By Alan Snel, LVSportsBiz.com Publisher
LAS VEGAS, Nevada — The ambitious folks at Formula 1 hired Las Vegas’ most high-profile and well-connected consultant to inform the commoners of Las Vegas that handing over the Strip to a sports event promoter would deliver $1 billion to the local market.
Then F1 Las Vegas paid off settlements to plaintiffs who asserted in lawsuits that they lost millions of dollars in revenues from the grand prix course fencing blocking access while also arguing in legal documents that Clark County fast-tracked and cut corners in the F1 race approval process.
Then, came the cherry on top: the Las Vegas Grand Prix signed up the Girl Scouts to sell cookies at the race that takes over the Strip every November and provide deserts at the F1 Hub Lounge year-round.
You combine Las Vegas consultant Jeremy Aguero and the cookie-selling Girl Scouts and that’s as done of a deal s you can get for any sports event in Las Vegas.
So, are you honestly surprised that the F1 Las Vegas Grand Prix wants the Clark County Commission to approve the November road race as an annual event?
Want the surest bet on the Strip? Bet your house on the county commission breaking out its industrial-size rubber stamp Tuesday morning to allow the F1 folks to hold the race every Saturday before Thanksgiving and take over public roads during a four-month race course set-up and dismantlement.
The first F1 race in 2023 was a disaster, causing both disruptions to local business and traffic jams like no other event in Las Vegas history.
The average city or county would have booted the F1 race after Year 1.
But not Clark County.
The county commissioners greenlighted the car race for a few more years and it was only a matter of time until Las Vegas Grand Prix would be coming back to the commission to endorse another decade’s worth of street racing along the 3.8-mile track in the Strip corridor.
But this is Clark County, which takes its marching orders from the hotel-casino owners in the Strip corridor.
And they wanted the F1 race.
So, the county commission approved the race.
The truth is F1 in Las Vegas was a done deal for the long haul as soon as the race promoter bought land and built the $1 billion paddock building and plaza at Koval Lane and Harmon Avenue.
If there was ever an event that so explicitly showed how things are done in Las Vegas, it was this F1 race.
LVCVA CEO Steve Hill secretly cut the deal with F1, he brought the race to the LVCVA tourism board as a three-year deal and the Clark County commissioners said, yeah, OK, if Hill and Aguero said the event will deliver a $1 billion spending impact annually then it has to be true.
It did not matter that many Clark County residents did not want the event and that the race caused massive traffic problems, disrupting commerce in the Strip corridor and costing businesses lots of revenues.
Las Vegas Grand Prix President Emily Prazer told LVSportsBiz.com more than a year ago that there would be efforts to settle the lawsuits brought against F1 and Clark County.
And, indeed, settlements followed along with the Girl Scouts selling cookies at the 2025 race and year-round at the F1 Hub Lounge.
F1 was home free.
That’s why Tuesday’s commission approval is nothing more than a victory lap for the race promoter in Las Vegas.
PSA