Photographed by us at the Austrian Grand Prix in Spielberg 2018 – the view of the huge grandstand after Turn 1 and towards Zeltweg. At that time you paid 95 euros for the cheapest MotoGP ticket category, but with a hefty surcharge for shipping costs of 15 euros. Now the prices have literally exploded compared to then and as a reader wrote to us, there has apparently never been a higher minimum price for 3-day tickets in history, as for 2021 in Spielberg.

Spielberg 2021: The most expensive prices in MotoGP history to date

We still remember well 3 years ago when we were guests not only in Styria, but on many other routes around the world. Among other things in Barcelona, where the entrance fee for 3 days per person was 72.75 euros. Like Barcelona, Jerez was also one of the cheaper offers, and you could get there from 70 euros per weekend. At that time Mugello already cost almost twice as much as Andalusia, but the toilets were almost all in terrible condition. We found a bill for the Haarbocht lounge in Assen for Saturday, which cost 149 euros per person. Mind you, including catering and that is a VIP offer, with a view from high above over a large part of the route, including start-finish and the first combination of curves.

View from the Haarbocht Lounge, which can only be reached by elevator and where you have a wonderful view of the route in the first part far above the grandstand seats. However, the rear part is covered by the pit system and in principle there are natural grandstands with a similarly good view over not much less than in the rather expensive lounge at Turn 1.

Sachsenring with problems after price increase
A standing ticket at the Sachsenring cost 112 euros, which is why there were problems with the number of spectators afterwards. Many loyal visitors then turned their backs on the popular event. It was heavenly in BuriRam (Thailand), where you got away with 55 EUR per person for WorldSBK. Misano, on the other hand, was as high as Mugello and we said to ourselves that Valentino Rossi and the euphoria about the old master was probably complicit. Brno was already quite expensive and anyone who did not buy the so-called gold tickets, which cost around 95 euros at the time, was not allowed to go through the underpass at the main stand. Actually a bad joke, because the footpaths had been an impertinence for over a decade and a half. The same goes for the horribly expensive hotel prices in the area from the middle of the second decade. But now Spielberg shot absolutely the bird for the MotoGP 2021.

Photographed during a visit to Brno for the MotoGP race in 2014 – along with Catalunya one of the tracks on which we have been guests almost every year since 2005. From 2018 the number rose extremely steeply and there were more and more races for MotoGP and WSBK. In the 2019 season we drove well over 15 thousand kilometers to the various races by bike alone, plus countless flights and car trips.

The normal madness – at least 169 EURO for a weekend ticket

For almost 170 euros per person, you can take part in a weekend at the Austrian GP, ​​according to our records, this is a record. There was nothing cheaper to get, than these cards, as far as we could tell. Allegedly, almost everything is already sold out. Since Austria is anything but a European flagship nation when it comes to dealing with the pandemic after Ischgl and other slip-ups, all it needs is a so-called red traffic light and everything is gone. Only from Munich you have a drive of around 4 hours and for events like MotoGP a total ban for visitors might even be conceivable in this case. To this end, borders could be closed again and hotels, of course, only accommodate professional visitors. Incidentally, the restriction to one day at 149 euros is hardly cheaper and there is no indication on the order page, in contrast to Donington WSBK, for example, what would happen if a visitor ban was imposed at short notice. So everyone should decide for themselves how serious they find such offers.

View from the main grandstand in Spielberg to the modern pit area and in the background on the left the Landhotel Schönberghof – the racetrack is definitely beautiful, but accommodation options closer than an hour’s drive are hard to find on GP weekends. In addition, the layout of the route is one of the most boring, with basically three full-throttle stages and only one really twisty fourth part. Without the bend before Turn 3, the circuit would be the only one on the MotoGP calendar that would not even have 10 corners.

It gets even more perverted – the VIP packages are coming back
As you can already see from the Grand Prix of Portugal, MotoGP had numerous onlookers from the start, as in the previous year, despite the alleged safety bubble. At the Circuito de Jerez, too, there were many clear private individuals on the grid before the race. One of the most embarrassing incidents after Marc Marquez’s comeback was a MotoGP report with a video clip about some scenes in the paddock with the Catalan. A selfie hunter suddenly appeared (in the paddock!) And the Repsol Honda Star posed voluntarily and in a friendly manner. Whatever the case, Dorna now wants to make all of this official, which has been around for a long time anyway. So that the organizers can make a lot of money, because with restrictive audience restrictions or even a ban, many millions of euros are still collected in this way. It can hardly be assumed that this category will be available via the normal ticket sales channels. As for Misano WorldSBK, most of it will go “under the roof”. Below is a price comparison from 2019, the last year before the pandemic, when Mugello, Misano and Brno were by far the three most expensive events, all of them with standing tickets for 3 days in Euro.

There are also WSBK admission prices listed, whereby you can see that in Italy at that time extremely high costs for the WorldSBK events were observed. The most extreme was Imola compared to the previous year with practically doubling at that time. At the MotoGP, the Red Bull Ring in Spielberg was in the upper middle field.