Note from the author: The following longform feature is my capstone project for my Master’s of Science in Journalism degree at Northwestern University. This marked my first time covering Formula One in any capacity and included interviews with Las Vegas experts, coverage of NASCAR’s first-ever street race in July in Chicago and on-site reporting from the F1 paddock and the Strip in Las Vegas. A special thanks to all of the sources who talked to me, my project advisor and professor J.A. Adande and my buddy Matthew Coronado for introducing me to Formula One. Hope you enjoy!
If any milestones could capture the magnitude, flair and joy of Las Vegas’ unlikely coronation as a professional sports city, the Aces’ and Golden Knights’ championship parades would be fitting choices.
Las Vegas has long been synonymous with entertainment and spectacle, but championships in back-to-back years represent a monumental feat for Sin City. For decades, professional sports were an unlikely possibility due to its modest population and the stigma of legal sports gambling.
The WNBA’s Las Vegas Aces were the first to bring a professional sports title in the desert. In their fifth season, an Aces squad led by coach Becky Hammon and stars Kelsey Plum and A’ja Wilson knocked off the Connecticut Sun to win its first WNBA championship. Two days later on Sept. 20, 2022, the Aces celebrated in true Vegas style in a parade that made full use of the iconic Las Vegas Strip. Players, coaches and other members of the organization followed a parade route that took off at Caesar’s Palace before stopping in front of the Bellagio Fountains to address the Aces’ euphoric fanbase.
Within a year, the Strip shut down again to crown another professional sports champion, the NHL’s Vegas Golden Knights. The Golden Knights became Las Vegas’ first true professional sports success story in the 2018-19 season by making a miraculous run to the Stanley Cup Finals in their inaugural year before losing to the Washington Capitals. Four years later, Vegas finished on top with a decisive five-game series victory over the Florida Panthers. On June 17, 2023, the Golden Knights made their own championship cruise down Las Vegas Boulevard, with an estimated 200,000 fans in attendance along the route, according to the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department.
On those two evenings, the Las Vegas Strip wasn’t just the nation’s most famous avenue and a glamorous backdrop. The Strip represented something more, that Las Vegas could not only handle professional sports, but could succeed at the highest level and win titles without losing an ounce of its personality. Las Vegas had made it, and through those championship parades on Las Vegas Boulevard, the city showed the world that after decades of obsolescence, one-off events and cold shoulders from professional leagues — even to the point of an advertising ban from the NFL in the 2000s — Vegas was here to stay.
The Aces and Golden Knights are hardly the only evidence of sports’ prominence in one of the entertainment capitals of the world. America’s most popular league, the NFL, moved the Raiders to Paradise, Nevada, in Jan. 2020, a move made only after the spread of legalized sports gambling across America and the easing of its stigma in the eyes of NFL higher-ups. The NBA’s Summer League, a showcase of the league’s best young talent during the offseason, has found its home in Las Vegas, with an expansion franchise likely in the near future. At the same time as the Golden Knights’ run to the Stanley Cup, the Oakland Athletics’ potential move to Las Vegas became a major storyline and issue in Nevada politics. Las Vegas has a rich history in boxing and college basketball as well and is the site of the UFC headquarters. Factor in the city’s packed schedule of big-time sports events and championships — including March Madness, the NBA’s upcoming in-season tournament and the Super Bowl LVIII in 2024 — and Las Vegas is becoming one of the most prominent sports cities on the map, a remarkable feat accomplished less than a decade from the arrival of its first professional sports team in one of the Big Four sports leagues.
The trend of Las Vegas becoming a prime destination for big-time sports was well underway before the Aces and Golden Knights took over the city to celebrate, but their parades answered the looming question — “could Las Vegas develop a professional sports champion?” — once and for all with glorious celebrations down Las Vegas Boulevard.
