How the Las Vegas Grand Prix transformed the Strip into Formula 1’s biggest marketing vehicle

Las Vegas — “If we’re not racing down Las Vegas Boulevard, we’re not racing in Las Vegas.”

That’s the nonnegotiable vision Emily Prazer, president and CEO of the Las Vegas Grand Prix and chief commercial officer of Formula 1, set with Liberty Media Corporation, Formula 1’s parent company, back in 2021. Four years and three races later, that dream is no longer a mirage.

During the race, which Max Verstappen won, cars whipped past Las Vegas’s casinos at ear-splitting speeds, audible even from hotel rooms along the Strip. The sound became more deafening atop the grandstands and Paddock Club, which offered F1’s “most VIP experience.” Sparks flew as the smell of smoke from burning rubber tickled fans’ nostrils, momentarily filling their lungs.

Race weekend now pulls in around $1 billion for Las Vegas’s economy each year — making it, according to one study, the single biggest annual event in the city.

“We get to sit in a room and come up with crazy and wild ideas that actually only Vegas could tolerate,” Prazer told The Current. “And I think that’s why Formula 1 loves this place so much … we’re very vocal about creating a legacy wherever we go racing.”

Pounding the pavement for U.S. expansion

After Liberty Media Corporation bought Formula 1 in 2016, its number one priority was growing the sport in America. Drive to Survive, which premiered on Netflix in 2019, led to an instant explosion of fans in the U.S. “We felt like we had a moment in time to strike while the iron is hot,” Prazer said, as F1 set its sights on Las Vegas.

She was told if she wanted to do anything in the city, she had to make one phone call — to Michon Martin.

Martin — a former assistant district attorney in San Francisco during Kamala Harris’ tenure, a veteran of Nevada’s attorney general and governor’s offices, and former counsel for Resorts World — is now the CEO of the agency R&R Partners. She is one of the behind-the-scenes dealmakers guiding professional sports to Las Vegas.

Though Martin and Prazer’s kinship was immediate, even Martin was left speechless by the idea of cars zooming past hotels at 200 miles per hour.

“It was bigger and better than anyone could have imagined,” Martin told The Current. From there, she and Prazer began pounding the pavement, selling each casino on the vision. “And now, because of Emily’s hard work, it’s becoming the fabric of Las Vegas,” Martin said.

“This has elevated the global image of our city,” Steve Hill, CEO and president of the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority (LVCVA), said on the Mics Out podcast. “There aren’t many things anymore that can do that and Formula 1 is one of them.”

Reimagining F1 for a global audience

F1 feels right in Las Vegas: Both the city and the sport are bold, over-the-top and audacious. They could be soulmates.

Yet making a sport long synonymous with luxury actually feel accessible was a challenge. Historically, brands like Richard Mille and Louis Vuitton have attached themselves to the races as fans watch them from yachts in Monaco and Miami.

“It used to be behind closed doors, very affluent and no one could figure out where to buy a ticket,” Prazer said.

The Las Vegas event delivers something new: a multiday spectacle that’s part race, part music festival and part brand activation.

To build lifetime fandom, F1 offered $50 tickets to Thursday’s practice round. Meanwhile the Paddock Club rolled out activations from MGM Resorts, Mercedes-Benz, and American Express, Paramount+, Fanatics, T-Mobile and Raising Cane’s hosted fans on the ground and in private suites.

Zedd, T-Pain and Steve Aoki all performed. Damson Idris, who starred in F1: The Movie, Mark Wahlberg, Magic Johnson, Jay-Z and Beyoncé were spotted — with Beyoncé sporting a Louis Vuitton racing suit.

“From a marketing perspective, marrying sports with the destination, that is the way to find new fans, new visitors and those to really fall in love with both the destination and with F1,” Martin said.

The racetrack becomes the movie set

F1’s global fan base hit 826.5 million in 2024, according to Nielsen Sports, a jump of 90 million from 2023. The U.S. was one of the fastest-growing fan bases, with a total fan base of 52 million, a 10.5% jump.

Across social media, F1 now reports 107.6 million followers, a 21% increase from 2024 — and a massive jump from the 18.7 million it had in 2018.

“Our job on a global basis, not just in Vegas, is to make the awareness there,” Prazer said.

With only 24 races a year, or 24 Super Bowls as she calls it, the sport must keep the attention flywheel going all year long.

A major part of that awareness play has been the Netflix phenomenon Drive to Survive and this summer’s F1: The Movie, which became the highest grossing sports film of all time. “The amazing part of it was that the racetracks became the movie set,” Prazer said.

Still, she adds that creating a strategy around the influx of fandom has required agility and careful planning. “We [have] fans who want to consume content on TikTok. They want 30-second shorts; they want YouTube shorts. We [have] spent a lot of time figuring that side of it, because otherwise there was no point in having Drive to Survive. What we’re seeing now is the fruition of all of that hard work.”

That always-on strategy is a major reason why F1 is switching its media rights from ESPN to Apple TV in 2026. The move to Apple unlocks opportunities to embed F1 within the Apple ecosystem of apps, streaming and news that goes beyond broadcasts alone.

Calculated experimentation

The sport’s audience has changed dramatically. Once described as the ultimate boys’ weekend, women now make up 42% of Formula 1’s global fan base. And 75% of all new fans are women.

F1 is steeped in audience data, modeling not just what fans want today but also what they may want in the future.

The events in Las Vegas are carefully informed by this data. F1 leverages its own global database, the Las Vegas Grand Prix database, and it works closely with all of the teams and broadcasters to create audience segments that fully maximize the potential for the city and the sport.

Those technical moves, along with the flashy ones, show that F1’s growth has come from calculated experimentation rather than playing it safe.

“Instead of using a playbook that has worked, [Prazer and CEO Stefano Domenicali are] looking for new fans to bring in to love the sport as much as they do,” Martin said. “And so always finding the way to get to yes from a marketing perspective, that braveness, that way of just attacking opportunity, that is the game changer.”

Like the sport it showcases, F1’s marketing strategy is just as dynamic, thrill-seeking and designed to grab attention.