Low cost tickets impact Silverstone finances

06/10/2016
NEWS STORY

While 139,000 eager fans passed through the turnstiles over the course of this year's British Grand Prix weekend - admittedly, a thousand down on 2015 - the circuit still faces another hefty financial loss.

An airline style pricing sysym saw tickets on sale for as little as £99, but with the increasing hosting fees (currently £19.9m a year) and no government assistance, the circuit, the circuit, which reported a £55.9m loss in 2015, looks set for another bad year.

"With an ever-increasing hosting fee, this means that the Grand Prix's contribution to profit will be less than last year," said Silverstone's chairman, John Grant in a letter to shareholders, "so that we now expect… to make a loss for the year and miss the year-two target of our three-year plan."

For the British circuit, which is owned by the British Racing Drivers Club (BRDC), a group of 850 mainly private shareholders, the Grand Prix is the jewel in its crown accounting for half the parent company's £54.7m revenue. Therefore, as we are now in October, there appears little chance of balancing the books.

A £33m deal to lease the track to Jaguar Land Rover (JLR), which wanted to use it as a high-speed test track, broke down when it emerged that Porsche, which runs a driving centre at the circuit, has a veto over rival manufacturers using the track for more than 45 days a year.

While other third-party bids, including that of Jonathan Palmer's MotorSport Vision (MSV), for the entire track are being considered, the BRDC is also considering remaining as landlord and raising funding from multiple partnership deals. A decision is expected by the end of the month.

Check out our Thursday gallery from Suzuka, here.

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Published: 06/10/2016
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