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Azerbaijan Getting Ready For Two Major Sports Events in 2020

By Timucin Turksoy November 3, 2019

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Azerbaijan's capital Baku will play a host to the Formula 1 Grand Prix for the fifth consecutive time on June 5-7, 2020 / Grandprixevents.Com

Officials at the Azerbaijan Tourism Board are busy trying to combine services of certain state agencies within a single operation strategy to facilitate the preparations for two upcoming major sports events in Baku - the Formula 1 Grand Prix and the 2020 UEFA European Football Championship.

On Thursday, the representatives from the Azerbaijan Tourism Board, the Baku City Circuit, the Azerbaijan Football Federations Association, and Azerbaijan Hotel Association met to establish a joint working group. The group’s activities are supposed to attract more tourists to Azerbaijan and help them spare their time more efficiently during their stay in the country, according to the State Tourism Agency of Azerbaijan.

The group now should create and promote new tourism products, as well as determine the best sales platforms for the tourists, who will visit Azerbaijan to watch the Formula 1 race and Euro 2020 games. 

For the fifth consecutive time the world’s ultimate motorsport racing Formula 1 will come to the Baku City Circuit, the world’s fastest city circuit. The event, which is scheduled for June 5-7, will be the 8th segment of 22 total races slated for 2020.

The last year’s tournament on April 26-28 was attended by 85,000 fans, including tourists from 75 countries. According to the Azerbaijan Tourism Association, each tourist stays at least three days during the F1 race and spends an average of $1,000. Most of the foreign F1 fans that come to Azerbaijan are from Russia, the United Kingdom, Georgia, Finland, the United Arab Emirates, Poland, and the Netherlands.

Azerbaijan received 2.4 million tourists from 191 countries during the January-September period of 2019. The number of inbound tourists was 9.5 percent more than in the same period of 2018.

Meanwhile, the biggest football competition in Azerbaijan so far will take place next summer as part of the 2020 edition of the Union of European Football Association’s (UEFA) major quadrennial football championship, known as Euro 2020.

Three group games and a quarter-final match of the competition will be held in Azerbaijan’s capital city Baku alongside eleven other European cities, such as Rome, London, Munich, Amsterdam, Saint Petersburg, and others. The games in Azerbaijan will take place in the country’s largest Olympic Stadium on June 13, 17, 21 and on July 4.