Women flock to the Melbourne F1 Grand Prix, figures show

Women comprise almost half the spectators attending Melbourne’s Australian Grand Prix making the event the most female-centric F1 event in the world.

Australian Grand Prix Corporation chief executive Travis Auld. Picture: Jason Edwards

Women now make up almost half the spectators at the Melbourne Grand Prix making the event the most female-centric Formula 1 event in the world.

Australian Grand Prix Corporation chief executive Travis Auld said female interest in the high-octane sport had been driven by the Netflix Drive to Survive documentary series that goes behind the scenes of the racing season. “We broke a record again this year with 450,000 people attending,” Mr Auld said at the QUT Business Leaders’ Forum in Brisbane on Tuesday.

“Crowds are up about 50 per cent from pre-Covid so growth globally has been extraordinary.”

Mr Auld said about 43 per cent of attendees this year were female, a significant increase over the year and also 10 per cent higher than the F1 global average. Of that 48 per cent are between 16 to 34. “They are young women, which is the envy of most sports globally,” he said.

“A major impetus was the Drive to Survive documentary, which was released in 2020. In itself, it was a very successful documentary, but it was also released at a time when Covid had just struck and people were sitting on their couches looking for something to do.

“Coming out of Covid, a whole range of people who were not connected with the sport previously now are. One in three people who now follow the sport were introduced to it in the last four years.”

Mr Auld, who previously served stints as CEO of Essendon Football Club and the Gold Coast Suns, has just completed a year in the Grand Prix role after having had no previous motorsport experience. He said it has “been a steep learning curve”.

“We’re one of the few Grand Prix events that takes place on a street circuit in a park, and that brings with it some enormous opportunities in that we get to start from scratch every year and we can innovate because there’s minimal permanent infrastructure. You’ve got 400 acres of land, so there’s no shortage of space.”

Mr Auld said more people wanted to come to the four-day event than he had tickets to sell at the moment. “There’s incredible demand for the event, but we’ve got to make sure the growth doesn’t outpace the experience. We can take a shortsighted view of it and sell a lot more tickets and fit them in, or make sure the experience grows at the same pace as the demand.”

He said the event pumped about $270m into the Victorian economy, making it a big money spinner for the tourism sector. “So we’re thinking not only about what’s happening on track, but also in off track, and entertainment is a big part of that,” he said.

Mr Auld said a new demographic were following motorsport and the challenge was to keep them engaged.

“If you’re an avid F1 fan and have been for years, you’re incredibly important to us and we’re going to make sure we’ve got a seat in a grandstand where you can watch every lap,” he said.

“If you’re coming along because it’s a great festival, then we want to make sure that we’ve got something that you can engage with on track. That might be for a family, it might be a group of young women, there’s got to be something there for them and then the amenity has to match.”

Originally published as Women flock to the Melbourne F1 Grand Prix, figures show