By Stephen Brook and Cara Waters
Incoming: chief executives of luxury global brands heading for the grand prix.
The influx into Melbourne for the Australian Grand Prix is spearheaded by Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton heir Frederic Arnault. The 29-year-old Frenchman is one of five children of LVMH titan Bernard Arnault and was instrumental in locking in the luxury conglomerate’s mega sponsorship deal with Formula 1, which starts this year and is estimated to be worth $US1 billion ($1.6 billion) over a decade.
Frederic Arnault sees extraordinary grand prix seasons ahead.Credit: Bloomberg
In an executive shuffle, Frederic has just been made chief executive of the group’s Italian cashmere brand, Loro Piana, after heading up TAG Heuer and the LVMH watch division.
He says Formula 1 is “one of the most desirable sports in the world”, one which “echoes a number of values that are very important to us”.
“The seasons that await us promise to be extraordinary,” he said when the deal was announced.
Frederic was expected to arrive in Melbourne as brand-building hospitality events reached a crescendo. On Thursday night, LVMH’s Moet & Chandon chief executive, Sibylle Scherer, hosted an intimate dinner at a private Toorak mansion. Across town, Nick Russian and Bar Bambi hosted the bar’s annual Patron tequila pre-grand prix party, a sit-down dinner for a VVIP guest list.
Ed Craven at the grand prix in 2024.Credit: Joe Armao
On Friday, Arnault is expected to host a Tag Heuer dinner at a private Toorak residence, with an after-party in the mansion’s extensive garage. On Sunday Crown is to host a Don Julio 1942 grand prix after-party at Grant Smilie’s Marmont restaurant while Bar Bambi is to stage a Chivas Regal grand prix wrap party.
Chivas Regal is a partner of Ferrari, which means Ferrari star Lewis Hamilton may or may not attend. We can be more certain about Anthony Capuano, the chief executive of Marriott International, who is due to stay at the Ritz-Carlton.
But CBD has learnt that Aussie billionaire and sponsor of the rival Kick Sauber team Ed Craven is staying away. Yep, the founder of crypto-casino Stake and streaming platform kick.com won’t be attending Albert Park on Sunday.
“I opted to give my tickets to staff members,” Craven said, pointing out there are a lot of huge F1 fans among the staff.
Counting on it
Grand prix organisers love to spruik the number of attendees at the Albert Park race, boasting of a record four-day crowd figure of 452,000 last year, but the actual numbers are rather rubbery.
That 452,000 figure is just an estimate by the Australian Grand Prix Corporation, with no official attendance figures published.
It’s so keen to keep these “sensitive” numbers to itself that after the Save Albert Park group obtained an order from the Office of the Victorian Information Commissioner requiring the corporation to publish attendance figures, the grand prix took the community group to the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal to fight the order last month.
Fans at last year’s Australilan Formula 1 Grand Prix.Credit: Eddie Jim
The corporation’s chief financial officer, Anthony Connelly, argued that if the figures were published “the event’s reputation as a leading sports and entertainment fixture could well be prejudiced by a misleading campaign suggesting its attendances are inflated”.
Peter Logan, head of Save Albert Park, has long been sceptical about claimed grand prix attendance figures, noting the grand prix’s reluctance to use turnstiles and scanners at the event, the distribution of free tickets and the likely inclusion of staff and media in the count.
“They’ve spent three decades ‘trialling’, in inverted commas, scanners,” he said. “Every other event scans their people in, they don’t count staff or hangers-on.”
Roderick Campbell, research director at think tank the Australia Institute, said attendance numbers were important when so much public money was spent on the grand prix, which lost $102 million last year.
“It’s gobsmacking that an event in an industry that claims to be so high-tech that it invents new stuff that could put people on the moon every year also can’t accurately say how many people came.”
Sadly, VCAT has not come to a decision yet, so the number of attendees at this weekend’s grand prix will continue to remain a mystery.
The Australian Grand Prix Corporation said it released daily estimated attendance figures.
“The VCAT matter relates to AGPC’s methodology for calculating these estimated attendances. AGPC will make no further comment on a matter currently before VCAT out of respect for the process,” a spokeswoman said.
Brand Doohan
But what on earth was rising Formula 1 driver for the Alpine team Jack Doohan doing during the week pictured on the evening news lying on a bed with his dad, the five-time grand prix motorcycle road racing world champion Mick Doohan?
Pure marketing, that’s what.
Jack Doohan is driving for Alpine this weekend.
Doohan pere et fils, with permission of the F1 Alpine team, were hired by Vispring for an event at its Armadale showroom.
The talk was to be strictly about good sleep preparation for athletes, but the media event snowballed and ended up on all major TV channels, even on brand-averse ABC and SBS. The luxury mattress firm, established in 1901 in London, is not a grand prix partner but it chose its moment well, with keen media interest in young Doohan.
Not that most TV viewers will quite be able to afford the product. A Vispring Diamond Majesty in California king size costs just shy of $200,000.
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