Some Canadian Grand Prix fans say they'll stay home next year after spike in ticket prices

Some Formula One fans who attended the Canadian Grand Prix last month in Montreal have noticed the prices of tickets for next year's event have skyrocketed — and it's pricing them out.

Eric Walters, a long-time racing fan from New Hampshire who attended last month's race, said he'd have to pay 37 per cent more for the 2024 event.

That's too much, Walters said. He came to Montreal with friends in 2022 and 2023, but now, the price for four tickets is too expensive and he won't be able to come. 

"I can understand ticket prices going up year over year, especially in times when there is higher inflation. But inflation isn't that much," he said. "An additional $120 [per ticket] that was a whole lot of money to be dishing out over one year."

Event promoters Octane Racing Group also changed pricing for children. Travis Reidy, a Formula One fan who travelled to see the Grand Prix in Montreal in 2022 and 2023 with his eldest son and his brother, said he used to pay $592 for his tickets for the weekend because children under 11 were allowed in free to the family section if accompanied by an adult with a ticket.

In 2024, it will cost $300 for children under 11 to access the family grandstand.

He wanted to bring both his sons to next year's race, but in the end, he won't be going because the weekend would have cost him $1,600 in race tickets alone.

"That's too much for a young family to afford right now," Reidy said. 

The event was already expensive, he said. Hotel prices and the cost of food at the racetrack added to the ticket price and now, it would be just too much.

Tickets are currently available to those who attended this year's race. The price of a general admission pass for three days at the Circuit Gilles-Villeneuve in 2024 is $275 before fees, compared to $250 in 2023, but some grandstand passes or other specialty tickets have increased even more. 

"It's frustrating," Reidy said. "This is the event that we look forward to every year. Now it's just not realistic.… They just priced out a lot of people." 

Octane Racing Group told CBC News that children are still admitted for free in general admission, and that they get a discount in the family grandstand. But did not address the price increases or fans' reactions to them.

Moshe Lander, a senior lecturer in economics at Concordia University with a specialty in sports economics, said Formula One's popularity grew during the pandemic, thanks in large part to the Netflix series Drive to Survive which provided behind-the-scenes coverage and attracted a new demographic of fans. 

"If they find that there's more demand than there is available space to accommodate them then naturally prices are going to go up," Lander said. "That's no different for F1 than it is for Taylor Swift tickets."

Despite the frustration some feel at being priced out of attending the Grand Prix, Lander said the calculation likely comes down to a simple supply-and-demand analysis.

"When any event increases its prices, substantially or otherwise, they're not doing it because they're necessarily greedy, they're doing it because they're trying to balance supply and demand," he said.

"There's only a limited number of people that can attend this event."