The impact of hosting a Formula 1 race has been “eye-opening” for Las Vegas after huge interest in the newest race on the calendar.
Last year brought the first Las Vegas Grand Prix to be held on the Strip. The event receiving significant attention, in part due to F1’s involvement as one of the promoters. Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority president and CEO Steve Hill said the first race far exceeded expectations and has set the city up for a successful event moving forward, even as it expects interest to settle down to more consistent levels.
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“We knew it would be big, but the attention…” Hill said. “And frankly F1 did a fantastic job of building to that race. I mean, they’re doing it again this year and yes, it was two or three times more marketing value than we would have expected going in, and we would have been happy with a third of what we got. We were going to be thrilled with what we expected, but what we got was eye-opening.”
Hill said the size of last year’s race made the entire month of November one of the biggest in the city’s history in terms of exposure and revenues, but that the next task is ensuring the whole event fits into the city’s broader commercial and cultural landscape as seamlessly as possible.
“It’s successful enough that it’s clearly going to be successful,” he said. “So what we’re all doing is trying to find that balance point with the sustainability of the race in Las Vegas, so that everybody involved is thrilled to have that.
“That’s really the definition, ultimately, of success. We’re not probably going to be able to compete with year one numbers again, and don’t need to in order for it to be successful. If the numbers were half that, it would still be a game-changer.
“I talked about it being the biggest weekend we’ve ever had. November in Las Vegas is typically the eighth-best month of the year, November last year was the second-best month in our history. It’s just a huge difference. We’re not going to get back to that on a regular basis and I don’t think anybody should expect that.
“But if we can do something, we focus on trying to do something that moves the needle each week and we do that about half the weeks in the year and the other half it is just normally what happens in our city.
“This not only changes a week, it changes a month and there are not too many things that can do that and it’s going to do that again this year, probably not at the same level as last year, which is completely understandable but every place it goes, it’s such a big event that it makes a real difference, even in Vegas.”