​The Vicious Cycle Alienating F1 Fans

Formula 1 is in crisis. Even for a sport which exists in a perpetual state of crisis, this seems especially serious.

Races in the sport's European heartland are struggling. This year Germany bowed out as a permanent fixture, while Italy's future beyond 2016 is up in the air. Television audiences are down too, with a five per cent drop in 2014 alone in Britain, and an almost 30 per cent global fall since 2009, from 600m to 425m. Formula 1, it seems, is no longer required viewing.

The sport, as ever, is taking a pragmatic approach to these problems. Mooted solutions focus on how to 'improve the show' on a Sunday afternoon to try to woo fans back to the grandstands, or at the very least their televisions. Most ideas involve radical deviations from F1's age-old format, involving gimmicks such as shortening races, reversing grids, and generally taking the last dregs of freedom from the engineers by further gentrifying the cars.

Meanwhile, F1 supremo Bernie Ecclestone is adamant that the sport loses nothing by taking high-paying flyaway races over traditional European ones, nonchalantly telling Autosport that "we've got some good replacements, haven't we?" When asked how he would woo fans to the remaining European races, he too focusses on changes to 'the show', such as bringing back louder V8 engines.

All of this thinking, though, is far too short sighted. The truth is that there is no simple solution to F1's rapidly declining popularity. A vicious cycle, created by the sport itself in the pursuit of profit, has turned the everyday F1 fan away, leaving the pinnacle of motorsport increasingly just the realm of two kinds of supporter: the wealthy and the obsessive.

The German Grand Prix was taken off the calendar because nobody could afford it. The Nürburgring, which was supposed to host the race, was bankrupt and had their contracts with Formula 1 voided by courts. Hockenheim, the country's other F1-calibre circuit, doubted they could even sell 50,000 tickets, so turned it down.

It's seems unbelievable that the German Grand Prix could do so poorly. After all, Mercedes are currently the dominant team, and the battles between their German driver Nico Rosberg and his British World Champion team-mate Lewis Hamilton have been the main on-track story since the start of 2014. Along with them is Germany's latest Ferrari driver, Sebastian Vettel, who has won four of the last five championships and is enjoying newfound popularity among neutrals fans.

The race should sell itself, but the hosts would be left in the unfathomable position of not coming close to earning enough to pay the massive fee that Formula 1 demands circuits cough up.

It's this race fee, which averages about $35m, that is one of the major problems for European circuits. The historic and revered stops for Formula 1 in Europe – such as Belgium's Spa-Francorchamps and Italy's Monza – have to compete financially with new tracks overseas, who have big-money backing and can easily afford to pay a huge race fee with little thought of profitability. The last decade-or-so has seen Abu Dhabi, Malaysia, China, Bahrain, Russia, Singapore, South Korea, and India host races, all to varying degrees of success. Next year, Azerbaijan joins the mix.

Formula 1 is a business, trying to earn a profit for shareholders. Race fees bring in around $2bn each year, and that sum always grows as race contracts typically inflate steeply as they go. However, money from new markets looking to use F1 as a way to establish themselves in the global economy is routinely almost double that offered by traditional European circuits. While F1 is run as a for-profit venture, and with race fees making up such a large portion of those profits, it makes sense to go there.

This leaves European circuits with two options: risk bankruptcy trying to compete financially and in terms of facilities, or do as Germany has and bow out.

Sometimes fighting on works. Silverstone is thriving since its redevelopment, and the British Grand Prix attracts sellout crowds of 120,000 on race day. Elsewhere, Belgium's Spa-Francorchamps track has become so efficient at hosting a Grand Prix that it now only loses $8m per year doing so. This route is costly, though. With limited opportunity to generate revenue on Grand Prix weekends (money from trackside advertising, for instance, goes straight to Formula 1; the circuit doesn't see a penny), and very limited financial support from local government, there is often little choice left but to raise prices.

