Jonathan Halkyard, Chief Financial Officer at MGM Resorts International, has stated that the Formula One Las Vegas Grand Prix helped to produce the best hotel gross revenue weekend for the company in its history.
Speaking at the Bank of America Securities Leveraged Finance Conference 2023, Halkyard was asked about the impact of the race in the Vegas market and how the city itself is changing into a destination for sports.
The CFO noted that the F1 booked to come to the city during one of its slowest weekends of the year. Because of the high expectations MGM had for the event, it invested heavily into it, including creating experiences for casino and retail customers in front of the Bellagio.
As a result of the investment, MGM ended up having one of its best weekends of the year and in the company’s history in terms of hotel revenue, with the event having contributed towards predicted record November numbers in terms of hotel revenue as well.
Halkyard commented: “The race met every one of our expectations. It was the highest-grossing weekend for us in hotel revenue in the company’s history. The second highest was the CES (Consumer Electronic Show) in 2019.
“When you think about other events that have happened in Las Vegas over the years, and in the scale of our company, that’s quite something, to have a record weekend on what was otherwise the slowest weekend of the year.”
The CFO added that casino, as well as food and beverage operational expectations, were met in terms of volume, and both guests and employees had a “very good experience” during the weekend.
Halkyard did acknowledge that there is room for improvement in terms of how the event is managed in the build up, as the construction of the race track, facilities and paddock caused disruption in Vegas over several weeks and months.
Employee’s journeys to work were also disrupted as they had to accommodate extra travel time due to the street race circuit closing off roads and parts of the Strip.
However, the MGM CFO expects the race to remain a top event in the future now that several permanent facilities for the race are in place, which should hopefully make the build up to the race less impactful.
“This was an event that certainly had a lot of friction in the months leading up to it, a lot of construction in Las Vegas. Some of that will certainly be recurring, a lot of it will not be as dramatic in coming years because, over the course of about a year, F1 and the city got the city ready to race for this event.
“F1 invested hundreds of millions of dollars of capital in their paddock facility, and that, along with money we invested to build the hospitality experience I described, we’ll reuse that year after year. I’m very optimistic that this is going to be a fantastic event in the years to come.”
Team members of CasinoBeats and SBC Americas talked about the F1 Las Vegas GP and the wider impact the race and other sports are having on the city in a recent episode of iGaming Daily.
