Formula 1 News: USGP ticket sales jump higher

Circuit of the Americas has seen a major uptick in F1 USGP ticket sales over the last three weeks, a good sign for the racing series that had been facing questions over its competition just a few months ago.

COTA Chairman Bobby Epstein told Adam Stern of Sports Business Journal he wasn’t prepared to give a specific projection on attendance, but the track’s ticket sales for the F1 Pirelli U.S. Grand Prix on Oct. 20 have “taken off” the last three weeks and several ticket categories have sold out. Attendance dropped last year to 432,000, in a race won by Max Verstappen, from 440,000, according to reports at the time. COTA continues to work with Elevate to support ticketing and premium hospitality sales.

Epstein wrote about ticket sales in a text message: “It’s not following any trend like we’ve seen in the past. The spike the last month has been incredible. It shows fans are paying attention, as they are responding to the variety of race winners and the magnitude of our concert headliners.”

Eminem and Sting will headline the performances at COTA’s Germania Insurance Super Stage during the USGP weekend. On Ticketmaster’s site today, single-day tickets for the race were listed between $400-$3,000. On the TV front, ESPN says it’s currently averaging 1.191 million viewers, up from last year’s full-season average of 1.114 million.