Now, Las Vegas faces a new question that will determine its sports future and status in the sports landscape: ‘Can Las Vegas’ sports scene continue its hot streak?’ The answer to that question will be determined in large part by an upcoming sporting event that will not only recreate the route and championship significance of the Aces’ and Golden Knights’ parade, but will literally use the Las Vegas Strip to crown its champion — the Las Vegas Grand Prix.
Set for Nov. 18, 2023, the inaugural Las Vegas Grand Prix is seeking to become the ultimate sports spectacle in the most exciting location. The race matches the exploding popularity of the sport of Formula One with a street race setup that will utilize all of the iconic sights of Las Vegas, all set in a dormant time in the Las Vegas sports calendar. Las Vegas’ hopes of attracting international visitors align with Formula One’s primarily European fanbase, while the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the third U.S. race of the 2023 Formula One calendar, should aid Formula One’s decades-long goal of expanding its U.S. following and a younger audience. A study from Applied Analysis estimated that the Las Vegas Grand Prix will generate more than $1.3 billion in economic impact and nearly $1 billion just in visitor spending — more than doubling economic impact estimates for Super Bowl LVIII.
“Las Vegas is an attention getter, and Formula One wants to expand its brand across the United States,” UNLV history professor Michael Green said. “Las Vegas gets you noticed. I think it’s symbiotic. Las Vegas says big event, big money people coming in, we’ll get a lot of attention for closing down the Strip.”
Combine the appeal of an international sports championship set on the Las Vegas streets with the recent expansion and competitive success of Las Vegas professional sports, and the Las Vegas Grand Prix might seem destined to be the next illustrious chapter in the city’s sports history and continue Las Vegas’ winning streak. But the Las Vegas Grand Prix appears to be more of a high-stakes gamble than a guaranteed success story.
To borrow from poker, both Las Vegas and Formula One have gone all in on their efforts to make the dream of the Las Vegas Grand Prix come to life, but the two sides face significant challenges in making the race an annual hit. From construction around the city that has exacerbated traffic congestion to skyrocketing ticket costs that may price out the average Las Vegas resident to significant resistance over the spending of public funds, there are a litany of issues that could derail the event from connecting with its community. And in a city notorious for moving onto the newest shiny attraction, the Las Vegas Grand Prix — and Las Vegas sports as a whole — will need to prove it is more than just Las Vegas’ next trendy phase over its 10-year commitment.
Formula One can hold its race on the same Las Vegas Strip that hosted championship parades for the Aces and Golden Knights, but it’s no sure bet that it can produce an event that the Las Vegas community celebrates and embraces to the same degree.
Formula One’s Sputtering Start in Las Vegas
More than four decades before the inaugural Las Vegas Grand Prix, there was the Caesar’s Palace Grand Prix. While technically located in Las Vegas and part of the Formula One calendar, the Caesar’s Palace Grand Prix didn’t lean into its unique locale in the slightest and pitted drivers against each other in a compound full of zig-zag turns. The Caesar’s Palace Grand Prix lasted two years at the Formula One level, in 1981 and 1982, before dropping off the Formula One schedule with little resistance.
Formula One journalist Maurice Hamilton has covered more than 500 grand prix events in his career, including the Caesar’s Palace Grand Prix. Reflecting back on those two races, Hamilton recalls the Caesar’s Palace Grand Prix as having a disastrous combination of concerning factors: temporary race tracks, an amateurish layout, poor fan attendance and few indicators of even being in Las Vegas at all.
“They do stand out because they were very unusual,” Hamilton said. “By that I mean they were not on permanent race tracks – we do have street races, of course, at many places – but it was unusual because the circuit was so temporary.
“It was a car park behind the Caesar’s Palace hotel and they just put these concrete blocks down to lay out the track. It was like something you’d do if you were a kid and you liked blocks and you were in your garden and laying out a track. It was not amateurish in the way it was run, but amateurish in the way it was set up. You looked at it and thought, ‘This is ridiculous.’”
