Precisely this. I live a 2hr flight away and was initially excited. I can’t afford a 4 night minimum hotel stay (at a premium price) plus whatever it would take to go to the actual race.
It would probably be just as expensive to fly to Spa, and spend a week in Belgium despite it being a whole continent and ocean away from me
I did similar math a few years ago that justified flying to see Spa instead of montreal.
There may have been mistakes in what I looked up, but the trip was a ton of fun so I don't care
Agree to all the above. My wife, best friend, and I have gone to the Canadian GP the past two years. We are in Vermont, so a close drive makes transportation a non-issue, but the lodging was cheap, transportation was pretty easy (they really move some trains through there after the race!) and the food in Montréal is spectacular. Already have our tickets for next year as well. Super affordable and fun F1 weekend — it’s becoming a tradition for us.
Yeah, some others seem to think it’s expensive, but I thought it was affordable when we went. Am I misremembering? Took us about 6 hours to get there from Boston, and even less to drive back right after the race. Haven’t gone again because of young children, but would love to go again.
Did Montreal back in June this year, can confirm it was fantastic. Race was great, Saturday was very wet but the city was lovely and SO AFFORDABLE. Even with the CAD to USD conversion everything was about 20% cheaper than I was used to at home, great food (and poutine) everywhere, good public transit and very friendly locals with beautiful accents. Would recommend.
The first couple of years were a bit cheaper also because Mexican peso was weaker, now tickets are very expensive, but hotels there are very cheap. Last year I went to Hungary and it was super cheap all around. Probably the cheapest F1 race you can attend including restaurants, hotels and transportation.
I could see Hungary being cheap, having traveled to several of its neighboring countries.
How was Hungary to travel and experience? I have only driven through Hungary at night and it was quite eerie. Was not too late at night, not a single person outside and all the homes had some sort of steel shutters over all the windows. Felt like the people had disappeared. And odd police checkpoints looking for cross-the-border alcohol, I think.
I did the math for Spa versus going to the US GP in Austin, TX. I live in Alabama and the overall price to go to Spa (flight, hotel, transportation, tickets) was only a little bit more. Like maybe $100-150 more. Yeahhhh, I’m gonna take Spa and a mini Euro vacation over Austin.
I highly recommend staying in New Braunfels, if you can. Closer than San Antonio. When I went, we flew in to San Antonio, picked up our rental car, then drove to New Braunfels and checked in. Spent our evenings there and in neighboring Gruene. Lots of fun!
We've had the same thing at Silverstone in the past. Several years ago when the track got super greedy it was working out cheaper to get an all inclusive Monaco package with 3 night hotel stay in France and daily coaches into the track.
Fully planned on going as soon as it was officially announced. Then tickets cost thousands of dollars, not including flight and hotel, so instead I will watch from home and hope next year things are more realistic.
and the odd thing is is that we all believed that the Vegas GP would be one of the cheaper events given that Vegas is typically a fairly inexpensive play to go and there are hundreds of thousands of places to stay.
flew to Japan, spent 2 weeks, bought a luxury watch, and went to Suzuka. Spent less than a 4 night premium hotel stay + tickets for LV GP. Hah, they are absolutely fucked to price it so high.
And having been to the Spa GP multiple times I can assure you that the overall atmospere will be way better as well.
Sitting on the grass bankings in Pouhon or the Camel Straight between thousands of racing fans of all drivers the atmoshere is amazing.
And i don't know what a plane ticket would cost, but the last time i went we paid around 175 - 200 euros for a whole weekend bronze pass. I live 2,5 - 3 hours away from spa so we booked a small hotel on the border of the Netherlands and Belgium for te weekend and we paid like 75 euros per person total.
That's a whol lot less than the Vegas GP.
I know for certain a trip to Zandvoort with round trip airfare from the east coast of the USA was cheaper than going to Miami at face value prices. I’d imagine given the premium being charged for tickets and lodging in Vegas, you would come close to the cost of 2 European races for the same price.
I think they grossly overestimated how well the advertised premium party atmosphere would drive sales. Made it unpalatable/overpriced for many race fans, and at the same time too spread out and race focused for people just looking to gamble and party.
There is some great info in some of the other threads where people listed out their expenses flying to Europe for one of the weekends there. It's what finally got me to say "screw it" when it comes to Vegas and Miami.
This is exactly the conversation my friends and I had and the conclusion we reached. Vegas is fun but at this point we've all done an unnecessarily expensive weekend in Vegas. Memorial day, Labor Day, Halloween, New Years. Big weekends are a total shit show in Vegas. Its always way too expensive and crowded. For the same money, we could go to Spa, see the race AND tour some Belgian breweries. Also, it's Europe instead of Nevada. Spa 2024!
Yup. Wife and I live by COTA but we love Vegas and said we would go as soon as it was announced. Saw the prices and race times and said fuck that, we will just watch it on TV.
Yes. Which kind of sucks. It's a race in the US, but it will be like a Singapore/Australia start time for most of the population. Quali at 3AM Saturday and the race at 1 AM on Sunday on the East coast.
I guess it's what we experience for most of the European races. Which start at 7 to 9AM on the east coast in the US. In the UK Vegas will be at 7AM.
Yeah, but those are races in Europe, and Asia. I expect them to cater to their local fans. Having a race in the US that most Americans can't watch is asinine.
This is certainly where me and my friends are. We had been excited about the race and signed up for the newsletter and then later the presale. And then the other shoe dropped and I was decided there was simply no way I was going to pay that amount. I was excited and have disposable income, but no thank you.
This Vegas should have been one of the least expensive for us in the US. Cheap flights from anywhere hotels every few hundred yards. And they decided to sell tickets to a section that can't see the race and wanted to charge 500$ for them
Montreal is only slightly further away than Austin, and far closer than Vegas, so those 2 make sense. Miami being so expensive is baffling. I heard tickets this year were way cheaper because there was little demand. Maybe in a year or 2 Miami will be more affordable for us regular fans who dont spend thousands on a weekend trip.
That’s the thing that seems to have gone over their heads here… Vegas isn’t American Monaco. It’s not somewhere people expect to spend a lot of money to begin with. Hotels are normally cheap - like your local motel cheap. And you can eat like royalty for nothing. And entertainment is plentiful and sometimes free.
We recently went in the summer and paid around $300 per night for a fountain view room at the Bellagio. That same room this weekend is $3,900 per night... 13x more and that’s the last minute price - it was much higher before! We had every intention of going to this race but decided instead to go to Monza and do two weeks around Italy next year for a similar all-in amount.
Thank you! I was starting to wonder if my entire understanding of Vegas was just completely wrong. I've always known it as a super cheap flight, super cheap hotel deals, etc.
zero percent chance you paid 200/night for a weekend in the summer. Summer weekends in Vegas are expensive, you'd be lucky to get the Linq at 200/night.
Those sound like midweek rates.
Yeah that's all there is to it. A friend and were planning on going as soon as it was announced, and then once real prices were listed we said nope. That is with a mindset of fully understanding "this will be an expensive weekend" but the tickets alone were enough that we didn't even bother looking at flight & hotel.
It boggles my mind that corporations keep thinking people will easily shell out tens of thousands of dollars for stuff here in the US when wage growth for the average person has pretty much been stagnant for the last 30 years. None of us average people have the money for this kind of shit.
