Silverstone owners BRDC have given Jaguar Land Rover exclusive rights to discuss a deal to buy Silverstone. It is believed the deal will be worth around £33m in return for the 249-year lease on the circuit, while the BRDC will still own the company which runs the Formula 1 British Grand Prix and pay the cost for hosting the event. The above is from crash.net. Is it me or does this put the Silverstone hosting fee for F1 (about £15million a year) in prospective? ie you could own Silverstone for 249 years for a little more than the cost of 2 F1 race weekends!!! Do Silverstone have huge debts? Madness. If Silverstone is only worth £33Million then I would say to host a F1 weekend should be more like £3million. At £15mil hosting fee that works out at £100 per person for a weekend ticket if there are no other costs to the circuit!!!! How on earth do BRDC think they could ever make a profit on F1?
Tracks can't make a profit on F1 races... which is exactly while they'll take whatever financial input they can to see them through in the short-term I guess. F1 should be paying the tracks for using their facilities, not vice versa. Bernie's been bleeding the sport dry for decades now. It's gotta stop.