To make a strange situation even more bizarre, the Caesar’s Palace Grand Prix was scheduled as the final race of the Formula One season in both of its years, meaning its makeshift course would determine the outcome of the championship. To those in the Formula One community, that dynamic was a travesty, especially considering all of the historic, picturesque courses on the Formula One calendar. Hamilton said the drivers and teams didn’t love the course, but that they accepted its importance and had little choice but to focus on giving their best effort and the competition itself.
For spectators, the Caesar’s Palace Grand Prix squandered any appeal that Las Vegas offered as a backdrop for a Formula One race. While Las Vegas was much less developed and glamorous in the early 1980s, race organizers made little effort to give the race a sense of place or personality. That shouldn’t be an issue for the inaugural Las Vegas Grand Prix.
“Just going back to 40 years ago, when you looked at the pictures on TV and magazines and books of the race, you wouldn’t know it was in Las Vegas,” Hamilton said. “You couldn’t tell from the pictures. It’s not shouting out Las Vegas to you – it’s just another circuit. There was nothing to say. It wasn’t being embraced by the city and wasn’t going into the city, whereas the big difference you’re going to have is it’s right in Las Vegas, so when we turn on our television in Europe, you’ll see that it’s in Las Vegas.”
Since the final Caesar’s Palace Grand Prix in 1982, both the city and the sport have evolved.
Formula One hasn’t experienced astonishing growth over the past four decades, in Hamilton’s estimation. While the Las Vegas Grand Prix’s inclusion as the third U.S. race of the Formula One calendar has supported the perception of the sport’s expansion in the U.S., Formula One also had three U.S. races in the 1982 season, staging grand prix races in Long Beach, Calif., Detroit and Las Vegas. The real game changer for growth has been the popularity of the Netflix show Drive to Survive. The show has expanded Formula One’s audience beyond its traditional European base — Formula One ratings have increased every year in the United States since ESPN’s contract started in 2018, according to NBC News — and illustrated the drama and personal interest element of the sport to casual fans and even those without prior knowledge of the sport.
“There are many people who never really followed Formula One but watched it occasionally on television and believed Formula One was purely the number of people you see on the pit lane changing the tires,” Hamilton said. “They didn’t realize it was 700 people back in the factory. Drive to Survive has brought that point home that it’s a huge industry and there’s a lot of personalities in it, a lot of complex sociological battles and a lot else going on. It’s a human interest story. That has drawn people in, because they want to come and see this.”
In contrast, describing Las Vegas’ growth since 1982 as astonishing might be an understatement.
“You Had to Be There”
The emergence of Las Vegas as a professional sports city traces back to its explosion as an American city and tourist destination, and is no less miraculous at that. The same two factors that eventually lured professional sports to Sin City, rapid population growth and the proliferation of legalized gambling, also fueled Las Vegas’ rise to prominence decades earlier.
UNLV history professor Michael Green has lived in Las Vegas since 1967 and has seen the transformation of Las Vegas firsthand. The most obvious change in the Las Vegas metropolitan area has been its population, which doubled in every census of the 20th century and skyrocketed from 180,000 in 1967 to nearly 2.9 million in 2023. That growth led to another key trend around the middle of the 20th century — Las Vegas’ emphasis on tourism and gambling.
“With the growth, Las Vegas made its decision a long time ago to concentrate on tourism,” Green said. “From 1931 to ‘78, Nevada had a monopoly on legal gambling. If you wanted to gamble legally, you had to come to Nevada. Because Las Vegas was centrally located for transportation, because Reno was a bit iffier on how important gambling would be, Las Vegas embraced it and everybody embraced Las Vegas as the gambling capital.”