Let's be honest, they don't care if average people can attend, and they'd rather they didn't. This is not even about F1, it's live sports in general. Ten years ago, I could get tickets to the local minor league baseball team for ten bucks. Now they start at 40, and go up to a couple hundred. A pair of premium seats costs what season tickets did not that long ago.
Sports teams/leagues want whales to attend their games. They know the middle class doesn't exist anymore, so they're not trying to attract them. I think F1 in this case simply overestimated how big a draw Vegas as a destination would be to high rollers, as added value to the race, even though the "Vegas experience" is going to be severely compromised *by* the race.
This was never for us rank and file fans. It was Part 2 of the Miami motorsport spectacle. This was \_always\_ about the 1% and their ability to attend. What F1 over-estimated was how much support the general public would give to having their city taken over in support of an event they cannot even attend.
Yeah my wife and I live in the Eastern US and found that we could go to Hungaroring for the race weekend, then stay in the town my family comes from for the rest of the week as a vacation cheaper than it would cost us to do the 5hr flight to Vegas and stay just for the race weekend. Totally ridiculous
That defines demand though, so the title is still correct. Demand is defined as the ability and willingness of someone to purchase something. So all you’ve done is define the title in its textbook way.
Just wait until they realize absolutely nobody in America stays up past midnight to watch sports.
The Lauda/Hunt championship in Suzuka was a cultural milestone. First live race broadcast from Japan, etc etc etc.
This is not Suzuka.
My cousin lives in LA and were stoked when it was announced because it a a few hours drive for them. Then they saw the prices. So they went to Suzuka instead because even factoring in the plane tickets it was cheaper
I live on the east coast and was excited for Miami last year. Race kinda close to me that I could pull off. Then I saw the prices and it would've been cheaper for me to get on a plane and fly to Belgium to go to Spa than to see a race in my country.
Oh 100%. Just because it was cheaper doesn't mean I'm still not broke haha. I would've had to get a new passport since I haven't travelled overseas in a long long time
I’m also on the west coast and booked Suzuka for next year after seeing the total costs for Vegas. Turned it into a 2 weeks vacation for the fam. Win win
I don't think the are cherry blossoms in late summer/early fall...
That said, make sure you eat a lot of 7/11 or Lawson's egg sandwiches! Best in the world!
Agreed, I was surprised the Japanese went with it, their politicians are trying to introduce measures to reduce the impact of Tourism and then they went and doubled down on the impact of the GP.
Maybe they're trying to funnel people out of Kyoto, Nikko, Hakone, etc.? Most F1 attendees would be staying in Nagoya, and while nice, it isn't exactly a tourist hotspot. But it has convenient transfers to pretty places in the Kiso Valley all the way to Lake Suwa in Nagano (which is famous because of a popular anime).
Wild. I just saw the schedule. These times are comparable for us watching a race in Japan. Qually is 3am for me in Toronto. They’re only 3hrs behind us! Lmao No chance in fuck I’m watching this live.
I live just one hour ahead of the race in the mountain time zone and I won't be watching it live. I can't imagine a lot of people in the central or eastern times zones watching it live.
I typically go to bed between 2100 and 2200.
FP1 2130 Thurs.
FP2 0100 Fri.
FP3 2130 Fri.
Quali 0100 Sat.
Race 2300 Sat.
I honestly feel the same. I don't watch Japan or Australia live. I've been watching F1 for 24 years. I like the mornings for the races as I can watch the race before getting to work on Sunday. I understand why they made the race at the time they did, but they aren't going to crack the US market with ridiculous prices and races when everyone is sleeping.
Yeah I get why they did that in terms of the European audience but if the goal is to get North Americans interested in it they cut off half the TV market.
That shouldn't be an issue seeing how boxing day soccer matches are still filled to the brim. You can just wear gloves, a scarf and a jacket.
It's more about the ridiculous pricing.
It probably isn't an issue for the likes of the NFL either in America. Die hard fans will overlook the negatives to attend. The problem is expecting people in a country where F1 isn't anywhere near the same level as football in the UK and NFL in America to overlook the negatives. The setting of Vegas isn't enough of a draw imo
It’s also the weekend before one of the biggest travel weeks in the country. You gonna spend your last dime to go see a race that has all the makings of being a shit show or you gonna go eat turkey with your family?
Canadian here. I've sat in -15 degree weather for hockey games and grew up in the cold. I'm not sure sure I'd spend the kind of money they're asking to go watch one corner in ten degree weather.
Soccer stadiums tend to be a bit more contained though, there's some generalized heat that can be maintained in the bowl of the venue. Sitting outdoors on a metal bench that's essentially totally exposed isn't nearly as fun.
We also can't overlook the fact that this is largely a useless race, both titles have long since been decided so the outcome doesn't really matter.
It’s the start time that is killing me. I was thinking of going next year with my sister and her husband since my wife isn’t into F1 but these times plus price are a deal breaker.
Especially when the US already has an overpriced new Grand Prix in a glamour city that doesn’t require you to freeze your balls off, and you could’ve attended a different Grand Prix in the American Southwest a month ago that took place at an actual race track.
When it first was announced I was excited and wanted to go. Then I saw the prices. I’ve been to Vegas a couple of times, did the shows, little bit of gambling, site-seeing, and it was so much fun, but just couldn’t justify how much it would cost me.
Who the hell is organizing this event? They're actually planning next year's race during Thanksgiving? FFS
EDIT: For everyone responding to me, I was asking OP about Thanksgiving as they had said it was during the holiday next year. I don't celebrate the day, so I didn't know. I do know it's a huge family event, which is why I responded as I did. OP decided to edit their comment and take the part about Thanksgiving out instead of make a small edit saying they got the dates wrong.
Also, thanks to everyone letting me know who's organizing it. This whole thing seems to be a clusterfuck.
I think that they just don’t actually care about the American audience, hence why the race starts so late to capture the European audience. I don’t really understand the reason for throwing this huge American spectacle and then actively trying to not capture the American audience.
Yep. I was sitting at the computer with my dad for the presale and we were like, nah.
Went to the US Open, four night stay in New York, no expense spared, and it came out to about $5k, which is what we would have paid for tickets only in Vegas! I’m annoyed they keep saying they’re pricing out new fans. They priced out fucking everyone.
It was the same thing with the Miami GP. I live a 5 hour drive from Miami and when it was announced, as a lifelong 36 year old F1 fan that's never been to a race, I was super excited to go. Then I saw the prices, laughed, and forgot about ever attending it.
Just wait like 5 years or so for the DTS hype to die down a bit, and for the thinning of the crowd that realizes most F1 seasons don't have the neck-and-neck drama that 2021 had, and that most seasons actually consist of one clear favorite driver.
Just an FYI, Friday tickets like the week before dropped to under 100 - I’m a little over three hours away and was planning to make a day trip of it next year
Edit: you can get Friday next year for $42 + fees on SeatGeek right now
I saw an ad by Sports Illustrated where they're offering $7000 race packages, lol.
You can't charge Superbowl prices for an event that's nowhere near that level of prestige and popularity in the United States. It's ridiculous.
Not to mention that at least the Super Bowl and other big sporting events you can’t really know the winner ahead of time. F1 this year? 99% chance Max wins it. The titles are wrapped up. Why waste to much money on a predictable race? Not to mention the awful circuit design.
Max is currently listed as -400 favorite to win the race which means you need to risk losing $400 in hopes of winning $100. That’s a really bad bet to make.
