Stray Dogs and Luxury Taxes: What Happened to the Indian Grand Prix?

Abstract

Two days before the inaugural Indian Grand Prix, a stray dog wandered onto the track at the Buddh International Circuit (BIC) in Greater Noida outside of Delhi, interrupting the first practice run and prompting British bookmaker William Hill to offer 100-1 odds that either the subsequent practice session, the qualifying round, or the race itself would be delayed by the intervention of a curious dog. The canines stayed away, and on October 30, 2011 Sebastian Vettel won India’s first Formula One race in front of 95,000 spectators, Bollywood stars, and the Indian business elite. Framed as the latest sporting iteration of a thriving and cosmopolitan India—joining the Indian Premier League and the Commonwealth Games—the Grand Prix was meant to herald the success of private investment in Formula One, as the race was one of the few on the F1 schedule not subsidized by the local government. Owned and funded by the Jaypee Group, a conglomerate company based in Noida, the BIC and the Indian Grand Prix were part of a broader scheme of private development under Jaypee Sports City, promoted as India’s first planned city focused on sports and marketed to the rising middle class. Hosting rights for the Indian Grand Prix cost the Jaypee Group $40 million annually, a fee that the company struggled to afford after three iterations of the event. In 2014, the Indian Grand Prix was cancelled due to scheduling problems and the race failed to reappear on the calendar for 2015, signalling its ultimate demise. The race could not survive at the BIC due to the track’s location in the state of Uttar Pradesh, wherein the government categorized F1 not as sport but as entertainment. This designation required the imposition of taxes on the teams, sponsors, tickets, and all equipment and materials related to the Grand Prix. There is an irony here, as F1 exists as a spectacularized form of sporting entertainment, but the refusal of the Uttar Pradesh government to grant F1 a customs exception contributed to the ruination of the Indian Grand Prix. Other key factors included the race’s failure to glocalize and attract a consistent middle-class consumer fanbase. This chapter will outline the brief history of the Indian Grand Prix and contextualize it within a neoliberalizing India where the promised benefits of privatized sporting development never materialized.