Formula One Management has revealed that in total 4,093,305 spectators attended the 21 races that comprised the 2018 season.

Seven of the events - Britain (340,000), Mexico (334,946), Australia (295,000), USA (263,160), Singapore (263,000), Belgium (250,000) and Hungary (210,000) - attracted over 200,000 spectators over the course of the weekend, while Azerbaijan (+31.6%), Austria (+27.6%), Japan (+20.4%) and Canada (+11.4%) each saw an increase on 2017 of over 10%.

Isolating race days, the overall attendance was 1,702,959, while race day attendance saw Silverstone take pole with 140,500 spectators, ahead of Mexico where there were 135,407 present to see Lewis Hamilton claim his fifth title.

Te United States Grand Prix attracted 111,580 on race day, with six tracks posting a double figure increase over 2017: Azerbaijan (+29.1%)†, Austria (+25.2%)†, Bahrain (+22.1%)†, Canada (+21.4), Japan (+19.1%) and Hungary (+10.1%).

The two races added to the calendar, France and Germany attracted 150,000 and 165,000 respectively, which, according to FOM, makes up for the 110,604 lost with the dropping of the Malaysian Grand Prix.

According to FOM, adjustments made to certain 2017 attendance figures subsequent to the release of last year's attendance results and the increase from 20 to 21 to the total number of events, the overall increase in attendance from 2017 to 2018 is 7.83% in absolute terms.

"With nearly 200,000 spectators at each Grand Prix, and more than 80,000 packing the grandstands for Sunday's races across the season, it demonstrates that these big numbers compare favourably with other major sporting events," said Sean Bratches, "thus confirming a trend for growth.

"We are particularly pleased with the results and research carried out through the season regarding satisfaction levels of spectators, as they prove that our efforts to engage fans are working well.

"The whole show of a Grand Prix weekend - the Formula 1 race, all the support series and the activities around the track - constitutes a great experience for the fans, as the attendance and research figures confirm. We strongly believe that Formula 1 has great potential which still hasn't been fully exploited and we are fully committed to improving the fan experience in the future."

According to FOM, the average of 81,093 spectators for each Sunday race day is almost double the number of those who watched the Bundesliga (average per match 44,657) and the Champions League (av. 46,630) in their 2017/18 season. Formula 1 race days had a better average attendance even when compared to the NFL, which registered an average game crowd of 67,405 in 2017/18, and the most important sports event this year, the Football World Cup in Russia, which averaged 47,371 per game with a peak of 78,011 for the final in Moscow.

In conjunction with Netfluential, over 50,000 spectators were canvassed in 2018, before and after they had attended a Grand Prix. Over one hundred in-depth interviews were carried out and over three hundred comments were received via a special app. A large amount of data was exhaustively analysed by Formula 1's Research Department looking at satisfaction levels of spectators who attended a Grand Prix.

In 15 of the 16 events where the research took place, 70% of the spectators judged the experience 'very enjoyable', with a peak of 90% at the British Grand Prix and 85% in Austria. These two races, along with those in Belgium, Hungary and Italy produced the sharpest increase in spectator satisfaction, rising between 4 to 14% compared to last year. The research also confirmed that an average of 65% (+3% compared to 2017) of the spectators felt that the experience provided during a race weekend was 'very or quite good value for money'.

The race at the Red Bull Ring showed the biggest increase over last year in terms of value for money, with an increase of 25%, while for Monza it was up significantly, by 11%, and at Spa-Francorchamps it increased by 8%.

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READERS COMMENTS

1. Posted by george, 23/12/2018 7:32

"shall we laugh or cry. "

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2. Posted by jasman, 22/12/2018 23:31

"Call me cynical rather than skeptical. "

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3. Posted by Editor, 22/12/2018 8:57

"@ Mark

You have every right to be sceptical.

The figures were released at close of business on the very day that essentially everything shut down for the Christmas / New Year holiday. This means that FOM would genuinely be able to claim that nobody was available to discuss the figures.

Furthermore, if they were genuinely positive figures they would have been released at a time they would have received maximum exposure.

Of course, we didn't receive the official press release - indeed, we don't receive any official press releases from FOM - after correcting their 2017 figures. (Yes, that means you Luca!)"

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4. Posted by Mark, 21/12/2018 23:39

"These figures are highly misleading. If I go to the Canadian Grand Prix for all the sessions and the race, I am counted as three people. To pretend all three days are attended by completely different groups of people is ridiculous. Advertisers and sponsors should be very skeptical of these numbers."

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5. Posted by phantom, 21/12/2018 20:56

"For the 13 available races, I came up with 82,000 per race. Missing are COTA and Silverstone.
Just check MotoGP attendance... (I don't know if I can put a link here)."

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6. Posted by mds167, 21/12/2018 17:47

"How can you compare F1 to football (US or otherwise)? Each of those matches has only two teams and there are multiple matches in the same day. How about comparisons with other forms of motorsports? NASCAR, Indycar, DTM, WECC or the two wheeled championships?"

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Over 4m spectators attended F1 races in 2018

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