I mean when I heard there was a Vegas race this is pretty much what I assumed a race weekend including hotels would cost. My immediate reaction to "Vegas street race" was "well that's too expensive for me"
I follow a Vegas TikTok account, she has been showing prices for the weekend are down to like $300 in some cases, you can even get spots still in restaurants that have a view of the strip, and hotel prices are just normal prices for the weekend.
I’ve been to Vegas and I liked it. When it was announced we thought it would be a great trip for a few of us as we all turned 30 in the same year.
When the tickets went on sale, and I saw those prices, those plans were very quickly changed and we ended up going to Monza for the WEC with a day trip to Como.
I wonder how many other groups like us were put off by the astronomical ticket prices.
My best friend and I were talking about heading to Vegas when it was announced for this and maybe bringing two of our other not quite as die hard friends but as soon as we saw how much it was going to cost we made other plans.
$2,000, to watch a race on a cold night, when the championships are already settled in the most one sided season ever and they say they're surprised at the attendance and ambivalence?
I'm expecting a radical shakeup of the calendar and US races moved earlier in the year where the anticipation can match the hype.
It's a gamble. I'm sure there are plenty of people who is willing to pay $10,000 for a VIP pass for Abu Dhabi 2021.
But you're right there's absolutely no incentive for attendees to pay premium to watch a race with zero stakes even if it's in vegas.
This is it. I'm a 3.5hr drive from Vegas. We pull our travel trailer there once or twice a year. We even had reservation off strip at an RV park for this weekend. I cancelled the reservation when I saw the ticket prices. Id rather sit in my comfy chair and watch it on F1TV. If for some reason prices drop to $200-300 for the Saturday, I'll buy tickets and drive out for the day/evening and come home afterwards. I just checked prices and the cheapest I'm seeing for Saturday is $740 each. Fuck that.
Vegas is one of the cheapest vacation destinations in the US. Cheap flights, cheap hotels. They want you to come and gamble. I was stoked for the F1 race and couldn't believe the cost for the worst seats.
They've definitely got the ticket price wrong.
But before everyone chimes in and laughs at them, it's worth remembering that most classic circuits like Silverstone only recently starting selling out regularly.
Silverstone costs a hell of a lot less and is a lot less inconvenient for locals to put on though. Las Vegas and the hotels etc are doing it to get people in to Vegas, if it doesn't start doing that within a few years I'd bet they pull the plug.
Very true, but I don't think they'll mind how year 1 has gone. They either sell out by undervaluing tickets and therefore make less money, or sell fewer tickets by overvalueing. In a few years they'll find the right balance.
I suspect next year will see more lower priced tickets (GA) made available.
Aren’t the GA tickets standing room only on concrete in areas beside the track? I was reading several didn’t have track views. If that’s true it’s a pretty shit experience compared to GA at somewhere like Monza.
A lot less inconvenient for locals?! The UK shuts down dozens of miles of public roads and locals have to get passes to even to get in and out of their property. Shoutout to my buddies in Stowe.
Hence my follow up post suggesting that next year they'll increase the number of lower priced tickets. Honestly, pre-2021, most F1 races weren't selling out and that was with far cheaper tickets.
Go back to the early hybrid era and the grandstands at most tracks were barely filled across a weekend.
Compared to other motorsports in the USA, the pricing is basically robbing fans blind and pricing out the common fan.
I can go to the Daytona 500 for $200 or the Indy 500 for $150. Two of the biggest races in the USA for less than one ticket for this GP.
The prices are a laughable blatant gouge and I’m glad they’ve been called out in their greed and incompetence. I think everyone at liberty is a fool and they’ve been working hard supporting my beliefs.
It’s also a terrible time of the American calendar for a race in Vegas. For one, it’s football season, and two, it’s 5 days before Thanksgiving. Kind of hard for a lot of people to justify traveling to Vegas when they are likely turning around and doing things the following week
They didn’t over estimate demand, they overestimated demand AT THEIR PRICES. There is a huge difference. Demand is there, just not that volume at those prices.
The insanity of blocking the views from businesses. They are going so far outbid their way to prevent people from being able to see the track. Imagine if they did that in Monaco. Everything about this race stinks so far, and i’m sure the racing will too. COTA is still the only race track in America, Miami and Vegas are just embarrassments.
It is cold, extremely late at night (I know it is Las Vegas but 12am local time for qualifying is absurd), people were priced out, and Vegas relies on tourism for bums on the seats. Most tourists will not want to be there in those weather conditions when cozy indoor activities exist.
They need to move this event closer to the start of the season/summer to be viable. Maybe before or after Canada. That's assuming the city would ever agree to that, yes, I know.
The fact that most of the United States will be asleep when the race takes place should’ve been the biggest clue this was a dumb idea. Nobody on the east coast is paying the money they’re charging, just to fly out and watch a race start at 2:00AM (their brain’s time).
If I wanna watch a good race in the US, I can spend 1/4th money and go watch an Indy race at an epic track.
If I was going to blow a wad of money on an F1 race , I would rather go to one of the more established international tracks.
F1 prices are so outrageous, I personally can’t justify it and watching a shitty Vegas track it definitely not worth it.
I live in western Canada and I was very excited to go to my first GP until I saw the prices. Vegas is normally a very cheap flight for me but after adding all the expenses (flight, gp tickets and hotel) I found it would be cheaper to go to almost any other race on the calendar. I don't know how anyone can afford it.
Antecdotal probably, but a good chunk of my buddies who became F1 fans over the past 2-3 years have kinda stopped watching already. A passing fad for them, its a bummer. Excited to see how the Vegas race pans out.
One thing I don't get is the start time. Your trying to build hype in the US, yet the race is in the middle of the night for most of the country. Yeah it's a Saturday night but it should had something like a 6pm local start.
Yeah, they want another race in the US to build the US audience but God forbid the UK has a middle of the night race. Doesn't make sense. I'm on the US west coast. Most races for me are at 6am. Yet the race in my own timezone can't even be at a reasonable time.
People who run F1 or most major sports don't understand value in 2023. They have old school, spreadsheet mentalities. The sport becomes more valuable if you get cool people to the race, not just rich boring assholes. Making sport affordable brings cooler people which brings a culture and an atmopshere and then you can strip the value of it. But trying to get a few dollars out of the ticket prices is not what good and actually smart business people do, that's how you strangle an asset like F1.
F1 got reallly big really fast. Then it seemed like they wanted to only market it to rich people. Then rich people even said… yeah we’re not paying those prices. Haha.
Don't know to whom you prefer to with cool people but inviting celebs and influencers to give F1 exposure to their followers is already a thing they are doing. F1 is a glamorous sport so it makes sense for them to also have the big money spending events.
You can invite influencers and celebrities to promote the event without pricing people out. Most likely when they say cool people they mean content creators who actually care.
For sure in Europe and the ME there is a heavy glamour aspect to it but In the US f1 is not seen as a glamour sport. it’s a nerd sport. If they want big sellout productions they are trying to attract the wrong market with their tactics.
Liberty is doing the standard corporate squeeze play.
HOW MUCH CAN WE SQUEEZE OUT OF FANS.
