Over the weekend a record-breaking crowd witnessed Max Verstappen take his first Australian win after a chaotic 58 lap race around Albert Park.
Together with Ticketmaster the Australian Grand Prix Corporation (AGPC) celebrated a record attendance of 444,631 over the four-day event, with an impressive crowd of 131,124 for race day.
Melbourne’s 2023 attendance numbers easily surpassed the record numbers of the 2022 Australian Grand Prix and exceeded the 440,000 that attended last year’s United States Formula 1 Grand Prix in Austin, Texas – the largest attendance for the 2022 season.
Every event day saw frictionless entry for hundreds of thousands of fans, and when gates opened on Sunday for race day, Ticketmaster was scanning up to 1,675 tickets per minute, highlighting the reliability of our access control infrastructure to handle an enormous rate of ingress.
Digital ticketing and a host of other innovative Ticketmaster technologies including TicketTransfer played an important role for fans during entry throughout the sold-out weekend. With fans able to easily access, transfer and have their tickets scanned from their mobile device, getting through the gates was a quick and easy experience.
Ticketmaster’s omnichannel marketing approach helped Formula 1 to better understand audience behaviour and preferences for racing events. This approach results in personalised messaging on the marketing channel most likely to be consumed by fans across a broad spectrum of demographics. Combining this cutting-edge approach with Ticketmaster’s ability to reach a significant national and international audience proved to be extremely successful in driving sales.
Gavin Taylor, Ticketmaster Australia Managing Director, said Ticketmaster’s relationship with Australian Grand Prix Corporation was key to ensuring an effortless ticketing experience throughout the event.
“With more fans entering the Grand Prix precinct than ever before in 2023, Ticketmaster was a key partner in delivering the best-in-class technology to create an outstanding event for fans, from onsale to entry. Working alongside the Australian Grand Prix Corporation team helped us to deliver a full-capacity event that provided fans with quick and easy entry every day, which cemented our reputation as Australia’s most reliable ticketing partner.” said Taylor.
Both Ticketmaster and the AGPC couldn’t be happier with the stability of operations during the event, through our partnership approach with superb commitment and diligence from the support and operations teams, and all Ticketmaster and AGPC staff.