Is it just me or does everything feel a bit bigger this year? It's like you're doubling down.

Yeah, it's actually even bigger than that.

We start on Wednesday this year with Andre Bocelli as part of the Yaslan program.

He starts to kick off the program for the first time with the launch of Yaslan Classics, which is a whole new genre of music that we've introduced to the festival this year.

And on Thursday, we have Zara, we have Lewis Capaldi.

On Friday, we have Alex Warren and Jennifer Lopez, who was just announced yesterday.

On Saturday, we have Imagine Dragons.

Do you do the maths on it?

With that high local attendance coming in from the UAE, how does that change what you offer? How do you make it affordable in a year where we've all been watching our wallets as well? How do you make it good value? How do you get us there? I mean, we've got a train option now as well.

Yeah, set to have rail for the first time.

Going to be able to bring people up to Yasin, to Abu Dhabi, from Dubai in particular, which is fantastic.

We have a partnership with them for the weekend.

And then in terms of accessibility, we have general admission passes where you can just come into the circuit, experience all the fan zones, all of the F&B.

You can go to Abu Dhabi Hill, into the grandstands, and then you can choose your experience all the way up to, like I said, premium hospitality.

But what we always try and focus on is value for money.

What kind of conversations have you had about insurance and what's been put in place?

I'm thinking, um, about rigs and insurance.

Yeah.

The, the, the stage set is a festival, so a lot of it is already in place at the E- Etihad Live, which was formerly called Etihad Park.

Um, and a lot of the production, most of the production, if not all of it, is done locally.

So from a freight perspective, it's very easy, um, especially for the artists that we're talking about that aren't big kind of mega rock bands that have a large number of, um, pieces of equipment coming into country.

Um, so then it's really about their A, B, and C party.

So the parties will range from about, you know, 50 to 80 people who are coming to the country, and they're coming from different parts of the world, so it's making sure that there, there's a flight for them to come in at the right time, and then we host them in Abu Dhabi for three to four days.

So at what point does a Formula 1 Grand Prix become part of a festival and a festival becomes part of a Formula 1 Grand Prix?

But what kind of confidence injection does this give?

Oh, huge.

I mean, just exactly what's needed at the right time.

You know, we're moving out of the summer period into peak tourism season.

That's why you saw Under Secretary of DCT make the statement with, uh, with Stefano.

You know, this, it's such a key pillar of the, the core tourism period of the year in the UAE.

Um, December, November, into January, February, it's the best time for weather.

Can you just give us a bit of an insight into the important role it does play, and without it, the, the impact that it would have had?

Where are you at the moment?

So we're ahead of where we've been last year, which was a record sales for us.

We've released more tickets this week.

There'll be more tickets going on sale next week with new grandstands that are opening.

We have a tremendous demand for F1 tickets in Abu Dhabi.

You know, ever since the pandemic, there's been such a rise in popularity of Formula One globally, particularly here in the region.

So we're trying to make this event as accessible as possible for everyone.

Do we know, do you have figures in terms of how many jobs the Abu Dhabi F1 creates, how much money it brings into the economy?

What are we expecting to learn about the state of Europe's biggest economies?

Well, essentially, uh, we're gonna be, we're gonna be focusing on the PMI survey, and that's gonna give us an indication as to whether the strong growth that we saw the second quarter continued in the third quarter.

Euro area GDP expanded by 0.4% in the second quarter of this year.

That was basically double consensus.

Part of that is because of a rebound in Ireland.

Uh, but even without that distortion caused by Irish GDP, the economy probably would've expanded by, by, by about 0.3, which is above expectations, and is certainly defying the, the negative forecasts or the gloomy forecasts that were put out after the sharp rise in commodity prices earlier this year.

But given that energy prices still remain elevated, how big is the inflation risk when we're thinking about the picture for the coming months?

There were these fears of stagflation.

What are we expecting to learn about the state of Europe's biggest economies?

Well, essentially, uh, we're gonna be, we're gonna be focusing on the PMI survey, and that's gonna give us an indication as to whether the strong growth that we saw the second quarter continued in the third quarter.

Euro area GDP expanded by 0.4% in the second quarter of this year.

That was basically double consensus.

Part of that is because of a rebound in Ireland, uh, but even without that distortion caused by Irish GDP, the economy probably would've expanded by, by, by about 0.3, which is above expectations and is certainly defying the, the negative forecasts or the gloomy forecasts that were put out after the sharp rise in commodity prices earlier this year.

But given that energy prices still remain elevated, how big is the inflation risk when we're thinking about the picture for the coming months?

There were these fears of stagflation.

We haven't had the stag, but we've had deflation.

What are we expecting to learn about the state of Europe's biggest economies?

Well, essentially, uh, we're gonna be, we're gonna be focusing on the PMI survey, and that's gonna give us an indication as to whether the strong growth that we saw the second quarter continued in the third quarter.

Euro area GDP expanded by 0.4% in the second quarter of this year.

That was basically double consensus.

Part of that is because of a rebound in Ireland, uh, but even without that distortion caused by Irish GDP, the economy probably would've expanded by, by, by about 0.3, which is above expectations and is certainly defying the, the negative forecasts or the gloomy forecasts that were put out after the sharp rise in commodity prices earlier this year.

We've talked about the resilience in the European economies that we've seen so far, but given that energy prices still remain elevated, how big is the inflation risk when we're thinking about the picture for the coming months?

There were these fears of stagflation.

We haven't had the stag, but we've had deflation.

You couldn't tell right there, but sure.

So, yeah, so I did that.

And I was pulled into – I got a scholarship because I was – a couple of them were online, a couple on social media, Stargate members – um and they were looks like they were looking for talent and i was pretty good just out of the gate at this so i got a scholarship to fly out to utah learn learn crv and then before the ink was dry on my intermediate training i got pulled into a subcontractor of the dod to do a project now He now, Paul, this is through Paul, the Stargate guy's company, you know, so I think he's under an NDA on that one's probably maybe.

But I didn't.

I wasn't.

So I'm free to talk about it.

All right.

Is there anything you want to add to that? Or is anything you want to you can also if there's anything, you know, that you want to say that you would like to say any kind of message that you would like to tell humanity?