a bit harsh and one sided perhaps but 20-30 mil a year buys a lot of advertising and with TV numbers declining im not sure that F1 still stacks up in terms of being a beneficial ad buy. in fairness i havent seen any numbers on this so its just an assumption on my part.
agreed though that some races do recoup their investment via sales and accommodation taxes paid by visitors and Montreal (which has a rather low sanctioning fee to begin with - $10-15mil iirc), is from personal experience, a truly unique experience as the whole city shuts down for a GP weekend. in addition to the 100-120K unique visitors to the track you have a many more thousands descending to enjoy the support festivities. thats a lot of people spending money and paying taxes but is Montreal unique or the norm?
a few years back, maybe around the time that it was announced that Austin would receive 25mil per year from their State's entertainment fund or maybe it was before that. anyways one of the members posted a link to an article/paper which made a point that still festers with me today.
if i can do it justice, essentially the point was that event of this nature require that the local population support and attend in massive numbers in order for the event to be successful. and since most people only have a finite amount of disposable income to spend on entertainment, they have to choose whether to buy a F1 ticket or purchase some other form of entertainment (usually local in nature). regardless of what their choice is though it still equals the same amount of tax being collected. either it is X dollars (and Y sales tax) that goes to F1 or its X and Y going to other local events (even to multiple other local events). in other words no new tax dollars are being generated as its just a redistribution of taxes being collected from either one event or another. thus from the point of view of the state they would be better off not subsidizing anything and let people spend their money on local activities as they would if f1 never came to town in the first place. and the local are better off as the state can now spend that 25mil on something the majority of locals want or need.
this argument has always festered with my as it does make sense. F1 of course is supposedly drawing in a lot of people who are not local residents and thats where the benefit of advertising to potential tourists comes in i suppose...but as mentioned earlier i also dont see that translating into large crowds at the race track.
a few years ago i would have whole heartedly agreed with your position but given the locations being picked for new races, the prices being charged, and the costs of admission, i find myself questioning my old belief that its good when gov't uses my tax dollars for entertaining a relatively small minority of people.
interesting but difficult subject. sorry for the long response but it is a subject which very much fascinates me.
