Businesses Want Formula 1 Race In Las Vegas Moved To New Location After They Lost Millions Of Dollars In Revenue From Grand Prix In November
By Alan Snel, LVSportsBuz.com Publisher-Writer
Not only do Las Vegas businesses want to be compensated for lost revenues from the Formula 1 race in November. Businesses that were hurt by the much-hyped sports event want the Las Vegas Grand Prix to look at relocating the 3.8-mile course that limited access to many merchants and restaurants in the Strip corridor.
LVSportsBiz.com spoke with Ferraro’s Ristorante owner Gino Ferraro who said the race location needs to change because businesses were hurt financially by the F1 event.
“That’s the only solution,” Ferraro said at his popular restaurant on Paradise Road Monday. “There’s no way the businesses will not be affected if the track stays. The Strip looked like a carnival. People were losing millions of dollars.”
Wade Bohn, owner of Jay’s Market at Koval Lane and Flamingo Road, also supported moving the race course to a new location away from businesses.
Ferraro said Clark County commissioners did not properly anticipate the impacts of closing 3.8 miles of public roads in the region’s busiest corridor.“They have to change the (race) location. (The county commissioners) didn’t think through the consequences,” he said. “Nothing is positive about this race.”
Grand prix representatives like new Chief Operating Officer Betsy Fretwell and even LVCVA tourism agency CEO Steve Hill, during the last few weeks, have met the owners of businesses that lost millions of dollars because of the layout of the race course that ran south on the Strip and north on Koval Lane.
On Wednesday only five days ago, Fretwell and Las Vegas Grand Prix CEO Renee Wilm spoke at a Vegas Chamber event, passing along a message that the race will try harder to clean up what Las Vegas consultant and sports booster Jeremy Aguero described as “imperfections” in the inaugural race Nov. 18.
Clark County commissioners gave permission to the sports promoter, Colorado-based, F1-owning Liberty Media, to take over the 3.8 miles of roads without receiving compensation for the county. Five of the seven county commissioners each accepted $10,900 tickets to the grand prix that disrupted commerce and transportation along the Strip corridor like no other event in Las Vegas history.
With that in mind, a spokeswoman for a group of businesses financially hurt by the F1 race said traffic and business impact studies need to be required for the 2024 race in the fall.
“It is increasingly obvious that the 2023 F1 race in its current configuration proved to be entirely too intrusive, inconvenient and expensive for businesses, residents and employees who work, live and drive into the Las Vegas Resort Corridor. If F1, the LVCVA, and the Clark County Commission are considering the same ‘re-do’ as 2023 I would ask them for a traffic study before they begin any road work in the public-right-of-way, and a business impact report of the 2023 impacts,” said spokeswoman Lisa Mayo-DeRiso, who has appeared before the Clark County Commission and LVCVA board.
“Those impacted have a need and right to know the facts about the race. The devil is in the details. I would also suggest a large community meeting to include: business owners, residents, Uber drivers, retail tenets, entertainment operators, restaurants and more before we move ahead with any 2024 plans,” she told LVSportsBiz Sunday.
F1 collaborated with the LVCVA on a poll that the grand prix said about 52 percent of 6,000 respondents said the F1 race should continue for another nine years.
LVCVA spokeswoman Lori Nelson-Kraft said the poll was “commissioned/paid for by F1 in partnership with Applied Analysis . . . LVCVA was a contributor — our area was overseeing the intercept portion from non-F1 ticketed visitors. That was handled by Applied Analysis as part of our monthly retainer with them and that part of the data was rolled into the overall data.”
Consultant Aguero, who did work for Formula 1 on the economic impact numbers, is a co-owner of Applied Analysis. F1 and Aguero showed economic impact numbers at the Chamber preview event Wednesday, but it’s LVSportsBiz.com policy to not publish the economic numbers unless the presenter explains the methodology behind the numbers. Aguero did not.
It should be noted that the economic report did include a line for “less: displaced spending” — an acknowledgement that the race did displace spending as part of the event.
