Ticket demand surges for $100m Grand Prix
Revenue for this year’s Australian Grand Prix will soar past $100m for the first time with tickets sold out and a surge in corporate hospitality driven by a resurgence in popularity for the global motor racing series.
The hugely successful Netflix series Drive to Survive, focusing on the drivers and team owners and principals behind the scenes, has helped fuel demand for the Australian race and attract a largely new group of fans.
New Australian Grand Prix Corporate chief executive Travis Auld said 40 per cent of racegoers were female – the highest rate of any Formula One race in the world – and 37 per cent who attended last year’s race were new to the event.
That all means Auld suddenly has a problem that would have been welcomed only a few years ago when it appeared interest in the event was waning: there are now not enough tickets to keep up with current demand.
“We had 440,000 people at the event last year (over four days) and that’s 50 per cent higher than we had in 2019,” he said. “So the growth has been enormous.
“We would like to provide the opportunity for more people to attend the event. But we want to continue to get the experience right first. I think we can beat last year’s number and set another record. But we’ll do so in a way that doesn’t impact the experience for fans.
“You need to make sure the experience is good enough to make it something people don’t want to miss.”
Auld said the event would easily break through the $100m revenue mark given the “significant growth in hospitality and demand in ticket sales” this year, surpassing the $95m level for 2023 and close to double the $55m figure achieved in 2019.
The race at Melbourne’s Albert Park had 46,000 grandstand seats for fans each day, and there were also at least 12-13,000 tickets sold as corporate hospitality, Auld said.
The corporate support has increased again this year, with newer and bigger precincts built by businesses such as Crown Resorts.
Auld, a former senior executive at the AFL who joined the Grand Prix in August, said he wanted the Grand Prix to reclaim the status it once had as a must-attend event for businesses leaders and other corporate types keen to network, as was now the case with the Australian Open tennis tournament in Melbourne each January and the AFL grand final in late September.
“One of my early observations is the fascination of corporate Australia with the business of F1, and that’s right through to the very senior levels, CEOs and chairs of top ASX companies,” Auld said.
With that in mind, the Grand Prix has established a new networking lunch and event for high-level corporate leaders and executives on Thursday as a lead-in to the Grand Prix on the weekend, featuring McLaren team chief executive Zak Brown and revelations about the use of data and analytics in the sport.
Auld hopes to keep building corporate support that his corporation can control ahead of a huge revamp of the Paddock Club on the main straight in time for the 2026 race.