APRIL 16, 2007

An interesting aside in the United States

By way of illustration of why Formula 1 has trouble finding promoters in the United States comes from the latest financial returns of the listed Dover Motorsports company, based in Dover, Delaware. The company runs four speedways including the celebrated Dover International Speedway, which is known as The Monster Mile. The circuit pays NASCAR fees of $5.9m for its June event and $5.3m for its second race in September. This means that the race fees for the two events are $11.2m. Dover sells out both NASCAR events with 145,000 seats sold on each occasion, with ticket prices between $50 and $96. This means that the income from the ticket sales is around $11m for each race, giving the company income of $22m. Dover Motorsports reported earnings of $5.7m excluding one-off charges.

F1 races have to pay up to $20m in race fees and few pull in a race day crowd as big as Dover. Tickets have to be much higher in price to help pay for the Grand Prix and so profits are minimal.

With those kind of numbers, F1 is going to struggle to compete in America.