The Las Vegas Grand Prix, despite its controversial and divisive nature, ultimately proved to be a lucrative event for sportsbooks. Despite facing legal issues and causing division among locals, the race generated record-breaking betting handle for Caesars Sportsbooks, BetMGM, Station Casinos, Westgate SuperBook, and Red Rock Resort. Caesars reported that it was three times Daytona’s numbers for total betting handle on any motorsports event during the race. Additionally, BetMGM claimed that they tripled the number of bets for any prior F1 event during the Las Vegas Grand Prix.
The 10 p.m. local start time of the race at 1 a.m. on the East Coast remains a topic of debate among stakeholders, as efforts are already underway to move up the start time to an earlier time slot. While this was done in part to minimize disruption to local citizens who have already endured months of construction-related headaches, several drivers and team executives are pushing for an earlier start to help with their own time-zone acclimation while traveling from Europe. As F1 continues to evolve into a more global sport, finding a fitting time slot is becoming increasingly difficult. Ferrari team principal Fred Vasseur explained this challenge in an interview with ESPN: “In the past, we had no issue because F1 was just for European people, and we had to stick to European timing.” However, with growing global appeal comes new challenges such as accommodating different time zones.”