggest spectator sports in the world with a viewership of 490 million people. TV channels across the world pay to show the races, and a cut of the money goes to the teams. There’s also a massive amount of ticket sales - 4 million people went to the 21 races last year. 

On top of that, the teams themselves sell merchandise and have sponsorship deals that bring in plenty of money - the cars are covered in logos that get seen by all those people. 

Finally, the companies that own the teams often see F1 as advertising for their product - ‘Win on Sunday, sell on Monday’. The classic example of this is that Ferrari don’t run TV/online/print advertising of any kind - their famous F1 team and winning reputation is enough to sell their road cars.