What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, but in 2025 there’s been less and less happening in Sin City.

Las Vegas is in decline. Visitor numbers to the mecca of vice have been down every month this year. The hotel occupancy rate is dwindling. Air traffic is soft.

This is not just a Vegas problem.

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Forecasts are that the United States will visitor economy will haemorrhage US$12.5 billion (A$19.3 billion) this year, allied to an 8.2 per cent decline in international tourists.

Inflation and the high cost of living combined with uncertainty over the federal government’s immigration protocols are all contributing factors working together to kneecap the world’s biggest tourist nation.

Las Vegas, as a city built on tourism, is certainly feeling the pinch.

The Las Vegas Grand Prix late last year was an early indicator. Despite the all-singing, all-dancing spectacular of 2023 designed to sear the new race into the consciousness of the race-going public, ticket sales in 2024 were down — and that was after sales for the inaugural event had already underwhelmed.

In 2023 the combination of stratospheric ticket prices and astronomical hotel rates deterred would-be spectators. Grandstands were consolidated, prices were slashed, in some cases by 50 per cent or more, and hotel rates collapsed.

The race was logistically challenging too, with a late-night schedule designed to benefit Europe as well as to allow the city streets to remain open for as long as possible during regular waking hours.

And that’s before mentioning the drain catastrophe that called off first practice after obliterating Carlos Sainz’s Ferrari, prompting the sport to hold a 90-minute practice session during that ended at 4am.

Fortunately the race was one of the best of the year, turning manufactured hype into genuine anticipation for last year’s event and getting the race through the always-tricky follow-up event.

But now comes the real challenge.

Peak novelty has expired. While Vegas will always be a tentpole race for Formula 1 given its location and the sport’s investment in the event, organisers must now navigate the transition from peculiarity to permanence in a softening market.

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RACING IN A COST-OF-LIVING CRISIS

When the first Las Vegas tickets went on sale, general admission was restricted to the back end of the circuit at a section of the track where visibility was uncertain at the time of purchase given the entire venue was still being built. The cheapest ticket was $771.

The cheapest grandstand seat was a whopping $3112, while a seat on the front straight would set you back almost $4000.

Prices were so high that even some drivers — hardly strapped for cash — found themselves empathising with F1 fans.

“I did hear some entry-level prices,” Daniel Ricciardo said at the first event. “I’m well aware that not everyone can afford those.

“Of course if there’s then some crazy packages and people want to spend that money, all good, so be it.

“But I guess I don’t like to hear that, ‘We would have loved to have come but we simply couldn’t afford it’.

“It would be nice that the sport remains accessible for everyone.”

F1 CEO Stefano Domeniacli said at the time that the market was dictating the prices.

“Formula 1 has a certain positioning with regard to the kind of sport it is,” he told AP. “In terms of price positioning, we are going to be on the top side because this is Las Vegas and that is the nature of the customer coming to Las Vegas.”

Certainly high rollers make up some percentage of the audience, but it turned out it was only a fraction.

Prices dropped last year, and in 2025 the cost of entry has been reduced again.

In particular the sport has focused on expanding general admission access, with the cheapest one-day ticket set at $50.

Emily Prazer, who is both president of the Las Vegas Grand Prix and F1’s chief commercial officer, said the repositioning of the race was part of the learning curve for the event.

“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,” she said, per Racer. “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 [hotels] 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.

“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.”

What was at first envisaged to be a highly international race — a hub for Formula 1 fans around the world — has also become a much more distinctly American affair.

“We now have 80 per cent of a domestic audience coming,” she said. “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.

“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.

“The part that’s challenging for us is just letting people know that there is entry level pricing.”

At the time of writing, less than 24 hours before first practice, there are still tickets available for all three days of on-track action, but last week organisers told the Athletic that they were confident race day was “still pacing well for a sellout”.

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HALO EVENT

Part of the hype of the Las Vegas Grand Prix in its first year was the scale of the planned spectacle.

