In a city that is dubbed ‘the sports entertainment capital of the world’, Las Vegas is certainly no stranger to hosting massive events.
From nightly residencies from the biggest entertainers on the planet, to the Super Bowl hosted earlier this year, there is always something to see in Sin City.
Australia now even has a regular place on the events calendar in Vegas, with the NRL about to enter its second year of a six-year deal to play two games in the city annually.
But when it comes to all the massive events that occur in Las Vegas, nothing tops the size, scale and spectacle that is the Las Vegas Grand Prix.
The second running of the race last weekend saw crowds flock to the city to witness the 20 best drivers in the world battle it out under the glittering lights of the world famous Las Vegas Strip. And they weren’t left disappointed, with a dominant victory by George Russell backed up by Max Verstappen claiming his fourth World Championship.
George Russell couldn't wait to celebrate this one
— Formula 1 (@F1) November 25, 2024
The race winner took the final corner with one hand as he fist-pumped his way to the line ????#F1 #LasVegasGP pic.twitter.com/abes4m10Of
But just how big is the event for the city?
According to the general manager of the Las Vegas Grand Prix Terry Miller, nothing is comparable to the event.
“It is already identified that the F1 event (in 2023) was the largest single event ever for Las Vegas, and that was in the same six months as the Super Bowl,” Miller told The Roar in Las Vegas ahead of the 2024 Grand Prix.
“A difference between the Super Bowl and this is the Super Bowl is concentrated on about 40 acres. This is 450.
“They have to secure a perimeter around the 40 acres. We have to figure out how to secure a perimeter around 450 acres. It is just an order of magnitude that is not even comparable.”
“They’ve (the NFL) been doing it for 58 years. They’ve got a playbook.
“I take nothing from them, because I’ve worked for them. I know the NFL, and they got it figured out. They know exactly what they’re doing and they’re the big gorilla in town.
“We came into Las Vegas, and Las Vegas welcomed us with open arms.”
Miller, an architect and the founder of Miller Project Management, is no stranger to big projects, having worked on some of the biggest stadium builds in the United States such as Levi’s Stadium in San Francisco and Empower Field at Mile High in Denver.
He even helped with the reconstruction of the MCG in the 1990s, working with Sydney architect Daryl Jackson in designing the Great Southern Stand.
But when it comes to the projects he has worked on over the years, the Las Vegas Grand Prix has been one of the most challenging.
“It was probably one of the most accelerated schedules and programs that I have ever done in terms of design and construction,” he said.
“I was part of the initial team in 2021 that said, let’s do it, then in 2022 I was in charge of design and construction of the pit building.
“I also oversaw the track itself, the track design, using (Hermann) Tilke as our track engineer and worked with them to create where the track actually was going to happen.
“We then sped off into design and construction in April of 2022 and put the race on in 2023.”
The sheer size and logistics of the event are unique even to Formula 1, a sport that is no stranger to turning city streets into race circuits.
Albert Park in Melbourne each year is transformed into a circuit for the Australian Grand Prix, alongside other iconic street circuits in Monaco, Singapore and Azerbaijan.
However, while all those circuits rely on a variety of factors to close down public roads and turn them into a race track, Las Vegas remains unique in the fact that when there isn’t racing, the roads are open to the public.
Forty-two different locations on the track open and close each day, with a two-hour window given to allow circuit workers to either close or open the roads to the public.
“I can guarantee you there’s no other circuit that has that kind of openness,” Miller said. “If you consider the circuit as a rectangle, you’ve got four key corners… those are four very difficult openings and closings from two standpoints.
“One, to be able to convert them into public thoroughfare requires a huge number of safety items, because we can’t take down all of the blocks.
“Each of those corners takes about two hours for us to convert individually, so I’ve got 140 crew that are around the circuit and when we say go, they start closing or they start opening.
“Those four corners sort of dictate that two hours in between that we’ve got another 40 or 41 other openings and closings that we do on properties and on streets.”
The properties too around Las Vegas present their own unique complications for the event.
Land that may be owned by one property is required for certain sections of the track that then overlaps with other land leased to a different property, all of which requires their own contracts to be agreed upon in order to have the circuit move through them.
“We didn’t start setting up the track until September, right after our Labor Day, (but) we spent January through September on the planning effort,” Miller explained.
“Even though we did it last year, we still had to create the drawings. We had to create all the imagery and all the details so that the public agencies could sign off again and say, yes, we understand that.
“But also so that we could walk with each property through that whole process of ‘here’s what it’s going to look like’ and we got very precise in terms of the times of day that we would be blocking their entrances or their loading docks or whatever.”
“There are so many regulatory aspects of what we are doing because we are doing it on public right of way.
“We’re not like Austin out in the rural area. We’re not like Miami where we control the entire acreage.
“We have 450 acres that we are impacting and we only own this 39 acres right here (the pit complex and building).”
To light the track up at night, 1750 temporary light units are installed around 12.2km of track barriers.
A total of 3500 track barrier blocks are used, while three temporary vehicle bridges are installed across the race weekend to allow local traffic to get over the circuit, as well as three temporary pedestrian bridges to help fans navigate around the track.
The inaugural event in 2023 saw an attendance of 316,000 people, including 145,000 unique visitors to the city, bringing in $1.5 billion worth of economic impact to Las Vegas.
“The Las Vegas condition of business authority is the magic behind that brand, and they have made it clear to the world: you come here and there’s a hell of a lot of stuff that you can do,” Miller said.
“If there’s an F1 fan somewhere internationally and they’ve always seen the ads for Vegas, but they’ve never had a real reason to come to Vegas, well now they do.”
Ben Waterworthhttps://www.theroar.com.au/2024/11/29/bigger-than-the-super-bowl-how-the-biggest-event-in-the-sports-entertainment-capital-of-the-world-is-put-together/‘Bigger than the Super Bowl’: How the biggest event in the sports entertainment capital of the world is put together
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