IT IS RECORDED fact that governments around the world spend countless amounts of cash each and every year attracting, promoting and growing major motorsport events to their part of the world.
Whether it’s a Grand Prix, a World Rally Championship round or, closer to home, a Supercars round it’s a proven method of ticking the tourism boxes via the broadcast and also ensuring the local region has a cool event with which to, hopefully, embrace and support each year.
Figures releases this year showed that the Victorian Government spent more than $60 million on the Australian Grand Prix, but only those few staunchly opposed to the race or the concept of motorsport will argue that the billions of dollars’ worth of TV exposure gained is not worth every penny.
While Grands Prix are becoming more ubiquitous – it was definitely better for the governments when there were only 16 races rather than the current 20-plus – and less exclusive, there’s still nothing outside of the Olympics or the Football World Cup that generates the same level of TV viewing eyeballs and bang-for-buck as a Grand Prix.
Melbourne would have to host 33 Grands Prix before they spent the $20 Billion Rio De Janerio spent on the last Summer Olympics. And for that cost ($40bn less than the games in Beijing!), the Brazilians got two weeks of sport and some infrastructure that is now not being used and as such is falling apart.
33 Grands Prix is the equivalent of 132 days of action, broadcast around Australia and to the world.
So while dropping $60m a year on an F1 race seems like a lot of money, in context it’s really not very much at all.
Closer to the level of we real folk, we find Supercars’ key street race events that do a very good job of promoting their local region for, relatively, not a lot of cost.
Adelaide have been doing it, first via F1 and now with the Adelaide 500, basically non-stop since 1985.
Townsville, a town hurting from the end of the mining boon and a flood (pardon the pun) of natural disasters, relies heavily on the Townsville 400 to fill restaurants and bars during the quiet winter months and while it isn’t technically a sprint race, few people would associate Darwin as a regular (and brilliant) place for racing if it wasn’t for their annual Triple Crown.
And then we come to Surfers Paradise, which could be the best example of using an event like a car race to showcase the city of them all.
I watch a lot of motorsport each year and I can’t think of one other that compares to the scenes produced from the Gold Coast each year.
Sure, the Belgian Grand Prix looks amazing on TV but it’s not exactly selling the country as a must-visit place, is it? As brilliant as Spa Francorchamps is, it’s also a circuit in the middle of an often damp pine forest and I have one of them 5 minutes from home.
As wonderful, truly amazing, as the Indianapolis 500 is each May, on TV it looks like a big circuit lumped in the middle of suburbia in a not particularly wealthy midwestern US City. Which is exactly what it is.
Perhaps Monaco comes close – but then you watch that race each year and I’d imagine 97% of us sit there and go ‘There’s no way I can afford that.’
And then there’s the Gold Coast 600.
If there’s a piece of television that better showcases everything that is great about a region than the chopper shots across the weekend, I’m yet to see it.
Pristine beaches, tall buildings, lots of people, a party atmosphere and all of it basking in golden sunshine that spreads across the city from the West as the sun sets. And then it even looks good when it’s raining, too.
You see it on TV and think: ‘My god that looks like a hell of a place’. And then you get the colour shots from around the precinct and you see the beautiful people in the swimming pools and the people watching from the hi-rise balconies and it gets even better.
What’s more, the circuit is completely mad – Supercars hopping over kerbs and spending more time on two wheels than the Bikes will at Phillip Island the same weekend – so the people who are just in it for the racing, and not the tourism, are hooked as well.
Two years ago friends of mine were watching from the cold and dark of the UK and decided then and there that, immediately following a work trip Down Under the following year, two weeks on the Coast would be it for them, thanks. And they aren’t the only ones.
The bottom line is this; whether you like the concept of street racing and governments throwing wads of cash at an event and facility that lasts for three or four days is irrelevant.
It’s the kind of place marketing that works. And I’d much rather governments tip their cash into car racing, even if it is only for a few days a year, than any other sport, thank you very much.
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