F1 Demands Las Vegas Venues Pay for a View of the Race | Hacker News Reader

F1 Demands Las Vegas Venues Pay for a View of the Race

thedrive.com

32 pointshnburnsy30 comments

I love motorsport, but F1 represents nobody. I ho0e they fail, for the benefit of the entire industry. It's scammers and cheaters all the way from the funding to the paddock. I have spent thousands on races but f1 will never see a dime frm me.

That's all motorsports. Ever watch Spec Miata and wonder how that car out front is so much faster than everybody else? Every race series is full of cheaters.

> Ever watch Spec Miata and wonder how that car out front is so much faster than everybody else? Every race series is full of cheaters.

I’m in the racing industry, the rules are well defined and specs will get checked at the end (big races will even do a full engine tear down), the question is how far someone will go to optimize within said rules.

Racing Rotax karts, there were certified engine builders that would literally buy pallets of engines, and then mix and match and dyno until they found so called ‘super motors’ with slightly more horsepower.

Those never got sold, but instead rented for big races to people with money.

The drivers are a big factor too. There are some phenoms out there too… we had one on our team that couldn’t afford it in the long run. I’ve also coached drivers that had money but no skill.

Had one that had the money, but had a lot of bad breaks… he’s racing Lamborghini’s professionally now. He won’t make it to INDYCAR or F1, but one driver that he barely lost a championship to is racing F1 now.

Reminds me of Wrigley Field in Chicago--there are apartment buildings across the street from the park where you can get a view of games from their rooftops. They built seating on their roofs and sold tickets to spectators.

https://www.bleedcubbieblue.com/2014/1/25/5344456/the-roofto...

I debated going to this race, but $3500-$6500 for a hotel stay that is close to free normally really discouraged me.

Seems like my friends and I might rent out a casino event company, have a house party, and have the lights and espn on several tvs; without the travel.

I have been wondering... does ESPN do ads in the middle of the race?

F1TV really is the best view, IMO. It's like $80/yr, you can watch any in-car camera at any time, and get multiple feeds and a real-time data feed. There are some 3rd party F1TV clients that will open up an array of windows so you can see simultaneous streams. And the web site works great in a browser and works on Linux. I've had a couple F1 parties at my house and it's been great.

When watching live, No there are no full screen ads in the middle of the race; But if you don't watch this race at 2:30am (Eastern Time) then the rerun will have commercial breaks.

Maybe it helps stopping the more and more street races

I hope it does help stop these disruptive events. F1 (and other sports orgs) come in and tout that they drive business for local businesses and city councils just lap it up.

Street circuits are just boring racing, at least for Formula 1. The cars are so big these days and the circuits are too narrow to allow overtakes and competitive racing. The qualifying grid basically dictates the finishing positions.

In 2022, there were only 12 overtakes at the Monaco GP, only 2 of which were shown on the broadcast. And Monaco is supposed to be the "premier" F1 street circuit. https://www.reddit.com/r/formula1/comments/v0lmjy/all_2022_m...

I'm hoping they've designed the Las Vegas circuit to have better racing.

Have you seen the layout? It's pretty close to a square in terms of design. It has a U-shaped dip in the top of it but I don't see it being super entertaining.

It has 17 turns and long straights on wide boulevards. It might be okay.

F1 is a little different than traditional sports in this regard.

While traditional sports (especially team-ball sports) claim that they stimulate the local economy and drive tourism, it has been shown time and time again that this is at best an exaggeration, at worse a complete lie. Most attendees to ball games are locals; in general they don't book lodging locally and they won't patronize nearby restaurants or businesses. They show up for the game, watch the game, maybe buy something or eat at the facilities directly around the stadium, then go home.

F1 is different in every regard. Fans will travel for F1. International ticket sales often make up more than 35% of the tickets sold, even in venues like Saudi Arabia or Bahrain. Race events take place over a 3 or 4 day weekend, giving the spectators more time to patronize local businesses. Most will rent lodging.

I'm not saying that they're not disruptive (they are, especially when run somewhere like downtown Las Vegas) but the way they are disruptive, the costs, and the practical upsides of an F1 street race are different than, for instance, bringing the Raiders to town.