Yes, going to a Grand Prix can still be done cheaply. Most tracks have a general admission option - there's no guaranteed seating, view, or view of a video screen, but you're there, and for only about £75 for the weekend. As soon as you start looking for luxuries such as a seat in a grandstand, though, the price skyrockets to several times that. Simple grandstand tickets plus camping for a two-adult, two-child family can quickly reach £1,000 before food, travel, or anything else is factored in.

It's a lot of money, especially when compared to other motorsport such as MotoGP or the Le Mans 24 Hours. An all-access ticket to the recent FIA World Endurance Championship (of which Le Mans is a part) at Spa-Francorchamps was €31; the same ticket for this season's F1 race is around €450.

With it's current pricing, F1 is putting itself financially on a par with a week in an all-inclusive resort. It prices the everyday fan out, leaving just the wealthy and the obsessive. The average fan, and their money, stay away.

This perpetuates one of Ecclestone's most damaging self-fulfilling prophecies. Seeing the sport as a global marketing powerhouse, he can't fathom reaching out to younger and less-well-off fans. "Young kids will see the Rolex brand, but are they going to go out and buy one? They can't afford it," he famously declared to Campaign Asia-Pacific in 2014, "or our other sponsor, UBS – these kids don't care about banking. They haven't got enough money to put in the bloody bank anyways… Most of these kids haven't got any money. I'd rather get the 70-year-old guy who's got plenty of cash."

The implication is simple: if you can't afford the sport now, what's the point in making it affordable to you? You still won't be able to buy what we're selling.

The cycle continues: fans don't to go to the tracks, and so the tracks lose the ability to compete with the money and facilities offered outside of Europe. So the exodus continues, and heritage races continue to play an ever smaller part as Formula 1 looks for new places of profit.

There is a knock-on effect to this. With European television audiences being the core of F1's viewers, it means more and more races are starting at unfavourable times. This season, eight of the nineteen races are starting outside of the traditional early afternoon slot. In recent years the first four races have all been early morning starts, although this has been alleviated slightly by Bahrain's move to a night race.

This isn't the end of the world in terms of fans getting to see the action. In the digital age, it's easier than ever to record the race, watch highlights, or simply follow the action online. Historic fly-aways, such as Australia, Japan, Brazil, and Canada, have no trouble finding European viewers either, but these are all proven tracks with excellent attendance who produce dramatic racing year after year.

There is a limit, though, to how many times you can ask fans to set that early alarm clock, or give up their last evening before the working week starts again. The F1 season is a nine month drama, and it's nearly impossible to only watch when race times allow without missing the action and stories which make the sport required viewing.

This is where the heart of F1's vicious cycle lies.

Any sports fan will attend, or just watch, an event if they think it's a must-see. It's why boxing rematches happen in much bigger stadiums than the first bout, or why football teams can bring 40,000 fans to Wembley while not getting 10,000 to their stadium each week. If the drama which is Formula 1 becomes a must-see, then suddenly the every day fan will want to watch it live on television, or go to the circuit.

It's harder for fans to watch races on television due to the huge variation in start times, along with the sport's gradual move to pay TV across Europe. In turn, this alienates fans from their sport, making it harder for them to get wrapped up in the season-long drama. They stay away from the tracks, unable to justify the cost of attendance for something they're only half following. In turn this puts more pressure on the European tracks. More races leave Europe, more awkward start times for fans, less interest in watching on television, and so the dance goes on.

There is no simple, on-track fix to this. Solutions can only come from the sport asking larger questions of itself: does it continue to chase profits and accept that fans will be alienated, or does it try to become more accessible and affordable for the average fan? Does it want full grandstands, or for the executive Paddock Club to be packed?

Put simply, does it want my money, or does it want corporate money?

They're questions that need to be answered, because if the F1 fanbase continues to shrink, the sport could find itself no longer able to demand the financial terms it currently does. The corporate money could dry up, and the fans money will be long gone.

If that happens, it isn't a crisis anymore: it's the beginning of the end.