With the Las Vegas Grand Prix only a week away and thousands of tickets still unsold, prices have been plummeting. Ticket brokers and speculators are desperately trying to sell their tickets for well under face value just to cut their losses.
Whilst those resellers might be left heavily out of pocket, the huge price drop means us F1 fans are finally seeing some relatively affordable ticket options for the Las Vegas Grand Prix.
I’ve done an analysis of the number of unsold Las Vegas F1 tickets and found some examples of hugely discounted tickets.
Formula 1 is coming to Las Vegas for the first time in over 40 years. With the sport’s new found US audience thanks to the massively popular Netflix show Drive to Survive, F1 is trying to capitalize on its Western fan-base by making the Vegas Grand Prix the third American F1 event this year.
But unlike almost all of the other rounds on the 2023 F1 calendar, the Las Vegas Grand Prix is far from sold out. And that’s having a massive effect on the current price of tickets with only a matter of days until the event begins.
Lack of demand
So why are the Las Vegas F1 tickets not selling? Here’s a few reasons:
- Surge in US F1 popularity thanks to Drive to Survive is waning after 5 seasons
- Max Verstappen and Red Bull have already won the 2023 World Championship and will undoubtedly dominate the race
- The tickets are the most expensive F1 tickets ever released
That third point is the big one. When the Las Vegas F1 tickets first went on sale at the end of 2022 their prices sent shockwaves across the motorsport fan community.
These were the official Vegas Grand Prix ticket prices for General Admission and Grandstand.
That’s right. Over $2500 for a grandstand ticket. That’s hundreds of dollars more than you’d pay at the next most expensive F1 races like Miami and Monaco. And over 4 times the $670 you’d pay for a 3-day seat in the incredible Gold 3 Grandstand at Spa Francorchamps for the Belgian GP.
These sky-high ticket prices were a big turn off. The American fanbase accused the organisers of ripping them off, and haven’t been buying.
Tens of thousands of unsold tickets
To find out just how many tickets are still unsold with only a week to go before the event begins, I decided to count them.
Using the official Las Vegas Grand Prix ticket platform on Ticketmaster, plus with a little help from some smart counting software, I went through each grandstand in the Sphere and East Harmon zones and counted the dots.
The tickets on Ticketmaster are split in to two types: Official and Verified Reseller tickets.
Official tickets (blue dots) are those still available from Vegas GP themselves. Verified Reseller tickets (pink dots) are from people who’d previously purchased them off Ticketmaster and are now trying to sell them again.
The other grandstands (West Harmon, Mirage, Bellagio) don’t have individual ticket information available so I discounted those.
Below is the number of unsold tickets for the Las Vegas Grand Prix, as of November 8th 2023.
A total of 10,001 tickets are still unsold across the Sphere and East Harmon zone grandstands. That’s a huge amount for an F1 event, especially considering there’s a whole number of other grandstands that I couldn’t get data for.
Ticket resellers are squirming
As demand has been much lower than expected, the tables have turned for the ticket sellers. Rather than being able to charge hefty premiums for their tickets once the official ones sell out, they’re now starting to sweat as the F1 looms and their tickets aren’t selling.
What are their options? Keep the tickets for themselves and go to the event, or cut their losses, lower their prices and sell them for whatever they can get for them.
And that’s what is happening now.
Huge discounts to be had
The resellers trying to flog their tickets via Ticketmaster Verified Resale are met with a limit on how low they can price them. The race organisers have done this to keep prices high, but that’s no good if nobody’s buying.
So instead the brokers and speculators have turned to the third-party ticket reselling platforms like Stubhub. Stubhub is usually where you’d go when the official tickets are sold out and you’re willing to pay a hefty bit extra over face value for one. But not this time.
To show the difference in prices I’ve picked out a few examples where the same tickets are being sold on Ticketmaster Verified Resale (TM VR) and Stubhub (SH) platforms. The price differences and discounts are pretty amazing.