Las Vegas experienced drastic changes to its cityscape in the last decades of the 20th century, a result of casinos shifting from mob ownership to figures like Howard Hughes and corporations. In turn, these corporations used their exorbitant resources to expand Las Vegas’ limits with mega-resorts and bigger venues. In addition to gambling, live entertainment and one-off sporting events became essential parts of the Las Vegas experience and activities to complement casino excursions. Golf and tennis hosted major tournaments around the Las Vegas area in the middle of the century, while Las Vegas established itself as one of the top hosts for big-time boxing matches in the world. The UNLV men’s basketball program sent locals into a basketball craze with runs to the Final Four in 1990 and 1991, including a 30-point rout of the Duke Blue Devils to win the 1990 national championship.
“You had to be there,” Green said of Las Vegas’ primetime events. “It’s like, ‘Is that Jesse Jackson sitting there with Jack Nicholson? It was a big celebrity thing.”
Traction for professional sports teams remained minimal through the turn of the century. Aside from talks of the then-Vancouver Grizzlies relocating to Las Vegas around 1999, the city wasn’t only out of the picture for Big Four sports leagues, but were intentionally shut out due to its policies on gambling. In 2004, the NFL blocked Las Vegas from running a Super Bowl ad promoting its tourism. The policy lasted until 2009, but still did not allow images of gambling or advertisements for specific casinos and venues. In 2012, the NFL amended its policy to allow for team sponsorships from casinos, then just three years later, the league forced Dallas Cowboys quarterback Tony Romo to cancel a fantasy football convention at the Sands Expo in Las Vegas by threatening a suspension or fine. The NBA awarded Las Vegas its All-Star Weekend in 2007, but while the turnout was encouraging, the weekend itself devolved into disaster. Visitors across Las Vegas overwhelmed security forces after the game, including more than 400 arrests and four shootings, and the episode set back Las Vegas’ reputation as a potential destination for a professional sports franchise.
Building the Next Great American Sports City
Less than a decade later, Las Vegas welcomed its first Big Four sports team. In 2014, MGM and AEG broke ground on a construction project along Las Vegas Boulevard, a 20,000-seat indoor stadium venue that would eventually become T-Mobile Arena. Though sports was not the priority at the start, the arena’s opening in 2016 gave eventual Golden Knights owner Bill Foley the momentum and venue he needed to make a run at an expansion franchise. Later that year, the NHL granted Las Vegas the expansion franchise that became the Vegas Golden Knights, and the team played its first game on Oct. 10, 2017.
The Golden Knights eventually made it to the brink of a Stanley Cup title in their first season, showing that Las Vegas could not only support a professional sports franchise but could thrive. Another key development in the coming months was the spread of legalized sports gambling, which weakened the stigma that prevented leagues from considering Las Vegas as a potential host for a franchise.
“Everyone knew sports gambling was going to become legalized around the country, so that was the first step,” Arash Markazi, the founder of The Sporting Tribune and a former ESPN journalist, said. “Even before it became official, I think everyone saw it trending in that direction. So some leagues were comfortable getting a head start. It was only a matter of time. Once you were going to have legalized sports gambling in Chicago, New York, etc … the biggest hindrance to professional sports being in Las Vegas was removed.”
In 2018, the WNBA joined the NHL in bringing a team to Las Vegas. MGM bought the San Antonio Stars, then relocated the franchise to Las Vegas and rebranded them as the Aces. Though the Aces couldn’t replicate the Golden Knights’ immediate success, the franchise attracted star power in the lineup and in the coaching ranks in the following years and made it to the conference finals in each of their next four seasons. The Aces also succeeded in cultivating a loyal fan following — 90 percent of spectators at games were local sports fans — and invested in state-of-the-art training facilities.
Las Vegas wasn’t done yet, either. To lure the NFL’s Oakland Raiders out of California, the Nevada government agreed to contribute $750 million of public funds into a new NFL stadium, which would ultimately become Allegiant Stadium. That $750 million figure came largely from hotel taxes, but represented the highest public contribution toward a stadium in NFL history. The tactic worked, and the Raiders moved to Las Vegas in 2020. Allegiant Stadium has since provided a venue for major music acts and sports games, but it may have been the final Las Vegas stadium project to have such a relatively frictionless path to significant public funding.
