KUALA LUMPUR: The Petronas Grand Prix of Malaysia, which concluded at Sepang yesterday (Nov 3), again hit new heights for the second year in a row in terms of spectator attendance.
A total of 184,923 fans attended the MotoGP event over three days - 34,388 on Friday, 51,786 on Saturday and 98,749 on Sunday - beating the previous record of 182,912 set last year.
The all-time record for Sunday attendance of 103,850 from 2019 still stands.
Sepang International Circuit (SIC) chief executive officer Azhan Shafriman Hanif is not yet satisfied and is determined to further boost turnout next year.
"We were targeting 200,000 this year though to get almost 185,000 here is still a good result. Our stakeholders are happy with the event, everything went smoothly," said Shafriman yesterday.
"We did substantially better in terms of retail ticket sales this season after implementing various promotions throughout the year.
"The trend now is to implement decreasing discounts where, for example, we begin with a buy one free one promotion and gradually decrease the discounts in the run up to the event. This is something we will look to implement next year.
"We are also looking to focus more on corporate ticket sales next year, which also showed some improvement this year, but still has a lot of room for growth.
"We will also look to work closely with our ticket agents abroad including Indonesia, Thailand, Singapore, Australia as well as in Europe to see how we can improve."
The introduction of the Saturday sprint race for the MotoGP class has helped boost attendances over three days since it was introduced last year.
The Malaysian GP (MotoGP) has been Sepang Circuit's flagship annual event after the track stopped hosting Formula One races in 2017.