Has Liberty gone too far?

[lkjohnson1950]

Liberty is apparently telling hotels and casinos around the Las Vegas GP circuit they have to pay $1500 per head or Liberty will take measures to block views of the track. I'm not sure how they will do a head count, but for the big hotels on the strip, this could be millions of dollars. I wonder if the Hotels could bring enough pressure on the city/County to cancel the race? 

https://www.gptours.com/gr_news/f1-threatening-to-block-las-vegas-gp-views/

[Jericoke]

Liberty:  We must bring F1 to as many Americans as possible.  It will bring value to our sponsors.

Las Vegas:  here's a race track that hundreds of thousands of Americans can watch!  You're welcome.

Liberty:  ...and let them see our sponsors for FREE?

[cosworth151]

This is from a Las Vegas TV news:

https://www.ktnv.com/news/las-vegas-properties-around-f1-circuit-could-have-views-obstructed-unless-fee-is-paid

It says F1 is charging $1,500 x the maximum capacity of the venue. That is usually determined by the Fire Marshal or some similar official.

They are already charging $500 for tickets to areas with no view of the track. Remember, Liberty considers the race to be a minor sideshow to the weekend.

I wonder if the Hotels could bring enough pressure on the city/County to cancel the race?

We can only hope so.

[Jericoke]

This is from a Las Vegas TV news:

https://www.ktnv.com/news/las-vegas-properties-around-f1-circuit-could-have-views-obstructed-unless-fee-is-paid

It says F1 is charging $1,500 x the maximum capacity of the venue. That is usually determined by the Fire Marshal or some similar official.

They are already charging $500 for tickets to areas with no view of the track. Remember, Liberty considers the race to be a minor sideshow to the weekend.

I wonder if the Hotels could bring enough pressure on the city/County to cancel the race?

We can only hope so.

I try not to be too political here (outside of pitlane politics, of course), but what kind of capitalist nightmare that the organizers would spend MORE money to stop people from watching the race just because those people are going to balk at paying a last minute $1500+ fee?

By all means, if this was the plan from day 1, good for you, get whatever money you can I suppose, but realizing that you've accidentally allowed someone to enjoy your product after selling all the tickets and trying to squeeze that money?  That's just s--t planning.  If you can't plan selling tickets, how can you be trusted to plan for safety of drivers or crowds?

[cosworth151]

Maybe they hope to get the local businesses over a barrel. Let them sell reservations promising a view of the track them threaten them with removal of those views.

[Alianora La Canta]

Liberty should have done research before telling hotels this.

Nevada has a law about "spite fences", that is to say measures taken specifically to block someone's view. This is the one major reason one cannot block one's neighbour's view in that state. As long as one says one has an ulterior motive for the blockage, it's on one's neighbour to convince the court one is lying, not on you to defend your stated reason. For an event intended to bring in lots of money, that would be a remarkably high bar for one's neighbour to clear.

However... ...sending out statements flatly demanding money to retain the view is strong evidence of one's motive. After all, why would one lie about the reason one is asking for money, if the stated reason is explicitly against Nevada law?

This won't cancel the race, because now the hotels have a great motive to let it run. Liberty has, after all, handed any hotel who wants to hire a lawyer the perfect means to defeat them in court and get large amounts of money in damages. Whether they initially pay up or not.

(And no, I don't trust Liberty to protect anyone's safety).

[lkjohnson1950]

Don't know if the MGM Grand has a view of the track, but it is on the Strip so I'll use it. It has roughly 5000 rooms, mainly King and double  Queen beds. Estimate 1/2 of the rooms can see the circuit and they only have 2 people in each room. That's 5000 people at $1500 each or 7.5 million Liberty expects The Grand to pay. Yeah, right. Chase Carey or Domenicali might wake up with a horse's head for company. Wonder if they will try this at Monaco or one of the other street circuits.   

[cosworth151]

F1 can probably get around the law by putting up some of the many advertising signs or maybe a Jumbotron in the right place. "We didn't do it to block the view. It's just part of our usual set-up." Still, this does smell like the old protection racket.

"Nice view you have there. It'd be a shame if someone put a giant Aramco advert up right in front of it Wednesday night of race week."

[Alianora La Canta]

F1 can probably get around the law by putting up some of the many advertising signs or maybe a Jumbotron in the right place. "We didn't do it to block the view. It's just part of our usual set-up."

Liberty could have got away with this, and very easily, had they simply not been so obvious about their motive by offering a last-minute bribe explicitly to avoid having the view blocked. (If, for example, the giant advertising hoardings were silently put up for the first year, and then offers quietly accepted to selectively not repeat the feat for hotels that were interested in having their view to compensate for the reduced advertising, all would have been well - assuming that Liberty actually was as disorganised as its currently looks).

It's the saying the quiet bit out loud that's considered the legal issue in Nevada.

Wonder if they will try this at Monaco or one of the other street circuits.   

Monaco's had a hotel supplement for at least 2 decades. Modest compared to the price hike connected to it being the biggest week of the country's tourist calendar, but still part of the reason so many fans choose to stay in Nice, Menton or even on the of the Italian towns on the same train line. This year, Monaco also charged a per-head supplement of €150 per head for every boat, excluding registered crew (the equivalent of its cheapest grandstand seats). This may be the place from where Liberty got the idea.

Of course, the Monaco organisers knew what the local law said about this before starting, because in Monaco's case the person who's in charge of local law (the Prince) is on the committee!

Singapore doesn't do it directly - rather it averages what it might have extracted from this across the year, and employs a 7% tax on all hotels in the city regardless of what events are or aren't on. Since the F1 race results in hotel fees going up, the tax income rises accordingly. I'm not sure if any of this gets handed to Liberty to cover the cost of lost income from people viewing proceedings from their hotel, but I would not be surprised if Bernie thought of this one and insisted.

I think only events Liberty itself is organising are at risk of getting the Las Vegas version, and then only if there is no more certain way of being compensated for potential lost income from hotels (for example, places that already have a city tax for all accommodation might offer a percentage related to the anticipated increase in tourists to avoid that consequence).