Formula 1 shelled out for a half-hour ‘opening ceremony’ on Wednesday night that featured a long list of musical artists and concluded with all 20 racing drivers appearing together on stage.

The number of off-track events scheduled in the lead-up to the race weekend and even around the competitive sessions themselves was so significant that teams and drivers felt it was distracting from the business of racing.

Last year’s event was notably more muted, but with organisers feeling more confident that they’ve identified where the race sits in the F1 ecosystem, this year’s grand prix promises to swing back towards the glitz and glamour of 2023.

“A lot can happen in Vegas that you wouldn’t want to see at other traditional racetracks,” Prazer said.

“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.

“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.”

Las Vegas is a unique event in the sense that it is wholly owned and operated by Formula 1. Whereas almost every other grand prix is organisers by a local body, in Vegas F1 is taking all the risks.

It also means F1 is getting hands-on experience in the nitty-gritty of hosting a major event.

Some promoters in 2023 took some quiet satisfaction from F1’s baptism of fire, from the drain catastrophe to some reports of substandard hospitality set-ups and even a lawsuit over ticket refunds.

But F1 has emerged from the first two seasons with a significantly enhanced capability that’s not only rubbing off on the way it does business throughout the year but also being fed back into a better Las Vegas event.

“I know everyone has varying views of things like what we did at the O2 [the F1 season launch stage show], but we would never have done the O2 if we hadn’t have done Vegas, because we didn’t realise really the production capability we had in-house,” Prazer continued.

“We’re giving ourselves this opportunity to commercialise 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!’

“It’s almost referred to affectionately as the test bed, which I think is helping us definitely grow the fan base.

“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.”

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THE PAYOFF

But while Las Vegas remains in some ways experimental, in other ways the establishment process means it’s settled into a groove as just another race.

One notable change is the shift away from the insane time schedule of the first year, when qualifying was held at midnight Friday night and the race was held at 10pm on Saturday — never mind the borderline unhinged 2am practice session, held behind closed doors, after Thursday’s drain catastrophe.

This year the schedule is reflective of just about every other night race, with second practice, qualifying and the race all taking place at 8pm (3pm AEDT). It also means the first and third practice sessions will occur at sunset, which will give television viewers a new perspective on the city and the circuit.

It means sacrificing European viewership — the race will start at 4am Sunday in London — but also brings the previously written-off US east coast back into play, again playing to the domestic market.

The original super-late-night schedule was sold as leaning into Las Vegas’s 24-hour reputation but was also partly motivated by a desire to keep the public roads open for as long as possible during the evening.

But efficiencies gained after two events means F1 is confident it can keep roads open for longer before each session and even between sessions without affecting the running of the event. Everything is clicking together in a way it wasn’t in the first two years.

That’s critical given there’s no one straight answer on how long Las Vegas will remain on the calendar.

It has approval from the local government to host the race until 2032, but F1 has only formally extended the race to the end of 2027.

Steve Hill, CEO and president of the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority, said that was reflective only of the incremental way the event was building itself up rather than signifying any softness in the commitment.

“We’re planning on this being a permanent race; we’ll just keep planning extensions that will probably expand as we go forward.”

Las Vegas is already reaping big benefits.

November has historically been the weakest month for tourism in the city, and the penultimate weekend of November — the week before Thanksgiving — was the quietest point.

The grand prix has flipped that, with November 2024 the most lucrative in the city’s history, generating US$924 million (A$1.43 billion) in revenue and $45 million (A$69.5 million) in tax.

Those are certainly solid foundations, and having spent more than half a billion American dollars (A$772 million) just getting the event off the ground, Formula 1 will see an opportunity to make good on its promise to turn this race into the most profitable on the calendar.

“It’s well-documented how much money we’ve spent on this project, so we have no desire not to be there for the foreseeable future,” Prazer said, per the Athletic.

“Hopefully everyone sees that it is growing into a really spectacular event on the calendar.”