The Las Vegas Grand Prix will be a halo event not only for the city of Las Vegas, but for Formula 1 as a company, said Emily Prazer, president and CEO of the race.
Las Vegas joined the calendar in 2023 and F1 invested significantly in the property and shoulder programming around the event in its first year, before taking a more conservative approach last year. Ahead of a third year in which the race plans to “make another splash”, Prazer – who is also F1’s Chief Commercial Officer – says it has become a major event for both the city and the sport.
“Halo event for Vegas, and obviously I’m wearing two hats, but Vegas’ benefit to 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, for example, Lego that everyone saw in Miami, people will remember that it launched in Vegas last year. And it’s almost like Vegas gives the sport — especially me and my team — the confidence to try a few different things because it almost seems like everyone agrees that everything is acceptable in Vegas.
“So it lets us push some boundaries that I’m not sure we would do on a more traditional race track in Monza or whatever. But it also helps us grow our creativity and ecosystem.
“I know everyone has different views on 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 done Vegas because we didn’t really realize the production capacity we had in house.
“We’re giving ourselves the opportunity to commercialize a sport and interact with fans in a completely different way. Not just because of Vegas, but it just gave us this: ‘Well, we can do it because we tried it and people didn’t hate it!’ So it’s almost affectionately called the test bed, which I think definitely helps us grow the fan base.
“You’ll even see the whole merchandising that comes from being in Vegas and having the opportunity to do it. [at The Hub] are 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 enjoy going to the Venetian and enjoying the collaborations… Again, this doesn’t suggest that Hello Kitty is going to work in Monza, but it certainly works in the US
“So I think, yeah, for Vegas it’s a halo. For us, it’s had the same impact as well. And I think that’s why we all agree that we want to keep doing it.”
This year brings lower prices for ticket options and it appears to be a sold out event. Prazer said the fan base that attended the race actually caught the organizers in the first two years.
“I don’t think people realize that when we first started the race, we announced the race and then we didn’t put out a tender, nothing,” she said. “We were like, oh, what do we think is going to work? And we’re all looking at, ‘Well, Vegas is for super high-rollers who want to gamble and whatever.’
“The great thing about Vegas that we didn’t think about in the first year – and I’m the first to admit it – is that 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 higher-end experiences that do charge a higher room rate, but it’s not just about those specific areas. And I think when we first went there, we thought, ‘Okay, we’re going to lean heavily on the ultra-high power and the big whales that come here to gamble,’ but you have the majority of hotel rooms that are actually more reasonably priced.”
“So we’ve spent a lot of time repositioning the event, from ‘Oh, everything is super expensive’ to making it suitable for all audiences. And knowing that we now have 80% of the domestic audience. When we started this we thought it was going to be more of a 50-50 international audience, but with everything that’s happened, that doesn’t seem like something that’s going to change anytime soon.
“So we repositioned the packaging and the prizes to reflect who’s coming. You can buy your really expensive $25,000 ticket for your high roller, but we have $100 tickets to make sure everyone can show up.
“So the part that’s a challenge for us is letting people know, that there are entry prices and we want to educate this. So for example on Thursday night you can come for $50. No other race on the calendar offers a $50 ticket. And people might say, ‘well, on Saturday it should be $50’. That’s just not realistic in my opinion.”
“We want to ensure that there is something for everyone. And then we will keep Saturday evening as a top evening full of entertainment and of course racing.”
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