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By Alan Snel, LVSportsBiz.com Publisher-Writer
Meet Las Vegas, the most unique sports market in the United States.
It’s a relatively small market with 2.3 million residents, yet its new identity as a major league sports town features among the costliest ticket prices in their respective sports leagues and events.
The NFL Raiders had the highest average ticket price at $168.83 in 2023, the NHL Golden Knights had the fifth highest at $124.09 in the 32-team league in 2022-23 and the Formula 1 race today is hawking ticket deals for its three-day Las Vegas Grand Prix event in November for price deals of $2,100, $2,700 and $3,600.
The Las Vegas Grand Prix is under local criticism from businesses and workers for hurting commerce and transportation over the way Formula 1 took over 3.8 miles of public roads in the Strip corridor in November. The grand prix emailed the most recent ticket deals Friday. Take a look.
The Las Vegas Grand Prix ticket prices were stunningly high — even by Las Vegas standards — for its inaugural 90-minute race Nov. 18.
The average F1 ticket price in Las Vegas for that three-day race event was $1,667, the highest average ticket price on the F1 circuit, according to the F1Destinations.com website. The second most expensive F1 race was in Miami where the average ticket cost was $1,113.
The F1 Las Vegas race heard the criticisms of the expensive tickets for the first race four months ago and has tried to make ticket prices more affordable for the Nov. 21-23 event. There’s a new $350 ticket for the grand prix race day. “We intentionally created two new GA fan zones, adding over 7,000 more GA tickets to ensure fans had access to the entry-level product. We also made sure Nevada residents were the first to be able to access this new offer,” a F1 Las Vegas spokesperson said.
Las Vegas is so unusual in that its bigtime sports like an F1 race or a Raiders football game draw so many out-of-town fans and are seen as tourism attractions as much as they are local sports events.
The F1 race in Las Vegas was especially telling because unlike its races in the two other U.S. sites in Miami and Austin where the race was staged away from population centers, F1 owner Liberty Media easily got Clark County commissioners to approve handing over 3.8 miles of valuable public roads in the heart of the Strip corridor.
It’s as if the county commissioners were more private servants and less public officials, as a longtime Las Vegas resident observed, in accommodating the wishes of the big hotel companies and a prominent care race promoter for the F1 event in the Strip corridor.
While the NFL Raiders and MLB Athletics had to provide “community benefits” plans that outlined financial commitments to the Las Vegas area, the F1 race was not required by Clark County commissioners to provide any local compensation to the local market.
Just last week, Clark County staff revealed a “debriefing report” on the impacts of the F1 race.
The presentation and reactions were newsworthy in that different parties offered different economic impact numbers. MGM Resorts International said there was a $561 million “spend,” Clark County provided several impact numbers in the $800 million range and the Las Vegas Grand Prix said in a written post-meeting statement March 19 there was a $1.5 million spending impact. How reliable are these economic impact numbers when the financials vary by such a big amount?
The Athletics’ stadium location fits into the theme that bigtime sports in Las Vegas is geared to tourists as much as it is to the local community.
In April nearly a year ago, the Athletics announced they were focused on moving to Las Vegas and were buying 49 acres of the old Wild Wild West casino location off Tropicana Avenue just west of Interstate 15 and west of the Strip.
But then the A’s changed plans and said they were, instead, going to build the $1.5 billion, 33,000-seat fixed-dome stadium on the Strip on nine acres at the 35-acre site of the Tropicana hotel-casino, which is closing Tuesday.
The site west of the interstate would have been a bigger economic development project for Las Vegas and would serve locals much more than a site on the Strip that will compete with other tourism acts like Cirque du Soleil, Mat Franco and Blue Man Group.
The A’s planned stadium will also have the highest percentage of premium seats in Major League Baseball and will likely be among the costliest average tickets in the majors.
A’s execs have not disclosed what the ticket prices will be at the new stadium on the Strip that is scheduled to open in 2028. Demolition of the Tropicana will likely occur later this year, while the stadium groundbreaking will be in the first half of 2025.
Big league ticket prices are out of the league for many Las Vegas locals in a market where the per capita income is about $70,000 — a middle-of-the-pack salary in the U.S.
But major league sports in Las Vegas are not necessarily designed for locals. The stadium funding legislation approved for the Raiders in 2016 and the A’s in 2023 had “tourism” in the actual name of the state bills that were both passed in special sessions.
Instead, Las Vegans can pay $50 or higher for a ticket to attend sports products like the WNBA Aces, minor league Las Vegas Aviators and Henderson Silver Knights, indoor lacrosse Las Vegas Desert Dogs, women’s volleyball Vegas Thrill, indoor football Vegas Knight Hawks and the UNLV football and basketball teams.
If you find $2,100, plus taxes and fees, for the F1 race in Las Vegas in November as too expensive, the Aviators — the A’s Triple-A ballclub — have tickets starting at 24 bucks for standing room only for tonight’s home-opener.