I came to say almost the same thing as Steven. 75% of the races this year "didn't matter." It also had (I think) the most overtakes of the season.
My other point is from the Las Vegas point of view - I think a big piece is advertising Las Vegas to Europe/the rest of the world. Sure Europeans know of LV, but there was good scenery and good racing, which may have more long term impacts for foreign tourists. While I've been to Monaco, if I revisit a big reason why is because of the scenery and "vibes" shown from the race.
I'm pretty sure this is a take that was stale by Friday night in Vegas. Yes, Thursday was a disaster. But many anecdotes across Twitter and, as you say, casino reporting indicated very strong demand across Friday and Saturday. As always, who knows what to believe, but I'm not sure there is much data that indicates a disaster scenario.
I do think F1 has a US problem perfectly encapsulated by your comment "the race didn’t even matter!" The race did matter - excluding the winner and winning team (Verstappen and Red Bull), this was an incredibly competitive season of F1, with many positions and tens of millions of dollars in prize money going down to the wire. This is how F1 typically works, outside of key years like 2021, 2016. F1's biggest challenge will be convincing Americans to care about anything other than the overall winner, something much more "European".
I hadn't considered that F1's goal might be to just add another cool race in a new location that would look good on TV. If that's the case, then this was more successful. I guess my assumption that a sports league would only expand to a new location if it wanted to create more fans in that location makes way more sense for the relocation of a team rather than one added race/match/tournament.
I came to say almost the same thing as Steven. 75% of the races this year "didn't matter." It also had (I think) the most overtakes of the season.
My other point is from the Las Vegas point of view - I think a big piece is advertising Las Vegas to Europe/the rest of the world. Sure Europeans know of LV, but there was good scenery and good racing, which may have more long term impacts for foreign tourists. While I've been to Monaco, if I revisit a big reason why is because of the scenery and "vibes" shown from the race.
I'm pretty sure this is a take that was stale by Friday night in Vegas. Yes, Thursday was a disaster. But many anecdotes across Twitter and, as you say, casino reporting indicated very strong demand across Friday and Saturday. As always, who knows what to believe, but I'm not sure there is much data that indicates a disaster scenario.
I do think F1 has a US problem perfectly encapsulated by your comment "the race didn’t even matter!" The race did matter - excluding the winner and winning team (Verstappen and Red Bull), this was an incredibly competitive season of F1, with many positions and tens of millions of dollars in prize money going down to the wire. This is how F1 typically works, outside of key years like 2021, 2016. F1's biggest challenge will be convincing Americans to care about anything other than the overall winner, something much more "European".
I hadn't considered that F1's goal might be to just add another cool race in a new location that would look good on TV. If that's the case, then this was more successful. I guess my assumption that a sports league would only expand to a new location if it wanted to create more fans in that location makes way more sense for the relocation of a team rather than one added race/match/tournament.