Azerbaijan F1 Grand Prix to bleed deep red ink

The Baku GP promoters are going to lose a lot of money

Baku, Azerbaijan will host its inaugural F1 grand prix this Sunday. The sale of tickets for F1 has brought to Azerbaijan only 2% of spending on the “royal racing" in the center of Baku, according to AZERBAIJAN BUSINESS CENTER.

Azerbaijan Youth & Sports Minister Azad Rahimov announced that the country spent approximately 100M Azerbaijani manats ($66.3M) "on the holding of the European Grand Prix in the F1 class in Baku" and received almost 2M Azerbaijani manats ($1.3M) from the sale of tickets.

Rahimov said, "Only 30 percent out of the sold tickets account for foreign buyers and the remaining 70 percent for local residents. The country’s hotels are numbering 12,000-14,000 rooms. One can hardly say all the available hotel rooms have been filled, but the rooms in the hotels that are located along the route of racing have been sold." ABC