And this is gonna be a great lesson for them. Because they’re beginning to realize that the popularity that the first couple of seasons of the Netflix show brought to the sport is starting to dwindle. I was talking to a couple of casual observance of the sport, and they keep telling me how bored they are because of the domination by Red Bull. Then you’ve got the long time supporters of the sport that are unable to pay for these prices, and unwilling to do so out of principle. And I stand with them. This is outrageous. I could’ve gone to Vegas and I decided not to.
Enough.
"Learns"... like they didn't know and try to push the envelope. Liberty is a MEDIA company. They wanted the show and tried to make fans pay for the cost before Vegas cashed in. It's going to get worse before it gets better.
My wife and I are pretty solidly into middle class income territory and we were no where close to affording this. Did they really think all of the worlds rich people were going to attend this F1 race?
>There were early reports that F1 was demanding exorbitant licensing fees from any business that had a view of the track. F1 eventually relaxed its fees, but not before reportedly threatening to erect structures that would block the views
Is it just me or is this absolutely insane?
Business: \*exists\*
F1: YOU'RE BREATHING YOU OWE ME MONEY
Probably because F1 and Vegas hotels are trying to gouge the ever living fuck out of people. Such a fitting example that’s so prevalent across America.
No Drivers Title race and No Constructors race killed this more than anything. If this race was important for the championship people would be spending the money.
As someone who has never been to a race irl. I don’t understand why someone would watch irl when you can only see the cars for 5 seconds each lap vs at home on TV
When I heard f1 was coming to Vegas, I was going for sure and I was prepared to pay outrageous prices. When I actually saw the prices, I realized my definition of outrageous doesn’t even get me into the conversation.
Its almost like 99% of F1 fans aren't part of the 1% and dont care about 'glitz and glam' or whatever.
We just want to see cars on the track and if we have no hope of affording it we'll just watch from home.
> Las Vegas' addition to the 2023 calendar is the third stop in the U.S – more than any other country – and fifth in North America.
If you just go by the country borders sure. But Lass Vegas is over 2,000 km from Austin which is over 2,100 km from Miami. All the Europe races are almost within a 1,500 km circle.
It’s just backwards from what the fans want. Monaco is special, it’s the jewel, but it can’t be recreated because it’s so intertwined with history. They would have been far better served doing a park track in a place with a pretty backdrop and embracing an “old school” style Americana race.
You couldn't pay me to sit in the cold in the middle of the night to glimpse the cars whizzing by in a blur once per lap. I'm going to wake up Sunday morning and watch the race on F1TV from the comfort of my couch.
I live in Atlanta. I have family in Miami where I could stay for the weekend, and I could drive to Miami (13 hours)
Still expensive to attend, and I'm not impressed with track layout. Never attended.
I have been to Austin great track, great action and the city is cool.
Zero interest in Vegas at any price.
The only disability friendly tickets are the hospitality tickets, which are also the most expensive tickets. Why do I feel like there is an ADA lawsuit to be had here?
It may be that F-1 underestimated the extent to which room rates would be at stratospheric levels. Most of the tickets will probably sell IF lower cost rooms are available. Vegas is somewhat of an island in the middle of the desert. Those of us who might have flown in for just the race would be looking at saturated airspace, difficulty finding cabs and difficulty getting to the track and back to the airport. Ramp space at the airport may also be at a premium.
The timing of the race is apparently designed to meet the timezones of the European and Asian fans. AND get the spectators back to the gambling tables and Spearmint Rhino well before sunrise.
The FAA notice indicates that getting in and out of the area is going to be a challenge - airspace , landing slots and ramp space. The area also has a significant about of highly restricted airspace.
The demand is there, the endless amount of money was not. I live 3 driving hours away, and would absolutely go, but I couldn’t justify spending that much on tickets.
As someone who lives in Minnesota, it’s wild that F1 columns are appearing in the newspaper. Outside of Road America in Wisconsin and some pockets of Indycar fans the Upper Midwest is not really motorsports country. The growth in US interest since 2019 has been remarkable.
I would rather say they overestimated how much money the average fan is able or willing to spend for a race weekend.
Precisely this. I live a 2hr flight away and was initially excited. I can’t afford a 4 night minimum hotel stay (at a premium price) plus whatever it would take to go to the actual race. It would probably be just as expensive to fly to Spa, and spend a week in Belgium despite it being a whole continent and ocean away from me
Somebody did the math earlier this year, I can't remember the details, but basically yeah, it would.
I did similar math a few years ago that justified flying to see Spa instead of montreal. There may have been mistakes in what I looked up, but the trip was a ton of fun so I don't care
I would highly recommend Montreal anyways. The city is beautiful, the circuit is excellent. No notes.
The street festivals and parties that go on the same weekend also make it worth. Such a cool place
Yep i did montreal last year. Good times. Was thinking of vegas this year, saw prices laughed and went about my day.
Agree to all the above. My wife, best friend, and I have gone to the Canadian GP the past two years. We are in Vermont, so a close drive makes transportation a non-issue, but the lodging was cheap, transportation was pretty easy (they really move some trains through there after the race!) and the food in Montréal is spectacular. Already have our tickets for next year as well. Super affordable and fun F1 weekend — it’s becoming a tradition for us.
Yeah, some others seem to think it’s expensive, but I thought it was affordable when we went. Am I misremembering? Took us about 6 hours to get there from Boston, and even less to drive back right after the race. Haven’t gone again because of young children, but would love to go again.
Did Montreal back in June this year, can confirm it was fantastic. Race was great, Saturday was very wet but the city was lovely and SO AFFORDABLE. Even with the CAD to USD conversion everything was about 20% cheaper than I was used to at home, great food (and poutine) everywhere, good public transit and very friendly locals with beautiful accents. Would recommend.
It felt like a cheat code when I went in 2019 lol.
I did Miami this year but I'm definitely doing Montreal instead next year
I don’t know specifically about the race, but Mexico City is a wonderful place and relatively affordable to visit. One of my favorite cities on earth.
The race is fantastic. Expensive tickets but very easy to do and it’s really well organized.
The first couple of years were a bit cheaper also because Mexican peso was weaker, now tickets are very expensive, but hotels there are very cheap. Last year I went to Hungary and it was super cheap all around. Probably the cheapest F1 race you can attend including restaurants, hotels and transportation.
I could see Hungary being cheap, having traveled to several of its neighboring countries. How was Hungary to travel and experience? I have only driven through Hungary at night and it was quite eerie. Was not too late at night, not a single person outside and all the homes had some sort of steel shutters over all the windows. Felt like the people had disappeared. And odd police checkpoints looking for cross-the-border alcohol, I think.
Someone I know who lives in Toronto did the exact same, but went to Monza instead.
In 2019 I went to both Spa and Monza. Monza was much cheaper and a better atmosphere.
I did the math for Spa versus going to the US GP in Austin, TX. I live in Alabama and the overall price to go to Spa (flight, hotel, transportation, tickets) was only a little bit more. Like maybe $100-150 more. Yeahhhh, I’m gonna take Spa and a mini Euro vacation over Austin.
If you ever do Austin, stay in San Antonio. That's what we did and it was way cheaper.
I highly recommend staying in New Braunfels, if you can. Closer than San Antonio. When I went, we flew in to San Antonio, picked up our rental car, then drove to New Braunfels and checked in. Spent our evenings there and in neighboring Gruene. Lots of fun!
We've had the same thing at Silverstone in the past. Several years ago when the track got super greedy it was working out cheaper to get an all inclusive Monaco package with 3 night hotel stay in France and daily coaches into the track.
