The $1,275 Premium tier is the only way into the Braham Grandstand, and Drive puts a four-day Braham seat at $2,185, which is $1,360 more than in 2026.

The most laughable complaint is that the headline perk gives early entry to the Melbourne Walk, where fans have always watched drivers for free.

Charging people more for something they already pay for is an access fee. That is why this connects to building and monetising a community of customers.

Revolut’s playbook comes from the webinar with two people who built a community and events business from the ground up.

Caitlin Robbins, founder Rox Queens, a community for women who do hybrid fitness racing. Nike backs it, and it has 65,000 members.

Aca Nayebi is CMO of METRIX, which puts on fitness races set to music in venues built for gigs, with around 2,000 people starting and finishing together.

Neither had an ad budget to grow with.

“Winning a new customer costs 222% more than it did ten years ago, according to ProfitWell.”

Caitlin started a WhatsApp group for women juggling training, jobs, and motherhood.

Micro-influencers shared it, and it had around 250 members in the first week. She added ambassadors, city groups and a monthly meet-up, and now pays about 12 “DM setters” on Fiverr, at £5 to £10 an hour, to find female athletes and bring them in.

METRIX went through gym owners, giving them free tickets, member discounts and training plans to hand out. Ava says the company is 12 months old, with a team of four and no marketing budget.

“We had gym owners come to our very first event…and the next time, they brought 88 of their members down.”

The Revolut playbook sets the two approaches side by side:

Customers who feel emotionally connected to a brand are worth 52% more over their lifetime than customers who are just satisfied, according to Harvard Business Review. Ava’s point is that a full room doesn’t mean a profitable one:

“Ticket sales don’t drive profitability alone. Understanding the unit economics of each event is so important.”

Caitlin used to hide that Rox Queens made money. Now she tells members where it goes. Commission from Revolut QR codes at her events pays for members’ race tickets, and Nike money goes back into the grassroots group.

Someone in the audience asked how you tell a community that’s ready to pay from one that’s just highly engaged. The answer is patience. Members need to feel they’ve already had value and are bought in, and then you give them the choice with membership tiers.

Currency, mostly: venue deposits, local ticket revenue and supplier payments in other currencies eat into margin before a ticket is sold.

METRIX wants to run abroad within the next 12 months, and Ava said that’s part of the reason the company moved its banking to Revolut Business. She wants the event to feel the same wherever it lands, always in a well-known music venue and run from one standard blueprint.

Caitlin tests new markets with very little money:

“Keep it lean. We look at doing in-kind partnerships. We will say to a local gym: “if you host us for free, you can invite all your members to the event.” That gives us an opportunity to build some noise.”

Fix friction straight away, and hold firm on what makes you different.

Caitlin built an app to replace her WhatsApp groups without asking members, and nobody downloaded it. Beta testers showed her the real need was a race partner at the right pace, so she rebuilt it as a matching service.

METRIX fans kept asking for single tickets, and the answer stayed no. “Our principle is community and doing something fun together,” Ava said.

Most of the Melbourne complaints land in the first row: one membership per ticket, and a fee paid before the club has given anyone anything.

Melbourne started charging before it built the community a membership depends on.

In my view, Melbourne’s biggest mistake is the order it did things in. Rox Queens identified a clear problem the market was already facing, not creating one.

Then it gave women something useful for free, then charged for extras and told members where the money went. Albert Park charged first, attached the fee to seats people already sat in, and sold back the walk to see the drivers.

Melbourne’s fans already act like a community. People go back to the same grandstand every year, travel to the race in groups and line the Melbourne Walks to see the drivers arrive.

The membership charges them for things they already do, and it charges a group of mates once each for sitting together.

METRIX went the other way and only sells team tickets, because turning up together is the point.

The membership does give the AGPC money months before the race and a list of people who renew every year. For an event that lost A$102.3M, I can see why that’s attractive. I just don’t think it builds anything the fans didn’t already have.

“Community has become a word every brand wants to use. Ava said on the webinar that she sees a new running community every day, and that bigger brands are realising they don’t have grassroots communities on their own, so they’re looking to pay for access to other people’s.

That makes the real ones more valuable, and it makes the fake ones easier to spot.

This works for fans who only watch, too. Teams, circuits, and brands in motorsport already have active communities around them all year, from supporters’ groups and fan pages to Discords and people who travel to races together.

The work is to make contact with them and build something before charging for it. I understand that free is sacrilege for brands, and that they want to own every part of their community, but I think that hurts them more than it helps.

Ava’s first question for anyone starting a community was: what are you solving that others aren’t? The same question applies to Albert Park’s Circuit Club and to McLaren’s membership.

What are you solving for the people who already follow you?