F1 Las Vegas’s mixed-use development is starting to give the auto racing series the dual benefit of improving its community relations and growing its business, according to Emily Prazer, president and CEO of the event.
Now heading into its fourth season, the annual competition on the Las Vegas Strip is the only race on the F1 calendar that commercial rights holder Liberty Media promotes itself. F1 has been in talks with the LVCVA and relevant counties about extending the Heineken Grand Prix until 2032 or 2037, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal, though no announcement has been made. But with Liberty now having spent well into the mid to high nine figures on Las Vegas, the company appears to be committed to Sin City and just started general ticket sales for this year’s event in November.
Based on renewals, deposits and the American Express pre-sale window, early ticket sales are “tracking better than Year 1,” according to Prazer. “I saw the numbers this week, and I went, ’Seriously?’ It’s amazing,” she added.
It’s the first-ever professional motor race to be held on the Strip -- one of the world’s most famous, valuable and busy streets -- so disrupting the city in the way street circuit events do was always going to lead to some growing pains and tension. But after what Prazer said were some “rocky patches” in the first few years, she feels the “tides have completely turned with the community” in and around Nevada and Las Vegas.
After spending half a billion dollars to acquire the land and build a massive garage and hospitality hub for the race, Liberty and F1 have turned what it calls Grand Prix Plaza, which has a go-kart track that uses the actual pit lane from the F1 race, into events hosting spaces and an F1 interactive experience like something out of a museum.
“We now feel like we’re totally embedded in it,” Prazer said. “We felt that [it would] kind of naturally figure itself out when we opened up the Plaza year round, because having events that you actually activate every day of the week has given us the ability to be who we are.
“When we were first there and having problems and everyone’s like, ‘Oh, you’re just repaving the roads,’ we had no opportunity to showcase who we are, what we’re doing ... that we can have people there and we have a dedicated community affairs team who are crushing it. We had Make-A-Wish do a program in Grand Prix Plaza last week -- we do so much locally ... and we have extraordinary locals that we surprise with tickets, so I think that title is well and truly tapped.”
New elements this year include F1 Las Vegas connecting some of the fan zones, which were previously partitioned off, to allow ticket holders to experience more of the activations and concessions across the circuit.
