Future of Belgium GP highly uncertain: 'Liberty Media want more money'
F1 News
- Ludo van Denderen
The Belgian Grand Prix will be on the Formula 1 calendar in 2024 and 2025, but races further into the future are in doubt. While promoters in the United States and the Middle East pay big money to host F1, the Spa-Francorchamps circuit has to scrape together every euro to cough up the (relatively low) participation fee. The Belgians have now been told that this fee will increase substantially in the coming years.
In Belgium, people are now seriously considering the Grand Prix at the historic Spa circuit disappearing from the F1 calendar. There are budget losses every year, while the local government cannot and does not want to pay more money to keep the race afloat. To the newspaper La Libre, the Walloon Minister of Economy revealed that the deficit was €3.2 million in 2023, €5.6 million in 2022, and €7.3 million in 2021. Part of the deficit reduction came from increased ticket prices, which are already among the highest in F1 in Europe.
Liberty Media want more money
The cost of being allowed to host the Grand Prix at Spa-Francorchamps is rising yearly. The fee will increase by 5 million euros in two years - from 23.5 million euros last year to 25 million in 2024 and 28 million in 2025. That amount hardly helps the loss-making organisation.
Liberty Media - the owner of Formula 1 - has already informed the Belgian Grand Prix that the fee price will go up again from 2026. So if Spa-Francorchamps want to continue hosting the race in the Ardennes, it will somehow have to find a pot of money to continue paying for a contract with Liberty.