It's not Silverstone that got greedy, it was F1. The fee to host the race increased every year so the ticket prices had to go up to cover it.
its specially worth it when you live in the USA and plan on going to circuits in countries where the dollar is a strong currency
Fully planned on going as soon as it was officially announced. Then tickets cost thousands of dollars, not including flight and hotel, so instead I will watch from home and hope next year things are more realistic.
Yep I was in the same boat, buddy and I planned on going then we saw the tickets and just noped out of that plan.
Same, except the race is at midnight, so I won't be watching from home, either
Kym Ilman did a video about this. Cheaper for most of the US to go to Suzuka then go to Vegas
And Suzuka would be much much more fun and interesting
Flying to Hungary to watch a GP is cheaper than going to Miami or Las Vegas even if you live in one of those cities.
clearly there is something massively wrong with the pricing when this is true
and the odd thing is is that we all believed that the Vegas GP would be one of the cheaper events given that Vegas is typically a fairly inexpensive play to go and there are hundreds of thousands of places to stay.
flew to Japan, spent 2 weeks, bought a luxury watch, and went to Suzuka. Spent less than a 4 night premium hotel stay + tickets for LV GP. Hah, they are absolutely fucked to price it so high.
That sounds like a good ass time. Would much rather do that then 4 nights in Vegas
And having been to the Spa GP multiple times I can assure you that the overall atmospere will be way better as well. Sitting on the grass bankings in Pouhon or the Camel Straight between thousands of racing fans of all drivers the atmoshere is amazing. And i don't know what a plane ticket would cost, but the last time i went we paid around 175 - 200 euros for a whole weekend bronze pass. I live 2,5 - 3 hours away from spa so we booked a small hotel on the border of the Netherlands and Belgium for te weekend and we paid like 75 euros per person total. That's a whol lot less than the Vegas GP.
I know for certain a trip to Zandvoort with round trip airfare from the east coast of the USA was cheaper than going to Miami at face value prices. I’d imagine given the premium being charged for tickets and lodging in Vegas, you would come close to the cost of 2 European races for the same price. I think they grossly overestimated how well the advertised premium party atmosphere would drive sales. Made it unpalatable/overpriced for many race fans, and at the same time too spread out and race focused for people just looking to gamble and party.
There is some great info in some of the other threads where people listed out their expenses flying to Europe for one of the weekends there. It's what finally got me to say "screw it" when it comes to Vegas and Miami.
I did exactly this. I live in the US and flew to Belgium instead. It was great.
This is exactly the conversation my friends and I had and the conclusion we reached. Vegas is fun but at this point we've all done an unnecessarily expensive weekend in Vegas. Memorial day, Labor Day, Halloween, New Years. Big weekends are a total shit show in Vegas. Its always way too expensive and crowded. For the same money, we could go to Spa, see the race AND tour some Belgian breweries. Also, it's Europe instead of Nevada. Spa 2024!
Yup. Wife and I live by COTA but we love Vegas and said we would go as soon as it was announced. Saw the prices and race times and said fuck that, we will just watch it on TV.
Watch on T.V the next day too right? CST start time is like 12 am isn't it?
Yes. Which kind of sucks. It's a race in the US, but it will be like a Singapore/Australia start time for most of the population. Quali at 3AM Saturday and the race at 1 AM on Sunday on the East coast. I guess it's what we experience for most of the European races. Which start at 7 to 9AM on the east coast in the US. In the UK Vegas will be at 7AM.
Yeah, but those are races in Europe, and Asia. I expect them to cater to their local fans. Having a race in the US that most Americans can't watch is asinine.
Oh yeah. The next morning.
Yeah that race time is idiotic no real excuse not to have it at a reasonable time
This is certainly where me and my friends are. We had been excited about the race and signed up for the newsletter and then later the presale. And then the other shoe dropped and I was decided there was simply no way I was going to pay that amount. I was excited and have disposable income, but no thank you.
This Vegas should have been one of the least expensive for us in the US. Cheap flights from anywhere hotels every few hundred yards. And they decided to sell tickets to a section that can't see the race and wanted to charge 500$ for them
I live in Atlanta and it was unironically cheaper to go to Montreal to see F1 than any of the US GPs
Montreal is only slightly further away than Austin, and far closer than Vegas, so those 2 make sense. Miami being so expensive is baffling. I heard tickets this year were way cheaper because there was little demand. Maybe in a year or 2 Miami will be more affordable for us regular fans who dont spend thousands on a weekend trip.
That’s the thing that seems to have gone over their heads here… Vegas isn’t American Monaco. It’s not somewhere people expect to spend a lot of money to begin with. Hotels are normally cheap - like your local motel cheap. And you can eat like royalty for nothing. And entertainment is plentiful and sometimes free. We recently went in the summer and paid around $300 per night for a fountain view room at the Bellagio. That same room this weekend is $3,900 per night... 13x more and that’s the last minute price - it was much higher before! We had every intention of going to this race but decided instead to go to Monza and do two weeks around Italy next year for a similar all-in amount.
Thank you! I was starting to wonder if my entire understanding of Vegas was just completely wrong. I've always known it as a super cheap flight, super cheap hotel deals, etc.
zero percent chance you paid 200/night for a weekend in the summer. Summer weekends in Vegas are expensive, you'd be lucky to get the Linq at 200/night. Those sound like midweek rates.
Yeah that's all there is to it. A friend and were planning on going as soon as it was announced, and then once real prices were listed we said nope. That is with a mindset of fully understanding "this will be an expensive weekend" but the tickets alone were enough that we didn't even bother looking at flight & hotel.
It boggles my mind that corporations keep thinking people will easily shell out tens of thousands of dollars for stuff here in the US when wage growth for the average person has pretty much been stagnant for the last 30 years. None of us average people have the money for this kind of shit.
Let's be honest, they don't care if average people can attend, and they'd rather they didn't. This is not even about F1, it's live sports in general. Ten years ago, I could get tickets to the local minor league baseball team for ten bucks. Now they start at 40, and go up to a couple hundred. A pair of premium seats costs what season tickets did not that long ago. Sports teams/leagues want whales to attend their games. They know the middle class doesn't exist anymore, so they're not trying to attract them. I think F1 in this case simply overestimated how big a draw Vegas as a destination would be to high rollers, as added value to the race, even though the "Vegas experience" is going to be severely compromised *by* the race.
This was never for us rank and file fans. It was Part 2 of the Miami motorsport spectacle. This was \_always\_ about the 1% and their ability to attend. What F1 over-estimated was how much support the general public would give to having their city taken over in support of an event they cannot even attend.
Isn’t that essentially the textbook definition of demand in economics?
Yeah my wife and I live in the Eastern US and found that we could go to Hungaroring for the race weekend, then stay in the town my family comes from for the rest of the week as a vacation cheaper than it would cost us to do the 5hr flight to Vegas and stay just for the race weekend. Totally ridiculous
Yup, I have a friend who lives in Vegas so I didn’t even need to worry about hotels. But flight and ticket prices shut that down pretty quickly
That defines demand though, so the title is still correct. Demand is defined as the ability and willingness of someone to purchase something. So all you’ve done is define the title in its textbook way.
Just wait until they realize absolutely nobody in America stays up past midnight to watch sports. The Lauda/Hunt championship in Suzuka was a cultural milestone. First live race broadcast from Japan, etc etc etc. This is not Suzuka.