3-day tickets:
SG2 102 Row 20
- TM: $2180
- SH: $1197
- 46% reduction
- TM: $2180
- SH: $1316
- 40% reduction
Saturday-only tickets:
PG2 104 – 5 Tickets Row 24
- TM VR: $1594
- SH: $932
- 42% reduction
PG2 105 – 5 Tickets Row 18
- TM VR: $1772
- SH: $976
- 45% reduction
PG1 103 – 2 Tickets Row 32
- TM VR: $2298
- SH: $1620
- 30% reduction
SG6 105 – 2 Tickets Row 19
- TM VR: $2300
- SH: $1701
- 26% reduction
SG7 104 – 2 Tickets Row 21
- TM VR: $1600
- SH: $1256
- 11% reduction
SG4 102 – 1 Ticket Row 11
- TM VR: $2800
- SH: $1498
- 46% reduction
Considering the TM VR prices are a little lower than some official prices, the reductions over face value can be even higher than those listed above. Have a nose around the two sites yourself and you’ll see just how many cheap tickets are already available.
Want a bargain? Hold your nerve.
As the F1 gets nearer I can only imagine the prices will keep coming down as the sellers panic. If you want to try and grab a bargain then holding your nerve for a few more days might just mean you net yourself a super cheap Vegas F1 ticket after all. That’s what I’m planning on doing.
Note: StubHub is not an officially recognised ticket reseller for the Las Vegas Grand Prix and using it comes with a level of risk of being on the wrong end of a fraudulent transaction. But their FanProtect 100% Guarantee is pretty robust.
Still waaaaaay too expensive. Add in hotel, meals, transportation and extras and you have a $10k weekend. I went to the Austin race a few years ago and paid around $500 for 3 days. Wasn’t worth it. I’ll watch on TV, thanks.
We (4 of us) did Miami for all three days …. It was $20K. While it’s nice to say we did it, I’ll never do that again….. not at those prices.
I had every intention of going to this race when it was announced a few years back, but balked altogether when the prices were released. I’ve been to Monaco twice as well as Singapore and going to those Grand Prix were somehow cheaper all in. I live in the Northeast US btw. With all that being said, I just rolled the dice last night and copped both a flight and hotel coming in Friday morning. Surprisingly, I was able to get done for around $900. I will end up missing free practice 1 & 2, but it’s worth the gamble if I can get the tickets for the low for Friday and Saturday. The goal is not to pay over $1,000 combined for both days. 🤞🏿
3 day ticks are under 800. Almost same price as Saturday. Definitely major crash coming
Old Watkins Glen attende .Outrageous prices…Went almost every F1 race there and can’t believe the prices for LV. Pure greed ! Logan Sargent will not even be able to afford to participate in his own race
You can thank Donald Trump for wrecking the economy and now everything is unaffordable. People can’t even go spend a family weekend at the car races because of that archcriminal.
You mean Joe b.
Their guarantee is legit . Used them a lot they keep extra tickets on hand at events such at this or Coachella. Not sure how that could be profitable but makes sense considering the exorbitant fees
When you do a similar type of seat search on airline websites from major hubs to LAS there are plenty of seats available to fly in. And airline ticket prices are still reasonable for 7 days out. The hotels have made their bank in the bundled package business with the “value” add amenities f&b. They all have had earnings calls in the last day or so and report record revenue even at less than 90% occupancy at the largest luxury properties. In other words, the resorts have made their nut and then some.
HI there, Great info! I am not seeing any reseller options on tm when following your link or using the F1 official ticket page. Is there a filter I am missing? Thanks
You won’t see any verfified reseller tickets on the 3-day grandstand options, only on the single day ones. The reseller ones are pink and the ‘official’ ones are blue.
Great research! I will be in Vegas visiting family the week of the race and have been tracking ticket prices. I’ve been tempted to buy but holding off for now, hoping ticket prices will drop in the next few days. Do you think Ticketmaster will lower the cost of the official tickets the day of the event if they don’t sell? Way to many still available.
Good question! I’d be surprised if the Ticketmaster prices come down, it wouldn’t be a good look for the Vegas GP from a PR perspective. I’m holding out for another couple of days and looking at StubHub.
Great article. We have two sets of tickets to choose from, which would be a better view? SG3101 Row 3 or 30?
I’d always pick the higher row.
Perfect, that’s what I did. Heading out in a few hours. Sure prices are dropping and its been a hassle for the city – but what major event isn’t? It is still going to be a cool event. If you don’t want to spend your money on it, don’t. And if you do like we are, enjoy the experience!
Great stuff! I’m in SG4 row 30 tonight so I won’t be far away!