Formula 1 returns to Spa-Francorchamps this weekend for the Moet & Chandon Belgian Grand Prix, the first race held under a rotational deal that will see the historic circuit miss the calendar entirely in 2028 and 2030.
Barcelona shares a similar deal with fallow years, part of a wider move by F1 to balance its European heritage venues against demand from new markets.
The agreement was framed by both parties as a financial reprieve – Spa avoids the full cost of hosting every year, while Barcelona secures a long-term future it might otherwise have lost entirely to Madrid’s new circuit.
The Netherlands was offered a similar arrangement for Zandvoort and turned it down, choosing to leave the calendar altogether after 2026 rather than accept fallow years in between.
Rotation deals like this are typically sold as a straightforward financial relief valve, halving the cost burden on the circuit while still guaranteeing fuller stands whenever the race does land.
The reality, according to one of the few economists to study F1’s finances in depth, is considerably less even-handed.
Paulo Mourão, an economist at the University of Minho and author of one of the only dedicated academic studies of F1’s economics, said the burden will fall more on the regions around those rotational circuits.
“When a Formula 1 Grand Prix shifts from an annual schedule to a rotational, biennial format, the surrounding region and local businesses bear the brunt of the financial loss,” Mourão told Sector.
“During the off-years, host cities forfeit tens to hundreds of millions of dollars in economic activity due to the absence of hundreds of thousands of high-spending visitors.”
Spa’s own attendance figures give a sense of the volume Mourão is describing.
The 2025 Belgian Grand Prix drew 380,000 fans across the weekend, a scale of visitor spending that simply does not happen in Wallonia in a year the race does not run.
When a Formula 1 Grand Prix shifts from an annual schedule to a rotational, biennial format, the surrounding region and local businesses bear the brunt of the financial loss.
Paulo Mourão
It is that gap, rather than the race weekend itself, that Mourão argues gets underweighted in most discussion of rotation deals.
“This missing influx directly impacts hotels, restaurants, transportation services, and retailers, while also eliminating thousands of seasonal jobs required for catering, security, and event operations,” Mourão said.
“Host regions also lose invaluable global media exposure and tourism marketing that normally reaches hundreds of millions of television viewers worldwide each race weekend.”
A Deloitte-commissioned study puts a figure on exactly that loss.
It found the Belgian Grand Prix generates €41.8 million in net economic benefit for Wallonia, and €55.1 million for Belgium as a whole, after public funding is deducted.
Those numbers represent hotel bookings, restaurant covers, transport revenue and seasonal employment that a fallow year simply does not generate, regardless of how well the circuit itself manages its costs that year.
Circuits themselves are more insulated from that swing, according to Mourão, because the costs they avoid in a fallow year can offset much of what they lose.
“While circuits lose direct revenue streams from ticket sales, hospitality packages, sponsorships, and merchandise, they also avoid the exorbitant hosting fees charged by Formula 1,” Mourão said.
“For many historic venues like Spa-Francorchamps, which has recorded millions in losses despite high attendance, an off-year can actually save the promoter from a deficit-inducing event.”
Spa’s own accounts bear that out. The circuit’s hosting deficit, covered by the Walloon government, has been falling but remains real – €7.3 million in 2021, €5.6 million in 2022, and €3.2 million in 2023, according to Walloon Economy Minister Willy Borsus.
Even a well-run, well-attended race weekend, in other words, is still costing the promoter money every time it happens – which is exactly the exposure a fallow year removes.
“Because the regional economic windfall and international branding far outweigh the circuit’s direct profits, local governments remain the biggest losers when a race is absent,” explained Mourão.
“This explains why they heavily subsidise these events to keep them on the calendar.”
Spa has direct experience of what happens when that subsidy disappears entirely.
The circuit went bankrupt in 2006 after losing tobacco sponsorship revenue to a European Union advertising ban, dropping off the F1 calendar that year altogether.
The Walloon government stepped in afterward and has remained the circuit’s major stakeholder ever since, funding the rebuild that brought Spa back in 2007 and, more recently, two new grandstands that added 10,000 seats of capacity.
Germany offers a more direct precedent for what biennial hosting itself can do to a race’s long-term survival, rather than just its year-to-year finances. Hockenheim and the Nurburgring alternated hosting the German Grand Prix from 2007, explicitly to split the financial burden between two struggling circuits.
It did not resolve the underlying problem. Hockenheim posted losses of up to €5.3 million per event even while sharing the calendar, with regional government covering the shortfall each time.
The Nürburgring withdrew from the arrangement in 2015, and Germany has not hosted a round of the World Championship on a regular basis since.
Spa’s position looks stronger than Hockenheim’s did at the equivalent stage. Its deficit is shrinking rather than growing, its attendance is healthy, and the Walloon government has continued investing in capacity rather than pulling back.
Whether that trend holds through fallow years in both 2028 and 2030 is a question the region, rather than the circuit, has the most riding on.