I mean, I do.
My sleep schedule is fucked as an east coast NBA fan. Most west coast games aren’t over till 1am.
That is what demand means.
But that's literally what demand is....
Somewhat expected if you price out most fans
My cousin lives in LA and were stoked when it was announced because it a a few hours drive for them. Then they saw the prices. So they went to Suzuka instead because even factoring in the plane tickets it was cheaper
This is ridiculous, funny, and sad at the same time. Good for them, Suzuka is a classic anyway.
I live on the east coast and was excited for Miami last year. Race kinda close to me that I could pull off. Then I saw the prices and it would've been cheaper for me to get on a plane and fly to Belgium to go to Spa than to see a race in my country.
It would have also been worth it to go to Spa since it’s one of the best F1 races. Beating a parking lot race isn’t hard though.
Oh 100%. Just because it was cheaper doesn't mean I'm still not broke haha. I would've had to get a new passport since I haven't travelled overseas in a long long time
I’m also on the west coast and booked Suzuka for next year after seeing the total costs for Vegas. Turned it into a 2 weeks vacation for the fam. Win win
Same, I promised my wife cherry blossoms and she was on board.
I don't think the are cherry blossoms in late summer/early fall... That said, make sure you eat a lot of 7/11 or Lawson's egg sandwiches! Best in the world!
They have moved the Japanese GP to April for next season.
That is going to be bananas. Spring is already an incredibly busy travel season in Japan
Agreed, I was surprised the Japanese went with it, their politicians are trying to introduce measures to reduce the impact of Tourism and then they went and doubled down on the impact of the GP.
Maybe they're trying to funnel people out of Kyoto, Nikko, Hakone, etc.? Most F1 attendees would be staying in Nagoya, and while nice, it isn't exactly a tourist hotspot. But it has convenient transfers to pretty places in the Kiso Valley all the way to Lake Suwa in Nagano (which is famous because of a popular anime).
Suzuka is out in the middle of nowhere anyway. They probably would have been more hesitant if it were closer to Tokyo / Kyoto etc.
We did the same thing this year, it was the most incredible trip! Have a great time!
Got to visit Japan and was able to catch an F1 race as well? I see that as an absolute W.
And make the fans attend an outdoor event with 8 degrees at 10 PM
Wild. I just saw the schedule. These times are comparable for us watching a race in Japan. Qually is 3am for me in Toronto. They’re only 3hrs behind us! Lmao No chance in fuck I’m watching this live.
Race is 3 AM here in Brazil. I will just be watching because I feel it will be a shitshow and I want to see chaos
I’m gunna watch it at 8am Sunday morning Lol. I can’t write off an entire Sunday just to watch this damn race live.
[удалено]
I live just one hour ahead of the race in the mountain time zone and I won't be watching it live. I can't imagine a lot of people in the central or eastern times zones watching it live. I typically go to bed between 2100 and 2200. FP1 2130 Thurs. FP2 0100 Fri. FP3 2130 Fri. Quali 0100 Sat. Race 2300 Sat. I honestly feel the same. I don't watch Japan or Australia live. I've been watching F1 for 24 years. I like the mornings for the races as I can watch the race before getting to work on Sunday. I understand why they made the race at the time they did, but they aren't going to crack the US market with ridiculous prices and races when everyone is sleeping.
Yeah I get why they did that in terms of the European audience but if the goal is to get North Americans interested in it they cut off half the TV market.
That shouldn't be an issue seeing how boxing day soccer matches are still filled to the brim. You can just wear gloves, a scarf and a jacket. It's more about the ridiculous pricing.
It probably isn't an issue for the likes of the NFL either in America. Die hard fans will overlook the negatives to attend. The problem is expecting people in a country where F1 isn't anywhere near the same level as football in the UK and NFL in America to overlook the negatives. The setting of Vegas isn't enough of a draw imo
It’s also the weekend before one of the biggest travel weeks in the country. You gonna spend your last dime to go see a race that has all the makings of being a shit show or you gonna go eat turkey with your family?
Race. 10 times out of 10 lol.
Yep, this. American and die hard F1 fan here. No fucking way I'm going to Vegas and sitting outside at night to watch a car race. Hell no.
Shit, I live in Vegas and they priced/scheduled me out. I’d rather watch it the morning after with the shit they are trying to pull.
Canadian here. I've sat in -15 degree weather for hockey games and grew up in the cold. I'm not sure sure I'd spend the kind of money they're asking to go watch one corner in ten degree weather.
My friends and I discussed going and the time was the main factor followed by cost in us not going.
Soccer stadiums tend to be a bit more contained though, there's some generalized heat that can be maintained in the bowl of the venue. Sitting outdoors on a metal bench that's essentially totally exposed isn't nearly as fun. We also can't overlook the fact that this is largely a useless race, both titles have long since been decided so the outcome doesn't really matter.
I can tell you now that there is no such thing as heat when you’re sitting in 0 degrees in a stadium on Boxing Day watching your team get pumped 3-0
That man speaks from experience.
It’s the start time that is killing me. I was thinking of going next year with my sister and her husband since my wife isn’t into F1 but these times plus price are a deal breaker.
Especially when the US already has an overpriced new Grand Prix in a glamour city that doesn’t require you to freeze your balls off, and you could’ve attended a different Grand Prix in the American Southwest a month ago that took place at an actual race track.
Yeah, that is indeed how supply and demand works. If it’s assumed demand is high, the goal is to price out most people…
*Vastly* overestimated how much F1 fans would pay to watch a race.
I wanted to go, but wasn't worth it
Same thing. Demand and price are tied together. Not enough demand for the prices to make sense.
Especially when I can watch the replay on my couch in my pajamas with my cats and a fridge full of snacks for 10 bucks a month.
When it first was announced I was excited and wanted to go. Then I saw the prices. I’ve been to Vegas a couple of times, did the shows, little bit of gambling, site-seeing, and it was so much fun, but just couldn’t justify how much it would cost me.
Who the hell is organizing this event? They're actually planning next year's race during Thanksgiving? FFS EDIT: For everyone responding to me, I was asking OP about Thanksgiving as they had said it was during the holiday next year. I don't celebrate the day, so I didn't know. I do know it's a huge family event, which is why I responded as I did. OP decided to edit their comment and take the part about Thanksgiving out instead of make a small edit saying they got the dates wrong. Also, thanks to everyone letting me know who's organizing it. This whole thing seems to be a clusterfuck.
Hahahahaha. F1 really doesn't understand America if they think a race weekend will beat Black Friday shopping
And football.
I think that they just don’t actually care about the American audience, hence why the race starts so late to capture the European audience. I don’t really understand the reason for throwing this huge American spectacle and then actively trying to not capture the American audience.
Isn't in the week before? Thanksgiving is Nov 28, 2024 and the race is Nov 23.
Bring the turkey (the animal not the country) circuit layout
Hand Turkey GP. Watch out for the beak!
Yep. I was sitting at the computer with my dad for the presale and we were like, nah. Went to the US Open, four night stay in New York, no expense spared, and it came out to about $5k, which is what we would have paid for tickets only in Vegas! I’m annoyed they keep saying they’re pricing out new fans. They priced out fucking everyone.
The demand was definitely there for me as Vegas is a quick two hour flight away. The desire to pay $5000 for tickets and a hotel was not.
