The Las Vegas Grand Prix is becoming a halo event not just for the city of Las Vegas but also for Formula 1 as a business, according to the race’s president and CEO Emily Prazer.
Las Vegas joined the calendar in 2023 and F1 invested significantly in the property and shoulder programming around the event in year one, before a more conservative approach last year. Ahead of a third year when the race is planning on “making a splash again”, Prazer – who is also chief commercial officer at F1 – says it has become a major event for both the city and the sport.
“Halo event for Vegas, and obviously I wear two hats, but the benefit of Vegas for the Formula 1 ecosystem is also starting to prove its worth,” Prazer said. “A lot can happen in Vegas that you wouldn’t want to see at other traditional racetracks.
“But the ideas with the likes of Lego that everyone saw in Miami, people will remember it launched in Vegas last year. And it’s almost like Vegas gives the sport – particularly me and my team – the confidence to try a few different things, because it’s almost like everyone agrees anything is acceptable in Vegas.
“So it lets us push some boundaries that I’m not sure we would do at a more traditional racetrack in Monza or what have you. But it’s also helping us to grow our creativity and ecosystem.
“I know everyone has varying views of things like what we did at the O2 [the ‘F1 75 Live’ launch event], but we would never have done the O2 if we hadn’t have done Vegas, because we didn’t realize really the production capability we had in-house.
“We’re giving ourselves this opportunity to commercialize a sport and engage with fans really differently. Not just because of Vegas, but it’s just given us this ‘Well, we can do it because we’ve tried it and people didn’t hate it!’ So it’s almost referred to affectionately as the test bed, which I think is helping us definitely grow the fan base.
“You’ll even see the whole merchandising that will stem from us being in Vegas and having the opportunity to do it. The queues [at The Hub] are like hours long, 600 people in a line. And we’re not doing anything revolutionary. We just haven’t done it before.
“So having the opportunity to test it there and see how people love to go to the Venetian and are enjoying the collaborations… Again, not suggesting that Hello Kitty is going to work in Monza, but it certainly works in the U.S.
“So I think, yes, for Vegas, it’s a halo. For us, it’s also had the same impact. And I think that’s why we all agreed that we want to continue doing it.”
This year brings lower price points for ticketing options and has been tracking to be a sellout event. Prazer said the fanbase that attends the race actually caught the organizers out in its first two years.
“I think people don’t realize that when we first started the race, like we announced the race and then had no procurement, nothing,” she said. “We were like, oh, what do we think is going to work? And all of us look at go, ‘well Vegas is for super high-rollers that want to gamble and what have you’.
“The beautiful thing about Vegas that we did not consider in the first year – and I’m the first to admit it – is it caters to the entire ecosystem. Like, you can go there and stay in a hotel room for $30 a night and feel like a king. If that’s your budget, great.
“You then have the Wynn and Fontainebleau and some of the other more high end experiences that do command a higher room rate, but it’s not just about those particular areas. And I think when we first went there, we were like, ‘Right, we’re going to lean in heavily on the ultra high net worth and the big whales that come here to gamble’, but you have the majority of hotel rooms are actually more reasonably priced.
“So we have spent a lot of time repositioning the event from this being like, ‘Oh, everything is super expensive’ all the way through to actually, it caters to all audiences. And knowing that we now have 80% of a domestic audience coming. When we first started this, we thought it was going to be more like 50-50 international, but with everything that’s gone on, that isn’t something that looks like it’s changing anytime soon.
“So we’ve repositioned the packaging and the prices to reflect who’s coming. You can buy your $25,000 really expensive ticket for your high roller, but we’ve got $100 tickets to make sure that everyone can show up.
“So the part that’s challenging for us is just letting people know that, that there is entry level pricing and we want to educate. So, like, a Thursday night, you can come for $50. No other race on the calendar is doing a $50 ticket. And people might say, ‘well, it should be $50 on Saturday’. That’s just not realistic in my opinion.
“We want to make sure that there’s something for everyone. And then we keep Saturday night as like the super-pinnacle evening of entertainment, and obviously racing.”
