Quote:
Originally Posted by hookem
I consider $300 or less for 3 days fairly reasonable also. But I'm definitely in the minority, the general consensus on the racing forums is that anything over $150 for 3 days of GA spells certain doom for the Austin race. I believe the issue is that many fans think they are being taken advantage of if CoTA charges more than older, government supported F1 venues in other countries. Plus the PSL sales leave a bad taste with the fans, when there are no guarantees about how long F1 will stay or what other series will come.
That last part I can understand. But the low GA ticket prices they expect are unrealistic, I think. F1 is like the Olympics compared to a music festival or a UT football game. Can't see it being any cheaper than either of those.
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OK, let's not go crazy now. I'm as big an F1 fan as anyone here, and while F1 is huge, it's NOT like the Olympics compared to ACL, SxSW, or a UT football game.
- UT football: $100K people x 1 day...~100K attendance
- ACL: 75K people x 3 days...~225K attendance
- SXSW: 200-250K people attending for various lengths of stay over 10 days. Harder to quantify than the others.
- F1: ~300K attendance over 3 days
- Olympics: attendance varies, but is measured in the millions over a period of 2 weeks or so.
While F1 will be bigger for 3 days than UT football is for 1 day, the 2 are actually very comparable in 1-day attendance. ACL & F1 are comparable over 3 days, and SXSW is huge. The Olympics blows all of these out of the water.
As for government support, don't forget that while COTA construction itself isn't government supported, the business model of the event itself is reliant upon government support. Indeed, without government support, it will fail.
Also, in re: the "low GA prices" we expect...$150 for a 3-day GA seat is not on the low end, even for F1. Not even close.
Of the 18 GPs I found with 3-day ticket prices, 13 of those were priced between $117 and $189. The avg price of those was $153. The outliers were GPs with 3-day GA prices of $21 & $60 on the low end and $283, $295, & $360 on the high end.
Some people are suggesting that a $300 3-Day GA ticket price is in line with other GPs or even on the inexpensive side. In the above set of prices, $300 would be an outlier and would be the 2nd most expensive 3-day GA ticket on the F1 calendar.