00:00 The Las Vegas Grand Prix preparations have caused Liberty Media CEO Greg Maffei to apologise
00:06 to the residents for their forbearance as the work to prepare the street circuit and
00:10 the pit building in the past year caused severe disruption of their day to day lives. Construction
00:17 has been ongoing in Nevada for several months to revamp the strip, build the paddock and
00:22 establish pit facilities, resulting in disruptions and detours impacting both residents and tourists.
00:29 Trees were cleared and the renowned Bellagio Fountains were obstructed from the Grandstand
00:34 view, leading to complaints about exorbitant tickets and hospitality package prices, some
00:39 reaching millions of dollars. Though Maffei stated that the inflated prices were not necessarily
00:45 due to Formula One, he went on to apologise to the residents of Las Vegas. Speaking to
00:50 Fox 5, he said "I want to apologise to all the Las Vegas residents and we appreciate
00:55 that they have their forbearance and their willingness to tolerate us. We're going
00:59 to bring something like $1.7 billion of revenue to the area so it's not just for the benefit
01:04 of fans who want to view the race. We hope this is a great economic benefit in Las Vegas.
01:10 We hope this is the most difficult year with all the construction that went on and things
01:13 will be easier in the future." There will be 105,000 people so the sheer scale of it,
01:20 even for Las Vegas, will be the largest event Las Vegas will have. There's a launch party
01:25 from Wednesday to Sunday, almost a week of events and musical acts. You know, you're
01:32 seeing sports figures from other sports having their own kind of side viewing parties. A
01:36 lot of the high prices frankly comes from costs that are not entirely ours. I'm not
01:41 begrudging our partners, but five night minimums in hotels and things like that helped push
01:46 up the cost. Not all of it, just the pricing of the tickets. The experience of that, and
01:52 frankly the fact that there's so much demand, is what drives it. The Las Vegas Grand Prix
01:57 is this Saturday at a very strange time, 6am English time. Don't miss it, it's going
02:04 to be exciting. See you there.
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