Further growth seems inevitable in the decade to come. In 2023, Las Vegas gained traction as a potential site for the MLB’s Oakland Athletics. Even the NBA, which hasn’t looked to expand in decades, is eyeing Las Vegas as a prime destination for an expansion franchise and has relied on the city as a host for its annual Summer League games and upcoming in-season tournament.
“In many ways, I think of our Summer League as the 31st franchise,” NBA commissioner Adam Silver said at a Las Vegas conference in July. “I mean, we have almost 80 games here. We really occupy the field for the first two weeks in July in this town. It’s become bigger every year, there’s enormous interest in it. So I feel like we have a huge footprint here.
“… The appetite for not just sports but entertainment in this city seems to be insatiable. I’ve watched it develop for a long time, I’ve watched it through the ebb and flow of Las Vegas. It’s certainly beyond anything I would’ve expected when I started coming here 30 years ago for trade shows and things. And I think they’ve done a fantastic job.”
The expansion of professional sports has strengthened Las Vegas’ tourism and leisure industry. The 2022 Las Vegas Visitor Profile Study from the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority found that 16 percent of Las Vegas visitors watch a sporting event during their stay, six percent of visitors attend a sporting event and three percent come with the primary purpose of attending a sporting event. Sports have also helped offset the Strip’s diminished reliance on gambling, according to data from the UNLV Center for Gaming Research. In the 1990s, gaming represented a majority of total revenues from major casinos, but by the late 2010s, the gaming’s percentage of total revenue consistently registered below 35 percent. While gaming is still a major part of the Las Vegas experience — the $7.4 billion gaming revenues from the top casinos in 2022 represents an all-time high — entertainment and sports events have become more important in attracting visitors and driving profits.
Andrew Woods has been the director for the UNLV Center for Economic and Business Research and was one of the authors for CBER’s May 2023 white paper on Las Vegas’ sports growth from an economic perspective, titled “A Summary of the Sports Economy in Las Vegas.” Woods worked closely with leaders of UNLV’s Sports Innovation program, with the ultimate mission of determining how the rapid growth of sports has impacted not only tourists, but also the culture and communities of Las Vegas residents. The paper found that Las Vegas sporting events “generated $1.845 billion in direct output from out-of-town visitors in fiscal year 2022” and explored the substantial role of Las Vegas sports in helping restore the tourism industry after the pandemic.
“Where sports seems to be so far, the immediate effect is it’s helped us rebound from the pandemic much faster,” Woods said. “I suspect that’s because it’s given people to think and remind them about Vegas as a brand and come out here. Clearly for Vegas as a brand, it is important to continue to draw tourists here. Can we open up new avenues for people to come here?”
By the start of the 2020s, Las Vegas had firmly established itself as one of the emerging sports cities nationwide. But in spring 2021, county commissioners and other city officials listened in on a tantalizing pitch to expand to its global brand through a sport that was quickly becoming a hot topic, Formula One racing. According to an article in The Athletic, Liberty Media, the group that purchased Formula One in 2016, approached Las Vegas officials with a concept for a street race that would compete on the Strip and include weekend festivities.
“What has changed a bit is four or five years ago, Liberty Media took over the ownership and are very, very aware of the need to be in that space and are pushing it really hard,” Hamilton said. “One difference we’ve seen in the inside of Formula One is Liberty Media is savvy about getting racing to be more acceptable to the wider public. When [former Formula One chief executive] Bernie Ecclestone ran it, it was all about making money and not as much about making an event that would draw people in and would have music and concerts and all the rest of that. In a way, Las Vegas today, this year, fits the model that Liberty Media are trying to promote.”
The pitch was successful, and on March 30, 2022, Formula One and the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority made Formula One’s return to Las Vegas official with the announcement of the Las Vegas Grand Prix. This time, everything about the race would shout Las Vegas, loud and clear.
