With the ever increasing popularity of Formula 1, the Canadian Grand Prix ticket prices have steadily been on the rise for the last few years.
Despite selling out almost instantly, the tickets for the 2024 Grand Prix saw the biggest jump in prices yet.
I’ve done an in-depth analysis of the last 5 years of ticket prices at the Montreal F1 and have found that some tickets have at least doubled in cost in that time. Read on below for the full analysis.
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Where to buy Canadian Grand Prix tickets
Official ticket source
The official place to buy Canadian Grand Prix tickets is on the official GPCanada website.
However, these almost always sell out straight away.
Other ticket sources
If you can’t get tickets through the official website link above, I would recommend buying Canadian GP tickets through Stubhub.
I have bought Formula 1 tickets through Stubhub a few times in the last 18 months, which includes my trip to the Vegas GP, and have always had great experiences.
They have a very robust FanProtect guarantee which keeps your money and tickets fully protected. They also have hundreds of Canadian GP tickets for sale at the moment.
When do the Canadian Grand Prix tickets go on sale?
For the last couple of years Canadian Grand Prix tickets have gone on sale at the end of July the year before the event.
2024 Montreal F1 tickets went on sale at 10:00am on the 26th July 2023. If you were on the official website at that point you would have joined a queue with tens of thousands of other people.
If you were one of the lucky ones you might have been able to get a grandstand seat. But the grandstand tickets sold out within a matter of hours.
Make sure you’re on the website the very moment the tickets go live to stand any chance of getting the ones you’re after.
Can you buy Canadian Grand Prix tickets on the gate?
You can’t buy Canadian Grand Prix tickets on any of the Canada GP entrance gates on the day of the event. You need to have pre-purchased them in advance.
Canadian Grand Prix ticket prices
Let’s dive in to the numbers and look at just how much the Canadian Grand Prix ticket prices have gone up in price over the last 5 years.
We’ve analysed both grandstand and General Admission tickets.
The Canadian Grand Prix didn’t take place in 2020 or 2021 due to COVID, so the figures below go back to 2019.
Grandstand tickets
There are 13 different grandstands at Circuit Gilles Villeneuve, home of the Montreal Grand Prix. For details on each of these grandstand read our grandstand viewing guides here.
The chart below shows how much the cost of each grandstand has gone up since the 2019 F1 race.
Grandstand 47 has seen the biggest increase as its tickets have gone up in price by 53% between 2019 and 2024.
The Lance Stroll Grandstand, Grandstand 15 and Grandstand 21 were all the next biggest climbers. Their ticket prices all increased by 42% between 2019 and 2024.
Grandstand 1 which sits along the start / finish straight has seen the lowest price increase. Tickets for this grandstand have only climbed 24% in 5 years.
Family Grandstand
The chart above doesn’t paint the whole story. One of the most affordable ways for a family to attend the Canadian GP used to be to get seats in the Family Grandstand.
In previous years children under 15 would go free in the stand, and seniors over 65 would have a reduced ticket price.
Now the free tickets for children are no longer offered and seniors have to pay full whack. This makes a big difference.
Let’s look at an example. For the 2023 race a family of 4 (2 adults two under-15 children) would have paid a total of $730 CAD for the two adult tickets and children would have been free.
Now two adult tickets would cost $800 CAD, plus two child tickets would be $600 CAD. That means the total family cost would be $1400, almost exactly double what it was the year before. That’s sad news for families looking to attend.
General Admission tickets
If you don’t get a seat in a grandstand then you’re probably left with General Admission tickets that let you walk around the track.
These have seen some of the biggest price hikes over the last few years. The chart below shows how much they’ve increased.
The 3-day General Admission ticket has gone from $150 to $275 CAD, an increase of 83%.
The biggest price hike is on the Saturday only ticket. In 2019 this cost just $70 CAD but for 2024 it cost $165 CAD, a huge increase of 135%.
F1 circuits have been trying hard to increase the popularity of attending on a Saturday. Recent years have seen some incredibly tight and tense qualifying sessions so their attendance has been rocketing. That’s resulted in the massively hiked Saturday ticket prices we see here.
Is Montreal F1 General Admission worth it?
General Admission tickets are the cheapest way to get access to the Canadian F1 event. But are they worth it? Unfortunately the views from the General Admission areas around the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve track layout are pretty poor, meaning they’re not great value.
Read our full guide to General Admission at the Montreal Grand Prix for more info on what you can expect to see (or not) and that will help you decide whether they’re worth it.
Why have prices gone up so much?
We’ve mainly got Drive to Survive to thank for this one. The Netflix series has introduced the sport to a huge number of new fans and its popularity has increased all over the world.
Whereas previously circuits would struggle to sell out the Sunday of an F1 weekend, now they’re selling out all three days within a matter of minutes.
With that increase in demand comes an increase in Canadian Grand Prix ticket prices.
