Business Owner: F1 Stopping People Coming to Las Vegas

^{Jorge Garcia owns and operates a limousine service in Las Vegas, and he says F1 has virtually killed November for him and other small businesses that usually service the Strip. (Image: JMC Transportation)}

If you were to search for information on the economic impact the Formula One Grand Prix had in Las Vegas, you’d be hit with a wave of incredibly positive statistics. 

Indeed, the official line is that the 2023 Las Vegas Grand Prix had a combined positive economic impact of nearly $1.5 billion, generated $77 million in tax revenue and boosted local funding for Nevada schools by $22 million. 

F1 Las Vegas 2024 - The Essential Guide

Those numbers also don’t include boasts such as road improvements and food donations to local charities. It’s all incredibly positive stuff. Good for everyone, great for the city, right? 

“I have nothing positive to say about F1 Las Vegas,” Jorge Garcia, founder and owner of Jorge Limousine Service, also known as JMC Transportation, tells Casinos.com. 

JMC has been operating in Las Vegas since the summer of 2017 and has built up a fine reputation, especially with tourists looking for that special Las Vegas treat. It’s a humble boots-on-the-ground family-owned Las Vegas success story. At least, it normally is. 

“Business is very good generally,” Garcia says, “but this month (November 2024, the month of F1 Las Vegas), I am just hoping to break even. That is looking like the best I can hope for.”

The reality is that, for Garcia, and countless other small and even some medium businesses in Las Vegas, F1 is not just a normal event, the kind of which Las Vegas is no stranger to hosting. Last year it was the Super Bowl and NFL Draft, next year it’s Wrestlemania, to name just a few. Such events are the lifeblood of the Las Vegas tourist industry. 

What makes the F1 Las Vegas so different according to Garcia's experince, though, is that rather than pulling tourists in, it is putting them off. And not just for the actual race weekend either, but for weeks before it due to the slow conversion of the Las Vegas Strip into a racetrack. 

'Who comes to Las Vegas to see the freeway?'

“Most days I wake up to 12 or so fresh inquiries for business,” Garcia explains. “Right now it’s two. People aren’t coming to town and we are prevented from offering those that do our most popular packages.

“When our clients are visiting Las Vegas, they come to us because they want the experience. They want to be driven down the Las Vegas Strip, immersing themselves in the sights. 

“During the F1 and its construction, I can’t take people down the Strip like before. I can’t drop them around the Bellagio Fountains for their photos. I can’t even show them the fountains because a temporary structure is in the way. Similarly, I am not allowed to drop people off at the Sphere. 

“Even with our airport pick-ups, we always drive people down the Las Vegas Strip instead of just taking them straight to the hotel. It’s impossible to do that during the F1 with half the Strip closed off. It’s the experience that matters. Who comes to Las Vegas to see the freeway?!”

For all the benefits that F1 does bring to Las Vegas, the question of how it impacts your average gambling Las Vegas visitor or normal tourist is one that, for the most part, is still largely unanswered. 

“Every day I pray that I will wake up in the morning and F1 will be gone from Las Vegas. Every day.”

Many of the most obsessive Las Vegas visitors I know who come multiple times a year deliberately avoid it around F1 time. It’s simply because they are unsure how it will impact their experience. 

With many pedestrian bridges that offer some of the best views of the Las Vegas Strip being turned into temporary enclosed tunnels even a week before the race, it’s easy to see why such scepticism exists. 

Similarly, I know people who came to Las Vegas in early October 2023 for the first time. They were excited to see all the iconic sights yet found they couldn’t even stand on the same side of the road as the Bellagio fountains due to construction of a grandstand and hospitality suites. They have not expressed a desire to return. 

When added to high profile cases of local businesses, most prominently Ellis Island Hotel and Casino, suing F1 for damages caused by restricting access to their property, a backdrop starts to emerge in which revenue generated by F1 is all funneled to a few big beneficiaries while everyone else suffers - including JMC Limousine Service. 

“It’s only really Bellagio, Wynn, Cosmopolitan, Venetian, and Caesars Palace that benefit from the F1,” Garcia alleges. 

He does that with sound reasoning as well. They are the biggest players on the Strip, are located directly on the racetrack, and can offer premium experiences to an existing client list of VIP players and high-rolling whales. 

When they arrive in town, they bring very deep pockets with them but empty them primarily at their hosted resorts. Meanwhile, businesses like JMC Limousine Service are starved of business due to their usual clientele feeling like they need to give Las Vegas a wide berth while F1 is in town. 

The 2024 race will be the second of the three initially agreed by Las Vegas officials with F1. That could easily turn into a ten-year deal though, but Garcia is one of many business owners hoping it will go the other way. 

“Every day I pray that I will wake up in the morning and F1 will be gone from Las Vegas. Every day.”

Spectacle over substance?

What is clear from speaking to Garcia and other affected businesses is that F1 coming to Las Vegas is not the problem. The fact it is a street track right in the heart of the Strip is what is causing the issues. 

“Big events are never the problem,” Garcia explains. “In fact, events in Las Vegas should be a great thing for everyone. F1 lasts for days, though, and the construction work around it disrupts the Strip for weeks or months. 

“We have NASCAR at the Las Vegas Speedway. We have places like SpeedVegas, where you can hire a supercar and drive around a track. In Vegas we have so much land that we could build a brand new track somewhere just for F1, but then it can be used all year round for other stuff too. 

“Why are we not doing that?”

The answer, of course, is spectacle. F1 want the spectacle of the Las Vegas Strip as the backdrop for its product, and Las Vegas wants to showcase itself to F1’s global audience. 

It’s seen by both as a mutually beneficial commercial partnership, but whether it remains that way in the fullness of time remains to be seen. 

“I don’t think it’s all that popular,” Garcia told us. “I’m seeing tickets for practice now being sold for $100. They were $400 a couple of weeks ago. It’s the same for the qualifying and race – big price drops.” 

While there is still much that remains unknown about F1 Las Vegas, its true contribution to the city, and its future, one thing is very much certain: If it’s not making the money it wants to, it’s not going to survive for long in Las Vegas. Nothing ever does.