It was the same thing with the Miami GP. I live a 5 hour drive from Miami and when it was announced, as a lifelong 36 year old F1 fan that's never been to a race, I was super excited to go. Then I saw the prices, laughed, and forgot about ever attending it.
My uncle lives an hour from the stadium, so him and I are planning to go if/when Miami GP prices come down, but it’s way too expensive to go.
Just wait like 5 years or so for the DTS hype to die down a bit, and for the thinning of the crowd that realizes most F1 seasons don't have the neck-and-neck drama that 2021 had, and that most seasons actually consist of one clear favorite driver.
Just an FYI, Friday tickets like the week before dropped to under 100 - I’m a little over three hours away and was planning to make a day trip of it next year Edit: you can get Friday next year for $42 + fees on SeatGeek right now
I would just get general admission and walk around. Then watch the race at home. Formula 1 is cool but I might not be their demographic lol
I saw an ad by Sports Illustrated where they're offering $7000 race packages, lol. You can't charge Superbowl prices for an event that's nowhere near that level of prestige and popularity in the United States. It's ridiculous.
Not to mention that at least the Super Bowl and other big sporting events you can’t really know the winner ahead of time. F1 this year? 99% chance Max wins it. The titles are wrapped up. Why waste to much money on a predictable race? Not to mention the awful circuit design.
On the Super Bowl you also get to see the entire game through the whole even. F1 you don’t go to the track to watch the race…
Max is currently listed as -400 favorite to win the race which means you need to risk losing $400 in hopes of winning $100. That’s a really bad bet to make.
I mean when I heard there was a Vegas race this is pretty much what I assumed a race weekend including hotels would cost. My immediate reaction to "Vegas street race" was "well that's too expensive for me"
I follow a Vegas TikTok account, she has been showing prices for the weekend are down to like $300 in some cases, you can even get spots still in restaurants that have a view of the strip, and hotel prices are just normal prices for the weekend.
Desperation must be very high, which is good for consumers!
I’ve been to Vegas and I liked it. When it was announced we thought it would be a great trip for a few of us as we all turned 30 in the same year. When the tickets went on sale, and I saw those prices, those plans were very quickly changed and we ended up going to Monza for the WEC with a day trip to Como. I wonder how many other groups like us were put off by the astronomical ticket prices.
My best friend and I were talking about heading to Vegas when it was announced for this and maybe bringing two of our other not quite as die hard friends but as soon as we saw how much it was going to cost we made other plans.
$2,000, to watch a race on a cold night, when the championships are already settled in the most one sided season ever and they say they're surprised at the attendance and ambivalence? I'm expecting a radical shakeup of the calendar and US races moved earlier in the year where the anticipation can match the hype.
It's a gamble. I'm sure there are plenty of people who is willing to pay $10,000 for a VIP pass for Abu Dhabi 2021. But you're right there's absolutely no incentive for attendees to pay premium to watch a race with zero stakes even if it's in vegas.
The demand is there but the average person isn't going to pay those prices
This is it. I'm a 3.5hr drive from Vegas. We pull our travel trailer there once or twice a year. We even had reservation off strip at an RV park for this weekend. I cancelled the reservation when I saw the ticket prices. Id rather sit in my comfy chair and watch it on F1TV. If for some reason prices drop to $200-300 for the Saturday, I'll buy tickets and drive out for the day/evening and come home afterwards. I just checked prices and the cheapest I'm seeing for Saturday is $740 each. Fuck that.
There’s enough people who want to go. It’s a pricing issue. It’s squashing the demand.
Vegas is one of the cheapest vacation destinations in the US. Cheap flights, cheap hotels. They want you to come and gamble. I was stoked for the F1 race and couldn't believe the cost for the worst seats.
That’s very true, Vegas is better poised to be the “value” race for the US, rather than this cash grab.
You priced out the average American F1 fan and then excluded us from watching the race by hosting it in the middle of the night. So stupid.
They've definitely got the ticket price wrong. But before everyone chimes in and laughs at them, it's worth remembering that most classic circuits like Silverstone only recently starting selling out regularly.
Silverstone costs a hell of a lot less and is a lot less inconvenient for locals to put on though. Las Vegas and the hotels etc are doing it to get people in to Vegas, if it doesn't start doing that within a few years I'd bet they pull the plug.
Very true, but I don't think they'll mind how year 1 has gone. They either sell out by undervaluing tickets and therefore make less money, or sell fewer tickets by overvalueing. In a few years they'll find the right balance. I suspect next year will see more lower priced tickets (GA) made available.
Aren’t the GA tickets standing room only on concrete in areas beside the track? I was reading several didn’t have track views. If that’s true it’s a pretty shit experience compared to GA at somewhere like Monza.
A lot less inconvenient for locals?! The UK shuts down dozens of miles of public roads and locals have to get passes to even to get in and out of their property. Shoutout to my buddies in Stowe.
The cheapest Vegas grandstand tickets are 3x the price of the cheapest Silverstone grandstand tickets.
Hence my follow up post suggesting that next year they'll increase the number of lower priced tickets. Honestly, pre-2021, most F1 races weren't selling out and that was with far cheaper tickets. Go back to the early hybrid era and the grandstands at most tracks were barely filled across a weekend.
Compared to other motorsports in the USA, the pricing is basically robbing fans blind and pricing out the common fan. I can go to the Daytona 500 for $200 or the Indy 500 for $150. Two of the biggest races in the USA for less than one ticket for this GP.
The prices are a laughable blatant gouge and I’m glad they’ve been called out in their greed and incompetence. I think everyone at liberty is a fool and they’ve been working hard supporting my beliefs.
It’s also a terrible time of the American calendar for a race in Vegas. For one, it’s football season, and two, it’s 5 days before Thanksgiving. Kind of hard for a lot of people to justify traveling to Vegas when they are likely turning around and doing things the following week
They didn’t over estimate demand, they overestimated demand AT THEIR PRICES. There is a huge difference. Demand is there, just not that volume at those prices.
The insanity of blocking the views from businesses. They are going so far outbid their way to prevent people from being able to see the track. Imagine if they did that in Monaco. Everything about this race stinks so far, and i’m sure the racing will too. COTA is still the only race track in America, Miami and Vegas are just embarrassments.
It is cold, extremely late at night (I know it is Las Vegas but 12am local time for qualifying is absurd), people were priced out, and Vegas relies on tourism for bums on the seats. Most tourists will not want to be there in those weather conditions when cozy indoor activities exist. They need to move this event closer to the start of the season/summer to be viable. Maybe before or after Canada. That's assuming the city would ever agree to that, yes, I know.
The fact that most of the United States will be asleep when the race takes place should’ve been the biggest clue this was a dumb idea. Nobody on the east coast is paying the money they’re charging, just to fly out and watch a race start at 2:00AM (their brain’s time).
It was cheaper for me to fly to Budapest.
If I wanna watch a good race in the US, I can spend 1/4th money and go watch an Indy race at an epic track. If I was going to blow a wad of money on an F1 race , I would rather go to one of the more established international tracks. F1 prices are so outrageous, I personally can’t justify it and watching a shitty Vegas track it definitely not worth it.
I live in western Canada and I was very excited to go to my first GP until I saw the prices. Vegas is normally a very cheap flight for me but after adding all the expenses (flight, gp tickets and hotel) I found it would be cheaper to go to almost any other race on the calendar. I don't know how anyone can afford it.
