With Businesses, Workers Saying They Lost Money From F1 Vegas Race In 2023, Why Do Clark County Commissioners Support Las Vegas Grand Prix In 2024? (Hint: Hotels Run Las Vegas)
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Shop at Jay’s Market at 190 East Flamingo Road at the Koval Lane intersection east of the Strip.
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By Alan Snel, LVSportsBiz.com Publisher-Writer
The contrast between the LVCVA’s intense hype of a Formula 1 car race on the Strip and comments by business operators and workers at county commission meetings about how they’re losing money because of the road race is startling.
One by one, they stepped up to the mic during the public comments period at the end of a Clark County Commission meeting Wednesday and the business owners and workers voiced a similar theme: the county commissioners allowed the F1 race to walk all over local businesses and employees in the Strip corridor.
The comments weren’t pretty.
One restaurant owner mentioned the talk of the Las Vegas Grand Prix set for Nov. 21-23 was giving her PTSD symptoms after last year’s inaugural race caused the shutdown of roads and lanes and the loss of millions of dollars in revenues for local businesses in the Strip corridor.
But Las Vegas is a town where the big hotels run the show and the publicly-funded Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority (LVCVA) promotes the private properties like Bellagio, Caesars and Wynn that benefitted from the Las Vegas Grand Prix.
And Clark County commissioners? Well, they rubberstamp big events.
They even approved a new Sports and Special Events Department Tuesday to handle the paperwork behind the sports events’ permit applications. (Two county commissioners, Michael Naft and Jim Gibson, told locals on line to comment that the hearing was for the proposal to create the sports events department and not the F1 race. But they were wrong — the agenda item’s background specifically said the department hearing came after a Las Vegas Grand Prix debriefing meeting March 19).
Take a look at the agenda item background:
The big hotels along the 3.8-mile course reported they did better than usual last year on that F1 race weekend compared to the same weekend of prior years.
But many businesses, cut off from customers because of the F1 race fences and lighting fixtures, suffered financially.
Which begs a simple question: Why would the Clark County commissioners hand over 3.8 miles of the region’s economic artery to a promoter of a 90-minute car race for free just to financially help a few big hotel-casino properties?
For F1’s part, grand prix staffers are telling Las Vegas that the painful nine-month race prep work of closing roads, installing fencing and shutting down lanes is down to a mere three months starting in September.
And after drawing severe criticism for not getting involved in the Las Vegas community in 2023, the grand prix is handing out free tickets and merch these days in hopes of soothing hurt feelings and lost incomes.
The speakers at the county commission meeting were not opposed to the F1 race in Las Vegas — just its location. Put it in a location where local businesses in the Strip corridor are not crushed by the race, they said.
But why allow a private sports promoter to have the region’s economic heart for a 50-lap race and also allow three months of traffic jams and commerce losses?
The county commissioners did not offer an answer to that one.
The Las Vegas Grand Prix has released a calendar showing road work and race prep as F1 takes three months to build the 3.8-mile track. Things start Sept. 9, so buckle up for the road delays.
You can see the site here.
Curious about how much F1 makes in ticket sales in Las Vegas?
Let’s use last year’s numbers. Las Vegas Grand Prix claims 315,000 fans attended. Sounds inaccurate, but we will stick with the number. The F1Destinations.com website said the Las Vegas Grand Prix had the most expensive F1 race ticket on the circuit at an average price of $1,667.
Let’s multiply those 315,000 fans by an average ticket of $1,667 and you have $525.1 million — more than a half-billion dollars in ticket revenue from the three-day event in Las Vegas.
If I am Clark County, I am asking for a $100 million cut of the action for compensation for allowing F1 to privatize 3.8 miles of roads, including the life blood of the Strip.
