Australian Grand Prix to be a sellout and hit $100m revenue record

Fuelled by interest generated by Netflix’s Drive to Survive, the Melbourne race is expected to smash the $100m revenue barrier.

Australian Grand Prix corporate chief executive Travis Auld says the event will be sold out next weekend.

Revenue for this year’s Australian Grand Prix will surge 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 are 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 Mr 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. 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.

Max Verstappen driving the for Oracle Red Bull Racing during a pit stop. Picture: Getty Images

“You need to make sure the experience is good enough to make it something people don’t want to miss.”

Mr 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 has 46,000 grandstand seats for fans each day, and there are also at least 12-13,000 tickets sold as corporate hospitality, Mr Auld said.

The corporate support has increased again this year, with newer and bigger precincts built by businesses such as Crown Resorts.

Mr Auld, a former senior executive with the AFL who joined the Grand Prix last 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 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,” Mr 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 even on the weekend, featuring the McLaren team chief executive Zak Brown and revelations about the use of data and analytics in the sport.

Perth billionaire Laurence Escalante sponsors the Ferrari team.

Mr Auld planned to keep building corporate support that his corporation could control ahead of a huge revamp of the swanky Paddock Club on the main straight in time for the 2026 race.

While the Paddock Club is the most premium corporate hospitality product at Albert Park, all the revenue it makes goes directly to Formula One’s global owner, Liberty Media, which runs the precinct at most grand prix events each year.

But the Victorian government, which last year covered a $100m shortfall for the event, has to spend at least $160m to rebuild the Paddock Club, which cost about $6000 per person for three days, as part of the renewal of the contract it clinched with Liberty to keep the race in Melbourne until 2037.

More widely though, there are plenty of Australian billionaires who have poured big money into Formula One as an investment or to promote their businesses to the world.

Fund manager Will Vicars has a big investment via Caledonia and its stake in the NASDAQ-listed Liberty Media Corp Series C business.

Perth billionaire Laurence Escalante sponsors the Ferrari team with his VGW Play online social gaming brand on the famous red cars and the drivers’ helmets, while Jack Zhang’s Airwallex global payment brand is now a partner of McLaren.

Airwallex co-founder and chief executive Jack Zhang.

Stake.com co-founder Ed Craven has gone a step further buying naming rights to the Sauber team that will carry both the Stake cryptocurrency gambling or his Kick streaming brands depending on where races are during the season.

They will all get exposure to the tens of millions of television viewers around the world, and also on the track. But importantly, there will be a huge amount of fans that will see the brands and the drivers and other personalities on Drive to Survive.

“What it has done has humanised the athletes to fans, but also elevated the team principals as known personalities. They are recognised and people want their autographs,” Auld says about the Netflix series.

“The Australian Grand Prix Corporation, like many promoters, has taken advantage of that opportunity. You have to capitalise on it, but I think that this organisation has done that.”