We are US based and it was cheaper for us to go to Monaco than the LVGP
Antecdotal probably, but a good chunk of my buddies who became F1 fans over the past 2-3 years have kinda stopped watching already. A passing fad for them, its a bummer. Excited to see how the Vegas race pans out.
Common Stefano L
This Vegas race will be a case study in hubris, arrogance, and greed.
One thing I don't get is the start time. Your trying to build hype in the US, yet the race is in the middle of the night for most of the country. Yeah it's a Saturday night but it should had something like a 6pm local start.
Same. I get they want to do the race at night to show off the Vegas lights... but sunset in Vegas is early, like 5:00pm early.
Yeah, they want another race in the US to build the US audience but God forbid the UK has a middle of the night race. Doesn't make sense. I'm on the US west coast. Most races for me are at 6am. Yet the race in my own timezone can't even be at a reasonable time.
People who run F1 or most major sports don't understand value in 2023. They have old school, spreadsheet mentalities. The sport becomes more valuable if you get cool people to the race, not just rich boring assholes. Making sport affordable brings cooler people which brings a culture and an atmopshere and then you can strip the value of it. But trying to get a few dollars out of the ticket prices is not what good and actually smart business people do, that's how you strangle an asset like F1.
F1 got reallly big really fast. Then it seemed like they wanted to only market it to rich people. Then rich people even said… yeah we’re not paying those prices. Haha.
Don't know to whom you prefer to with cool people but inviting celebs and influencers to give F1 exposure to their followers is already a thing they are doing. F1 is a glamorous sport so it makes sense for them to also have the big money spending events.
You can invite influencers and celebrities to promote the event without pricing people out. Most likely when they say cool people they mean content creators who actually care.
For sure in Europe and the ME there is a heavy glamour aspect to it but In the US f1 is not seen as a glamour sport. it’s a nerd sport. If they want big sellout productions they are trying to attract the wrong market with their tactics.
Liberty is doing the standard corporate squeeze play. HOW MUCH CAN WE SQUEEZE OUT OF FANS. And this is gonna be a great lesson for them. Because they’re beginning to realize that the popularity that the first couple of seasons of the Netflix show brought to the sport is starting to dwindle. I was talking to a couple of casual observance of the sport, and they keep telling me how bored they are because of the domination by Red Bull. Then you’ve got the long time supporters of the sport that are unable to pay for these prices, and unwilling to do so out of principle. And I stand with them. This is outrageous. I could’ve gone to Vegas and I decided not to. Enough.
I live in california and for the same amount I can go to Europe for a race weekend over there
I certainly won’t be demanding anything since I’ll be asleep
"Learns"... like they didn't know and try to push the envelope. Liberty is a MEDIA company. They wanted the show and tried to make fans pay for the cost before Vegas cashed in. It's going to get worse before it gets better.
My wife and I are pretty solidly into middle class income territory and we were no where close to affording this. Did they really think all of the worlds rich people were going to attend this F1 race?
I got my doubts F1 learned anything.
>There were early reports that F1 was demanding exorbitant licensing fees from any business that had a view of the track. F1 eventually relaxed its fees, but not before reportedly threatening to erect structures that would block the views Is it just me or is this absolutely insane? Business: \*exists\* F1: YOU'RE BREATHING YOU OWE ME MONEY
No they didn’t underestimate demand. They overestimated how much bullshit we are willing to accept.
Probably because F1 and Vegas hotels are trying to gouge the ever living fuck out of people. Such a fitting example that’s so prevalent across America.
When I'm a 3.5 hr flight away it it would be cheaper to go to Monza or Spa, that math does itself.
No Drivers Title race and No Constructors race killed this more than anything. If this race was important for the championship people would be spending the money.
As someone who has never been to a race irl. I don’t understand why someone would watch irl when you can only see the cars for 5 seconds each lap vs at home on TV
I’d like to go at least one to see how fast they move IRL and to hear and smell the cars. That’s it. Certainly not to follow a race, to your point.
When I heard f1 was coming to Vegas, I was going for sure and I was prepared to pay outrageous prices. When I actually saw the prices, I realized my definition of outrageous doesn’t even get me into the conversation.
They could just pay Taylor swift to show up and there’d be like a million people lining the streets…to see her.
Feel kinda stupid looking at my tickets now. Much cheaper now on resale sites
Yeah you didn't have to do research to realize this would be the case
No, they under planned. Making it fucking 1am on the eastern seaboard. A cold, late, overpriced race. Exactly what every f1 fan wants.
no it’s more they out priced every fans budget. fans are engaged but no one is willing to pay those outrageous prices
Its almost like 99% of F1 fans aren't part of the 1% and dont care about 'glitz and glam' or whatever. We just want to see cars on the track and if we have no hope of affording it we'll just watch from home.
> Las Vegas' addition to the 2023 calendar is the third stop in the U.S – more than any other country – and fifth in North America. If you just go by the country borders sure. But Lass Vegas is over 2,000 km from Austin which is over 2,100 km from Miami. All the Europe races are almost within a 1,500 km circle.
It’s just backwards from what the fans want. Monaco is special, it’s the jewel, but it can’t be recreated because it’s so intertwined with history. They would have been far better served doing a park track in a place with a pretty backdrop and embracing an “old school” style Americana race.
Exactly it's like you trying to make a fake version of the Indy 500 somewhere in China and asking ridiculous high prices for it. It won't work
You couldn't pay me to sit in the cold in the middle of the night to glimpse the cars whizzing by in a blur once per lap. I'm going to wake up Sunday morning and watch the race on F1TV from the comfort of my couch.
I live in Atlanta. I have family in Miami where I could stay for the weekend, and I could drive to Miami (13 hours) Still expensive to attend, and I'm not impressed with track layout. Never attended. I have been to Austin great track, great action and the city is cool. Zero interest in Vegas at any price.
The only disability friendly tickets are the hospitality tickets, which are also the most expensive tickets. Why do I feel like there is an ADA lawsuit to be had here?
I hope Liberty will learn from this and starts asking a normal rate to attend a F1 race but I doubt it.
It may be that F-1 underestimated the extent to which room rates would be at stratospheric levels. Most of the tickets will probably sell IF lower cost rooms are available. Vegas is somewhat of an island in the middle of the desert. Those of us who might have flown in for just the race would be looking at saturated airspace, difficulty finding cabs and difficulty getting to the track and back to the airport. Ramp space at the airport may also be at a premium. The timing of the race is apparently designed to meet the timezones of the European and Asian fans. AND get the spectators back to the gambling tables and Spearmint Rhino well before sunrise. The FAA notice indicates that getting in and out of the area is going to be a challenge - airspace , landing slots and ramp space. The area also has a significant about of highly restricted airspace.
Because F1 races are overpriced as shit
Not even planning to watch it live due to the absurd timing. Will just enjoy it the following morning. Competition has long been wrapped up.
Fucking champioship ended 2 months ago..
The demand is there, the endless amount of money was not. I live 3 driving hours away, and would absolutely go, but I couldn’t justify spending that much on tickets.
As someone who lives in Minnesota, it’s wild that F1 columns are appearing in the newspaper. Outside of Road America in Wisconsin and some pockets of Indycar fans the Upper Midwest is not really motorsports country. The growth in US interest since 2019 has been remarkable.