Formula 1 Grand Prix, Texas-Georgia and College GameDay: A Wild Weekend in Austin

The most exciting Formula 1 points race in years … plus an Eminem concert the night before at the track … being held the same night as one of the biggest football games not only this season but in recent University of Texas history.

It’s why there’s a good argument to be made that the epicenter of the sports world this weekend is Austin, Texas, where hotels rooms have been sold out for months between the United States Grand Prix weekend scheduled for the same time that the No. 1 Longhorns host No. 5 Georgia in a major SEC game. Oh, and ESPN’s College Gameday is in town as well.

“I feel like this weekend is going to be the biggest weekend we’ve ever had in our history as a city,” said Austin Sports Commission Executive Director Drew Hays.

With an average daily rate for hotels over $450 a night, ticket sales booming for Formula 1 and the Longhorns well and truly back, there’s no reason to doubt it.

This weekend’s ADR is averaging 5% above last year and occupancy is up 8%, meaning hotel revenue is projected to be 13% higher than last year. Hays pointed out Austin has had one of the largest hotel supply growth’s year-over-year recently, meaning that current occupancy projections at 8% higher than 2023 reflect a larger increase than the percentage states dues to increase number of overall hotel rooms city wide; downtown now has more than double the hotel rooms that it did in 2015.

While Texas is Texas and draws a devoted home base no matter what, this season’s debut in the SEC has brought additional excitement. While the Longhorns have hosted Alabama and LSU in nonconference games in recent years, Saturday’s visit by Georgia is the first matchup between two top-five teams in Austin since 2006 (before the iPhone was even invented).

And after Saturday’s sprint race at Circuit of Americas and Longhorn football that night, F1 takes over the global sports spotlight with Sunday afternoon’s race. Over 420,000 people attended the circuit across three days of track action last year. According to Austin-based Angelou Economics, the 2023 Formula 1 race had an overall estimated economic impact of just over $1 billion, with direct estimated economic impact of roughly $480 million.

“When you think about it, UT-Georgia being a night game would get close to selling out the city as it is,” Hays said. “And F1 sells out the city too, so it’s almost a loss of two great weekends. Now, I say that, but it’s going to be a fantastic weekend and there’s not too much to complain about when we have such a grand scale of sports.

“All eyes are going to be on Austin this weekend, we’re going to have some of the biggest returns on hotel occupancy tax ever and we can show event right holders we have the infrastructure to hold two mega-events at the same time. To show it in a way we’ve never shown it before is a good talking point for us in the future.”

This weekend is the biggest but by no means the only weekend where sports is driving business in Austin. The city recently hosted the USA BMX Texas Nationals and the U.S. men’s national soccer team in an international friendly to debut new coach Mauricio Pochettino. O2 Stadium, home of Austin FC and some Copa America matches this past summer, will also host the U.S. women’s national team on October 24.

“It’s totally been a game-changer for our market and that’s why we’ve had so much success lately is the new venues,” Hays said of O2 Stadium and the Moody Center, the new home for Longhorns basketball and volleyball. “We’ve submitted a number of bids for things that we wouldn’t have been able to host if we had the old arena.”

There will also be the NGFFL Gay Bowl on Halloween weekend and the National Amateur Disc Golf Tour national championships in early November. And already for next year is the Concacaf Gold Cup in the summer plus MLS All-Star Game and Blast.tv Major at the Moody Center in in June 2025.

That means little rest for the sports commission but with good reason and motivation; the Austin Convention Center will close on April 1, 2025, following next year’s South by Southwest to start work on a new facility scheduled to reopen in 2029.

“As a city, we can’t afford to take breaks,” Hays said. “That puts a lot of pressure on sports because we’re going to have to soften some of that blow from the meetings and conventions business. For our team, we don’t care at this point if we have a down weekend, we want to book business.”