Warning Signs
Months away from the Las Vegas Grand Prix’s checkered flag, the race’s imprint is already visible across the city. Shirts and hats of popular teams like Mercedes, Ferrari and McLaren have made it to sales racks in the Harry Reid International Airport and the casinos, while Las Vegas Grand Prix-branded gear is in stock and ready to go as well. Visually, the most impactful development is the construction of the $500 million paddock facility, a multi-story structure located at Harmon Avenue east and Koval Lane a mile east of Las Vegas Boulevard that will host luxury suites, Formula One offices, 13 driver garages and the start and finish line of the Las Vegas Grand Prix. Formula One also envisions using the space year-round for a Formula One experience attraction to continue developing fan interest in the U.S.
The addition of the Las Vegas Grand Prix increased the number of dates on the Formula One calendar to a taxing 23 races, but from the unique course to the sheer spectacle of Las Vegas, those around the sport are excited for its annual inclusion as the calendar’s seventh street race. From a competitive aspect, the Las Vegas Grand Prix might be a letdown. Red Bull driver Max Verstappen entered Formula One’s summer break with eight consecutive grand prix wins and first-place finishes in 10 of the first 12 races, and by late November he will almost certainly have sealed the drivers’ championship. Red Bull faces a similarly easy path to the constructors’ championship over the coming months, meaning both standings will be set at the top when Formula One welcomes teams back to Las Vegas. Hamilton said such dominance isn’t ideal, but that the competition for the other podium spots for both drivers and teams — the most compelling theme of the 2023 season so far — could generate intrigue on Las Vegas’ race weekend.
For Formula One to make the Las Vegas Grand Prix a successful event from a racing perspective, Hamilton said that the design of the 3.8-mile course will determine the quality of the race.
“The key will be it has to be a good circuit,” Hamilton said. “By a good circuit, I mean one that is a challenge to the drivers. If the drivers really find it difficult and hard work and have to think about it. It’s difficult for the teams to set the cars up, tricky little bits and pieces and a combination of fast and slow.”
Liberty Media’s efforts to maximize the show business sparkle of the Las Vegas Grand Prix will continue the sport’s evolution toward spectacle, at the expense of tradition. The race will be the only Saturday start of the Formula One calendar and start late at night, at 11 p.m. local time. The Las Vegas Grand Prix also represents a major change to Formula One’s business model, as Formula One will handle race logistics internally rather than handing off to an event host. Live Nation will lead race weekend concerts to engage visitors and locals beyond the race itself.
“I think they want to try something new here,” Markazi said. “I think that they want to try to have something that will cater to casual fans and hardcore fans. I can totally get the perspective of hardcore fans who are not quite in love with the timing and format and all that, but it’s going to look amazing.”
Las Vegas is also uniquely suited to host sports events of the scale of the Las Vegas Grand Prix. According to Woods, one in four workers in Southern Nevada work in the leisure and hospitality industry, while ⅓ of the GDP is related to the sector. From the UNLV College of Hospitality to the world-renowned culinary union, Las Vegas has prioritized developing and supporting those leisure and hospitality industry workers. The result of that emphasis is a city that is well-equipped to handle tens of millions of tourists per year and has established a reputation for providing premium service.
In turn, tourism’s importance to the Las Vegas economy relative to other major U.S. cities with sports teams has become inextricable from discussions to add professional sports teams. Before Las Vegas passed legislation to contribute $380 million toward an MLB stadium in mid-June, discussions in the Nevada legislature considered the city’s tourism economy as a main draw behind supporting a team, while the stadium proposal targets a location on the south end of the Las Vegas Strip, a short drive away from the Harry Reid International Airport.
