The Las Vegas Grand Prix in November 2023 will be a Saturday night race that will include the Strip. Photo / 123RF
Formula One finds itself in uncharted territory. For the first time, the series is promoting and selling tickets for a Grand Prix.
After a 40-year absence, Las Vegas returns to the calendar in 2023. The November 16-18 event will have a unique Saturday night start, at 10, for 50 laps of a 3.8-mile (6.1km) circuit that includes the Strip.
In May, Liberty Media Corporation, which owns F1, spent US$240 million ($424 million) on 39 acres to the east of the Strip to build a pit, paddock and hospitality complex.
Although the race has only a three-year contract, F1 shows it means business.
“A three-year deal was done to respect the fact the Las Vegas community does not yet completely understand the project, and for us to prove we can deliver something unique,” Stefano Domenicali, CEO and president of the Formula 1 Group, said in an interview. “The fact we are investing so much money is a sign to show them we do believe in this project and that it will be beneficial to everyone in the long term.”
And the reason F1 was promoting and selling tickets itself was because, he said, the sport was the best organization to do it.
“We thought the only ones who could help the system, to follow the path we want to take as Formula 1 in the US were ourselves directly,” Domenicali said.
The race has its own CEO, Renee Wilm, who is also the chief legal officer of Liberty Media.
The past few months have been a whirlwind. “I do feel like we are just every day in DRS,” Wilm, referring to a device that increases the speed of a F1 car, said in an interview. “We are moving incredibly quickly.
“We are building a track, a brand-new pit building, which will be the year-round home of F1 in North America, and we are working on ticketing, hospitality, marketing. There’s so much that goes into promoting an F1 race. We just need to keep going at lightning speed.”
Emily Prazer, chief commercial officer of the Las Vegas Grand Prix and described by Wilm as “the creative brainchild” of the event, has 13 months to deliver.
“The reality is this is all very new, and the fact we are doing it on probably one of the busiest roads in America means we can’t take that lightly,” Prazer said in an interview. “So we have been speaking with other promoters, particularly Singapore, about how they’ve done their event, which is phenomenal, but they’ve had 14 years to get there. We want to deliver in Year 1 what they delivered in Year 14.”
Over the past few months, Wilm and Prazer have had to work closely with the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority and the casinos to help them understand what is required to plan the event.
“From the casino side, they get the vision, they know what this is going to do for the city,” Wilm said. “Another thing that’s probably different about Vegas is this is a town that knows how to get events done and get them done right and pull together for the good of everyone.
“MGM and Caesars may be competitors in so many ways, but when they see an opportunity to activate the entire town, they’re going to pull together, and they’re going to help us make this happen.”
The disruption over the coming months will still be considerable, for the businesses and for residents.
In her role as chief legal officer, Wilm had firsthand experience dealing with the protests around the Miami Grand Prix before its debut in May.
“One thing we did at the outset of this project was reaching out to the local community that would be affected by our track, to hold out that olive branch from Day 1 and say, ‘We know we’re going to cause you noise and disruption, but we think this is for the good of the city, and we want to make sure you’re a part of that conversation’,” she said.
“There are a couple of residential complexes near the track that we did reach out to early on, very much in learning from seeing what happened in Miami Gardens. They weren’t thrilled, but they appreciated the fact we did communicate with them early and often.”
Another area of concern is what the event may cost fans to attend. Ticket prices have not been announced yet. In an earnings call in August, MGM Resorts International CEO Bill Hornbuckle said the company planned to buy US$20 million to US$25 million worth of tickets from F1 to create hotel packages, with the most expensive about US$100,000.
“The perception of the US$100,000 statement is probably based on the ultimate F1 race experience that may be put together for casino whales that are willing to come in and lose millions of dollars that weekend,” Prazer said.
She compared room rates in Las Vegas with those in Singapore, Monaco and Monza for the Italian Grand Prix and found that Las Vegas was cheaper.
“The thing about Vegas is you’ve got the really low end and really high end,” she said. “There is something for everybody, and there are 150,000 hotel rooms here versus Singapore, where there are materially less, and all in the place where the race location actually is. I’m not as worried about that as I think some are.”
Prazer said she could understand the pressure on Formula 1 to deliver a spectacular and affordable event, and that her biggest fear was that something would be forgotten as “F1 has not sold tickets before, it has not promoted an event before.”
“It’s meeting the expectation because this event is being positioned in a certain way, not just by F1, but the media,” she said. “The level of expectation on what we are delivering needs to happen, so my biggest stress is making sure we do that.”
The bottom line with any Grand Prix, but especially for Las Vegas, is whether the action on track will match the entertainment off it.
“When you build a new track, what you need to consider — and, above all, with a city track and the layout of the streets — is trying to find the best compromises in order to guarantee overtaking,” Domenicali said. “Considering the location, I’m expecting a very good race where overtaking is done in a way that the drivers need to push.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
Written by: Ian Parkes
©2022 THE NEW YORK TIMES
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