How the Melbourne Grand Prix found 20,000 extra fans it didn’t know it had room for

By Liam Fitzpatrick, Founder, Commswork

The Australian Grand Prix increased daily capacity from 120,000 to 141,000 by installing sensor infrastructure to measure how fans moved through Albert Park, then redesigning the circuit into purpose-built precincts that reduced unnecessary movement by 23 per cent.

Most learned folk felt resigned to the Australian Grand Prix having an attendance ceiling.

For years the accepted wisdom was that Albert Park, the lakeside public space in inner Melbourne where Formula One descends each autumn, could hold about 120,000 people per day before the fan experience started to deteriorate. The park was not designed for those numbers. A large lake sits in the middle of the circuit. Crossing from one side to the other during a session could take 30 to 40 minutes. Choke points formed at pedestrian bridges. Fans arrived, planted themselves in one spot, and stayed put because moving was too painful.

Travis Auld, chief executive of the Australian Grand Prix Corporation, was not convinced the number was real. He suspected there may be some grace with upper limit of 120,000 - his gut said it wasn’t a capacity issue. More one of movement within the grounds.

The measurement problem

The challenge was that he had no evidence either way. Nobody had measured how fans actually travelled through the circuit, where they congregated, how long they stayed, or what triggered them to move.

So he called in PMY, a technology consultancy, to install sensor infrastructure throughout the precinct. Much less invasive than the surveillance camera alternative. Counting and flow sensors at entry points, within sponsor activations, along walkways and at the bridges that had long been the worst bottlenecks. The ambition being knowledge. Once more was understood about how people traversed the GP, he could try and grow the event and cater to their needs better.

The data and its insights, changed the organisation's entire planning model.

Travis Auld CEO keynote at Future of Sport Conference

Precincts over circulation

One element the sensors revealed, was that fans were not uniformly distributed. Certain zones were dangerously overcrowded while others sat well below capacity at the same time of day. The 30-minute crossing problem was not caused by too many people. It was caused by too many people trying to cross at the same time, in the same direction, over the same bridge. The bridges themselves had been operating as one-way infrastructure during peak periods without anyone designing them to do so.

Auld's team responded with a series of interventions that sound mundane on paper but proved transformative in practice. They built new two-lane pedestrian bridges with reversible traffic flow, operating five lanes inbound during the morning and five outbound at close of play. They redesigned the circuit around distinct precincts, each calibrated to a different audience. A trackside zone for the committed motorsport fan. A Pitstop Park for families. A music and food hub by the lake aimed at a younger demographic drawn as much by Melbourne's restaurant culture as by the racing. A high-end hospitality precinct for corporate guests.

His thinking was that if you give people a reason to stay in one part of the circuit rather than endlessly circulating, you reduce unnecessary movement. If you reduce unnecessary movement, you increase effective capacity without adding a single extra square metre.

The precinct model also addressed something Auld had noticed from his earlier career running the Gold Coast Suns. At that AFL franchise, he had discovered that Australian sport was no longer competing only against other sport (unlike Melbourne). On the Gold Coast the competition was the beach, the theme parks and the weather. At the Australian motorsport showcase, Formula One was increasingly attracting people who had never watched a grand prix. Forty-six per cent of the audience is now female. The average age has dropped considerably. These fans did not want to stand at a fence for three hours watching cars. They wanted an experience. And the precincts delivered a varied one for each group, depending on your location.

Unexpected benefits

PMY's sensor network also unlocked a commercial benefit that Auld had not fully anticipated. Sponsors had previously been offered exposure to 120,000 people, which is a large number but an imprecise one. Now the Grand Prix could show Cadillac, in its first season as an F1 team, exactly how many fans entered their activation space, how long they spent there, and at what times. Lego, a partner in the family precinct, could see the same. Doritos built an observation tower and received data on foot traffic and dwell time, turning partnership conversations from vague metrics, into quantifiable business outcomes. Making renewal conversations a lot easier and more interesting for the following year.

The numbers quantify the impact. Sunday capacity has moved from 120,000 to 141,000. Weekday attendance, once an afterthought, has reached 130,000. The Grand Prix introduced a Thursday programme that now draws between 73,000 and 86,000 people to a day that previously did not exist as a commercial proposition. Total weekend attendance is approaching half a million. People movement efficiency improved 23 per cent. And, by every measure the corporation tracks, the fan experience has improved alongside the growth.

What Brisbane 2032 can take from this

Auld told the Future of Sport Summit in Brisbane that he considers the organisation to be at the beginning of its data journey, with more improvements to come. For an event that has added roughly 20,000 fans per day to a venue many thought was full, it’s a remarkable statement, that we don’t doubt he will deliver on.

It is also, for anyone involved in planning Brisbane's Olympic precinct for 2032, a useful provocation. The question is not how big to build. It is how well you understand what happens inside whatever you build. Will that space and foreplanning create a legacy for what comes after? And whether others have the humility to question and measure before jumping to assumptions.

Liam Fitzpatrick is founder of Commswork, a communications agency. This article draws on Travis Auld's keynote and panel contributions at the Future of Sport Summit, Queensland University of Technology (QUT) Brisbane.