For all the excitement around the course and scenery, Las Vegas Grand Prix and its impact is greater than just a single night race. And in the blistering heat of the summer, friction has been mounting between the race and Las Vegas residents. The need for road quality to satisfy Formula One racing requirements has led to months of construction and repaving, worsening traffic congestion in the busiest parts of the city. Insufficient parking infrastructure has driven up parking prices in the years since the arrival of professional sports. Those logistical issues will be exponentially tougher in November, when Formula One will shut down the Strip, one of the busiest streets in the nation, for race weekend. The Las Vegas Grand Prix organizers declined to comment for this story.
Another major motor racing sport, NASCAR, experienced similar challenges earlier this summer. NASCAR held its first-ever street race, the Grant Park 220, in downtown Chicago in July and tensions over street closures negatively affected public perception of the race. When record-breaking amounts of rain wreaked havoc on the Chicago Street Race weekend, NASCAR leadership decided to cancel its Xfinity Series race and abbreviate its Cup Series race rather than rescheduling for the following Monday, in large part because of the logistical challenges of continuing to close the roads.
These months of inconveniences have felt more egregious to residents considering the lack of accessibility of affordable Las Vegas Grand Prix tickets. Formula One has long been an upper-class, luxury sport, but the Las Vegas Grand Prix has made headlines especially with its high costs of entry and VIP packages, all part of its strategy to maximize the spectacle of its race-day experience. Grandstand tickets started around $500 but now exceed $5,000, and casinos are offering million-dollar packages for race weekend. Those prices are continuing to rise due to inflation, and while Formula One racing is no stranger to high ticket prices — races in 1982 reached $250 dollars for the grandstands, according to Hamilton — the race could price out middle-class families that could comfortably afford sporting events like Aces or Golden Knights games.
“I once said that I thought that Las Vegas was going to luxuriate itself out of prosperity, that it was going to become too expensive for a significant number of consumers,” Green said. “I worry about that with sports and generally. I think of what it cost me to get tickets to Dodger games. The tickets have all become more expensive, but it’s more of an experience. Las Vegas has become more expensive, but it’s more of an experience.”
The most contentious issue for the Las Vegas Grand Prix, though, revolves around public funding.
The debate around public versus private funding has raged across the sports landscape for decades, but it’s been an important part of the discussion in Las Vegas, especially with the pace of its sports growth. After MGM and AEG privately funded T-Mobile Arena, the city looked to taxpayer dollars to lure professional teams from other leagues away from their homes. Allegiant Stadium broke the NFL’s record for public funding, and while it has given the city a 65,000-seat venue to host major acts such as BTS and Taylor Swift, the stadium has made parking and other issues even more challenging. The city has pledged money toward the Athletics’ stadium deal, but after paying $750 million toward Reliant Stadium, the opposition toward approving $380 million toward the Athletics’ project was much more substantive and wary of unexpected costs.
That same issue has come to the forefront in the development of the Las Vegas Grand Prix. Originally, Formula One planned to privately finance the entirety of its project. But as has been the case with other stadium projects, the Las Vegas Grand Prix project came with unwelcome surprises for local legislators. In a June 6 commission meeting, representatives from the Las Vegas Grand Prix requested $40 million in public funding to help offset the costs of repaving the Las Vegas roads, while Formula One would contribute the other $40 million to cover the $80 million cost. The request marked a significant departure from their stance throughout the race process, and though a 4-3 vote of the seven county commissioners allowed the request to go to the negotiation stage, several county commissioners expressed on the record their disdain for how blindsided they felt by the sudden and unanticipated costs.
“What gave you the comfort to go through this process and have us really be obligated to $40 million?” Commissioner William McCurdy II asked Las Vegas Grand Prix representative Stephanie Allen at the meeting.
“What’s 40 million dollars? Well, I’ll tell you what, in our capital budget, that’s a lot,” Commissioner Marilyn Kirkpatrick said. “That’s somebody’s park, that’s somebody’s recreation center, that’s some building that has duct tape on the carpet because we haven’t made it a priority. I’m a no, and it’s unfortunate because I’m a big supporter, but I’m tired of being left from the table and being on the menu.”