What is F1 going to do if they don't pay? Hold the entire race inside a tunnel?

The subtitle of the article says:

> The series has allegedly threatened to block sightlines to the track for businesses that don’t pay a hefty licensing fee".

It elaborates in the article:

> Fail to pay up, and the series will obstruct sightlines to the circuit, by way of barricades, stands, or other means.

It also says:

> Sources [...] indicated that lights could be shined towards businesses that don't pay up, in order to dazzle anyone trying to sneak a peek for free.

Aside from the shining lights toward the business, it is all perfectly legal. And it is perfectly legal for the businesses to not pay and see if it is worth it to the race organizers to actually build barricades or stands in places to block the businesses.

The light thing might not be legal, but might be the kind of thing where there isn't much penalty. Often the penalty for building something that disturbs another property is that you have to stop doing that and enforcement might be slow enough that by the time the race is ordered to take down the lights the race will be over.

> > Sources [...] indicated that lights could be shined towards businesses that don't pay up, in order to dazzle anyone trying to sneak a peek for free.

If this is legal, then wouldn’t it be legal for the businesses to also shine their own spotlights onto the track to dazzle the drivers that might be looking up at their business.

How about these venues threaten to shine a 3000 watt light on paying viewers instead?

I mean seriously, this is inane. The precedent must not be set.

Shining a light toward something like a restaurant is annoying but is probably not dangerous. Shining a light toward race cars probably is. That might greatly change the legality.

Would be super interesting to see an arms race on this. 5000W bulb from the track vs. a concave mirror bouncing it back in such a way that it would mess with the drivers? Whom would then start wearing polarized glasses as they filtered the light?

Honestly, it is starting to sound like a missing chapter from the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

The hotels should demand $5000 per head for those who look at their driver blinding lights. No free lights for you F1!

Well, you wouldn't be shining it towards race cars. You'd be shining it at the track/back towards the light that's shining on you.

And of course that $1500-per-head number isn't a retail price tag, it's a deliberately outlandish frame-setting starting point for the negotiation. I'd bet F1 would be happy to make deals for a third or even a tenth of that number if that's what they can get a business to pay.

Why does F1 even think it's in a position to negotiate anything here?

Don't they realize that the businesses they're attempting to strong arm paid for the infrastructure that the F1 is using through their taxes, that these businesses are the ones who created the market that F1 is taking advantage of?

Of course they realize but they don't care, because they're greedy. And they should be slapped down hard for attempting to be so greedy.

The whole thing is positively dystopian in vibe, but what struck me most was that businesses were being asked to pay on the basis of potential occupancy and not on the basis of how many patrons may actually be on premises during the race. That means that if they fail to achieve 100% occupancy they’ll be footing a hefty bill with no revenue. It’s a dangerous precedent and I hope they all go “LOL no” (though the Prisoner’s Dilemma teaches that everybody defects).

That's also just an outlandish point to anchor the negotiation window. I'll bet exactly zero businesses will actually pay for every potential occupant. (Or if they do it'll be because the per-head cost got negotiated way down.)

The articles says they'll put up barricades, stands and shine lights in that direction to block and "dazzle" anyone trying to watch "for free"

Capitalism has killed F1 races before they even started, in order to go to an F1 race in America you must pay an arm and a leg, while in Europe it’s a modest fee.

Absolutely correct, communism has made attending Formula 1 races affordable in Europe.

I have to imagine the way they'd enforce this is similar to how people can't use the name "Super Bowl" but instead have to say "watch the big game"

If the hotel wants to charge extra for that weekend and advertise views of the race without paying, they'd like have to just say "great views of that weekend's race" rather than the Formula 1 Race.

Update: Never mind, they're talking about erecting barriers and shining bright lights towards the venues. That's insanity. But hey, so much money involved, it will absolutely go against the public interest.

Or, from the second paragraph:

> Fail to pay up, and the series will obstruct sightlines to the circuit, by way of barricades, stands, or other means. Sources told the New York Post that F1 staffers working for Renee Wilm, the Las Vegas Grand Prix CEO, indicated that lights could be shined towards businesses that don't pay up, in order to dazzle anyone trying to sneak a peek for free.

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