The circus has departed now and tomorrow the last remnants of the F1 community will be climbing on the “bombers” and heading up to Kuala Lumpur, where the fund will begin again on Thursday. In Melbourne the city is returning to normal and the accountants will soon be looking at the books to see how the race did this year. According to the official crowd figures, there was a drop of nearly six percent compared to 2008. This year’s race attracted a total of 286,900 people, compared to the 303,000 last year. The highest crowd figure ever in Melbourne was back in 1996 when the first race in Albert Park attracted a total four-day audience of 401,000. The numbers then dropped to 289,999 but afterwards grew to 371,7000 in 2002 before falling back in 2003 to 348,700. Since then they have risen again until this year’s race.
Despite the return to Albert Park of the popular local V8 Supercar series, which was absent last year, the numbers this year are the lowest ever and corporate sales are down. The recession is almost the root cause of this and it will be interesting to see how other events do.
There may have been some effect from the late Grand Prix date, which meant that the race clashed with the start of the Australian Rules Football season. The Thursday before the Grand Prix the AFL season kicked off with a big game between Richmond and Carlton, which drew 90,000 fans to the MCG stadium. The tickets cost about $30 apiece but perhaps that meant that some did not have the cash to go to Albert Park as well. The switch to an evening race may also have had an effect on the figures, but it is not clear whether this would mean more spectators or fewer. The general feeling in the newspapers was that the evening race was a good idea.
The F1 attendance may also have been boosted by the post-race concert by The Who, which might have covered up an even bigger drop in regular spectators. It is hard to say. Whatever the case the Victorian State Government will know that this year’s race is going to lose more money than ever, despite cost-saving efforts by the Grand Prix Corporation. There will be some who will make a fuss about this, but they forget what the race does for Melbourne and just how powerful are the images of the city skyline and the Melbourne sign on the start-finish straight. You cannot quantify the impact that has on the number of folk who visit Melbourne each year – but there is not doubt that there is an effect…
Still, Australians love a good argument, so no doubt we’ll be reading all about it in a few months from now…