Allen responded to the concerns by asserting the road upgrades will have “significant public purpose” and said Formula One and the Las Vegas Grand Prix staff’s diligent preparation efforts led to a delay in the $40 million request. McCurdy ultimately voted to let the discussions advance to the negotiation stage, but doubted his willingness to meet Formula One at its $40 million asking price, especially with a plethora of other issues around the Las Vegas metropolitan area requiring the commission’s time, money and attention.
“I really want to emphasize that it’s never a good feeling of being in a position to either support or not, in terms of the 40 million dollar contribution from the county, with all that we have going on, with all that we’re trying to do, especially in the human services field and the housing crisis that we find ourselves in,” McCurdy said. “I would support it moving forward for a conversation, but I cannot definitely say that if it comes back at 40 million dollars, that I’ll be there.”
“You Can’t Be Shamelessly Business About It”
The inaugural Las Vegas Grand Prix will attract the attention of sports fans of all types: domestic and international, casual and hardcore. With Liberty Media and Formula One striving to grow its fanbase in the United States and Las Vegas hoping to increase its global exposure and attract international tourists to the city, the Las Vegas Grand Prix seems to be a sensible gamble for all sides, and very likely a lucrative one. The November date also fits well for both parties, giving Las Vegas a big-time sporting event in an otherwise slow time in the sports calendar and Formula One a welcome addition to the back half of its racing calendar. Compared to Formula One’s last stint in Las Vegas, the Las Vegas Grand Prix should serve as a breathtaking advertisement for its city and capitalize on the Formula One’s calendar’s most iconic backdrop.
“This year is going to be vastly different because the end of Liberty Media and Formula One is to make the Las Vegas Grand Prix a go-to event, an event where people even if they aren’t interested in motor racing, will come from wherever to be there and be seen,” Hamilton said. “That didn’t happen 40 years ago. I think it will work in the dynamic that Formula One wants in the moment.”
However, winning over the hearts of locals might be an even more critical — and certainly more challenging — task than simply putting on a show in the Las Vegas Grand Prix’s efforts to become Las Vegas’ next sports success story and endure long-term in Las Vegas.
The 10-year scope of the Las Vegas Grand Prix partnership affords Formula One time to establish the Las Vegas Grand Prix as a must-watch annual event and evolve the race over the course of its first years. Still, the community connection will be a crucial part of the Las Vegas Grand Prix story, and the angst over public funding, financial inaccessibility and traffic issues has fueled the perception of a sputtering start on this front. Factoring in the crowded sports landscape in the city and economic and environmental sustainability concerns that have accompanied Las Vegas’ unprecedented growth, Formula One must navigate a great deal of challenges to establish staying power.
Examining the blueprint of its Las Vegas professional sports predecessors would be a wise move on Formula One’s part. The Aces and Golden Knights have demonstrated not only that professional teams can flourish in Las Vegas, but that by prioritizing and embracing its community ties, success will resonate with locals and make celebrations like their championship parades truly city-wide events. From the Golden Knights taking an active role in the community following the Oct. 1, 2017 shooting in Las Vegas just days before their first regular season game to the Aces providing financially accessible ticket options and a compelling product to local fans on a yearly basis, these teams have taken on distinctly Las Vegas identities to connect with the community rather than solely to bolster profits.
Formula One has made strides in investing in the Las Vegas metro area, but sustained success will require long-term commitment to the community and steering clear from the temptations of an exclusively profit-driven mentality.
“[Formula One is] doing a good job of getting out into the community and out at events, sponsoring non-profits,” Woods said. “That’s important because if you come to Vegas, you can’t just be shamelessly business about it. There’s 2.4 million people here and growing, we’ll know if you’re just here to make money and not going to care about the community. The ones that ingrain themselves like the Golden Knights and WNBA, seem to be more successful.”
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