There is only one thing wrong with the wonderful crowds who attend the British Grand Prix at Silverstone – there are about as many children as there were in Hamelin after the Pied Piper had done his thing with the magic music.
Silverstone has done little in the past for young spectators, judging by the outrageous ticket prices for the showpiece weekend of British motorsport. So it was gratifying to visit the British Racing Drivers’ Club (BRDC) on Tuesday and meet Silverstone’s new managing director, Patrick Allen, who has taken a fresh look at the cost of attending.
Children have been admitted free of charge to watch F1 at the circuit – provided, of course, they were under the age of two. “So if you have a three- or four-year-old it cost £87.50 for them to come along,” says Allen, the former head of marketing at the Co-op. Allen has raised the age of free admission to 10. And those aged between 11 and 15 will pay just £49.
“Genuine hardcore supporters, who love this sport, couldn’t afford it because with a couple of kids it cost £1,000. It didn’t make any sense,” Allen says.
Silverstone’s answer to making little profit from the British Grand Prix, despite the near-capacity attendances, has been to cut ticket prices. That might seem daft but capacity is being improved. And now bookings are 22% up on this time last year in terms of revenue, while the head count has gone up by 30%.
Allen has already produced headlines for slashing ground admission for Sunday’s race from £155 to £99. “So many members [of the BRDC, who are based at Silverstone] thought I’d taken leave of my senses with a £99 ticket.
“We put 1,000 tickets up for sale. They were sold in 22 minutes. We had 18,000 calls. We left the offer open and sold 6,000 tickets, in seven hours. In the previous seven months, for Sunday ground admission, we’d sold 2,900 tickets.
“Over 65% of those 18,000 calls said they were now coming because they could bring their kids for free. This is important to me, because I believe it’s the future generation we should get interested in.”
A three-day ground admission ticket will cost £175, £5 less than last year. And the average cost of a ticket has gone from £230 to less than £200. The old guard has been swept away at Silverstone and an effort is being made to make Formula One less elitist.
Allen, who came in at the end of last year, added: “It’s always difficult to change your pricing model halfway through a purchasing cycle. But it needed addressing. What we were doing didn’t make any sense, because we were alienating people. We never sold more than 19% of grandstand tickets but now we have sold 80%.
“We had lots of affluent people coming to watch while our audience was shrinking. We wanted it to be going the other way. And we’re not just talking about grand prix audiences here. This is a 360-day-a-year circuit. It’s not just about four days in July, even though that is half our business.”
Allen also makes the point that the British Grand Prix is being promoted as a festival, with bands, big wheels and funfairs. “When you watch Manchester United you get a 90-minute match, and that’s it. So we’re giving pretty good value, I think.”
Formula One’s chief executive, Bernie Ecclestone, who is paid an annual £15m for staging the race at Silverstone, has often been critical of the race there. He will be visiting the circuit to speak with Allen and the BRDC chairman, John Grant, in the near future.
Up until 1986 the British Grand Prix used to be held in alternation with Brands Hatch, too, with the Kent track taking the race in even-numbered years. Silverstone has never matched the wonderful view you got at Brands, but that place cannot handle modern F1. And we should celebrate the fact that Silverstone, consistently, provides us with one of the best and most popular races of the year. It is even more popular now, it seems.
