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Timberlake, whose Oscar-nominated song 'Can't Stop the
Feeling' won him a 10th Grammy Award, will appear on stage on
Saturday Oct. 21 at Austin's Circuit of the Americas (COTA)
after qualifying.
Last year's race ended a trend of declining audiences and drew a
record crowd of 269,000 with Swift's first concert of the year
watched by some 80,000 people.
"Last year did what we hoped it would do, which is not only
enhance an already great event but also give us the chance to
expose a lot of new people to the sport," COTA chairman Bobby
Epstein told Reuters. "And it worked.
"I think where we saw a big change was in the average number of
tickets sold per transaction, which told me that families were
buying. And so I think we’ll see that continue."
The 2017 F1 season, which began in Melbourne last weekend, is
the first with the sport being run by American company Liberty
Media, which took control of Formula One in January.
Liberty replaced CVC Capital Partners as the sport's commercial
rights holders, with Chase Carey ousting 86-year-old Bernie
Ecclestone as commercial supremo.
F1 has long struggled to get a foothold in the American market,
so hopes are high that Timberlake's performance can build on
last year's successful race weekend.
Bad weather hit the track's revenues significantly in 2015, with
Saturday's final practice taking place behind closed doors due
to flooded conditions and qualifying moved to the Sunday.
Epstein said COTA would refund 105 percent of the value of any
three-day reserved seat ticket purchased by July 4 if more than
two inches of rain falls in the 24-hour period before the start
of the race.
In addition, the ticket would still be good for the race.
(Reporting by Alan Baldwin, editing by Julian Shea)
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