Mark Hughes, vice-president of JPSK Sports, a subsidiary of the Jaypee Group which has been tasked to build the Indian GP circuit, has promised affordable tickets and tight security for the race which is set to take place in 2011.
Hughes team has been conducting market research by looking at similar ‘big’ sporting events in the country and assessing their ticket prices.
“We are looking at the range of tickets for the high end of cricket games, the international test matches, the IPL games,” he told The Times of India. “We are looking at the ticketing for the Commonwealth Games and we are also looking at the other races and trying to find a balance.
He promises a similar system to that of Malaysia which has a generous amount of reasonably priced general admission tickets for locals which start at £18 (€22, $26).
“There will be a reasonably affordable general admission and there will probably be about 25,000 general tickets. I’d like to think that we can make it affordable in the same way that Malaysia did – Malaysia have a very good, affordable entry ticket price.”
Extra security will also be introduced for the event to tackle any terror threats, or even stray dogs: “We will have things like built-in underground scanners, so when a car drives in every vehicle will get scanned,” said Hughes. “At the same time, we will look at how we integrate that with the CCTV systems.
He continued: “We will have a reasonably sophisticated ticketing system that will be very difficult to forge. There will be a turnstile system at every entrance, every ticket will be electronic. Security will be ramped up, it has to be.”
