In 2022, 207.2 million manats were allocated from the state budget to finance international, country-level, and other similar events by the official Baku, and 207 million manats were forecasted for this purpose in the 2023 budget.
The practice of financing international events at the expense of the budget has intensified since 2010. s, Azerbaijan, which hosted the Eurovision Song Contest in 2012, the first European Olympic Games in 2015, the 4th Islamic Solidarity Games in 2017, the European Youth Olympic Festival in 2019, and 4 games within the European Football Championship in 2020, has also started hosting Formula 1 Grand Prix since 2016.
The Formula 1 race was not organized in 2020 due to COVID-19 and was held without spectators in 2021. The duration of the competition, which was supposed to end in 2020 with the first contract, was extended for another three years. In 2023, Azerbaijan managed to extend the hosting of this competition until at least 2026.
Although Baku’s hosting of the Formula 1 race raises more questions than other international sports competitions, the government of Azerbaijan continues the race without answering them. In this article, we raise those questions and try to answer them via cost-benefit analysis.