German GP hopes fade as AvD warns costs ‘impossible’

Dec.11 (GMM) Germany’s brief burst of optimism about a Formula 1 return has been dampened again, with TZ newspaper reporting that the financial realities make a comeback highly unlikely – despite F1 CEO Stefano Domenicali recently declaring he wants Germany back on the calendar.

AvD president Lutz Leif Linden laid out the scale of the problem. “Formula 1 has experienced an extreme surge in popularity in recent years, also due to promotional activities such as the Netflix documentaries,” he said.

“This has significantly increased the cost of everything.”

Linden, who has previously organised German GPs himself, says the figures are now far beyond what ticket sales can cover.

“The license fees and any security costs for such an event alone cannot be covered by the sole source of income, namely ticket sales,” he added.

Germany offers no public funding – unlike many F1 host nations – and even places an additional burden on drivers by taxing income earned during the weekend. “That doesn’t exist in other countries,” Linden noted.

The price tag, he said, is now brutal. “20 or 25 million euros are nowhere near enough anymore,” he said, adding that a German GP would only be realistic “if some super-mega sponsor comes along.”

Linden stressed the huge economic upside an F1 weekend brings to a region, but political reluctance and fears of breaching EU subsidy rules remain major obstacles.

He concluded: “Nowadays you can’t get a major international sporting event anywhere unless the state fully backs it and cross-finances it. We can only achieve something if we go ‘all in’ – all of us.”

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