11/11/2014
NEWS STORY
Farid Shidfar, who has links to film director Steven Spielberg, has been revealed as the man behind the proposed Grand Prix in Las Vegas.
Despite claims from some quarters that talk of a return to Las Vegas is a sleight of hand, thereby allowing Bernie Ecclestone to work on another project, the F1 supremo, who last month said the race is "ready to go", invited Shidfar to the recent United States Grand Prix as his guest.
Shidfar is the founder of digital meeting service rundavoo.com having previously been the driving force behind the Los Angeles media and entertainment practice at consultancy firm Accenture. Indeed, it was this role that brought him into contact with Steven Spielberg.
In 1994, Spielberg founded the University of Southern California's Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation, a non-profit organization which records video testimonies of survivors and other witnesses of the Holocaust. The following year Shidfar helped to develop software which enables the foundation's library to be accessed from museums around the world.
During his 15 years as a senior executive at Accenture, Shidfar worked with some of the world's biggest media and entertainment brands including Disney, MGM, Sony and Universal. In 2008 he quit in order to work on private projects and began to build closer links to Las Vegas.
The first of these projects was the launch of the brand for the city's Cosmopolitan hotel which opened in December 2010, and in 2012 Shidfar founded Rundavoo, a digital service which streamlines the co-ordination of meetings as well as hotel, restaurant and event reservations.
According to an article in Forbes by Christian Sylt, Shidfar has been analysing the opportunity to bring F1 to Vegas since 2011. In January he founded the Nevada company P2M Motorsports Management LLC, while his Linkedin page confirms that this is the "consortium bringing Formula 1 to the Las Vegas Strip".
It is understood Hermann Tilke has visited Las Vegas several times in order to design the layout of the track signalling that the project is more than just a bluff from Ecclestone.
Indeed, Ecclestone has been keen to bring F1 back to Las Vegas since its last appearance in the early 80s when the event, held in the car park of Caesars Palace, was abandoned after just two events.
A race on the famous streets of Las Vegas, including the legendary Strip, would have a massive impact, not least in the States, and would give the sport a firmer footing in the home of the automobile. The United States Grand Prix in Austin has boosted interest in the series, with 237,406 fans attending over the course of the three days of the most recent event.
In 2013 F1's TV audience in the US increased by 1.7 million viewers to 11.4 million and accelerated a further 93% over the first eleven races of this year. However, F1 still trails the audience for IndyCar on the same network (NBC Sports) by 5%. According to Forbes: "A Grand Prix in downtown Vegas would almost certainly propel F1's audience in the US beyond that of IndyCar as it would give the race a backdrop of landmarks which are recognisable all over the country."
An F1 race in Vegas would fit in with the city's strategy of diversifying from a tourist industry which is dependent on declining gambling revenue. In 2013 gambling revenue on The Strip was around $6.5 billion compared to a peak of $6.8 billion in 2007. In the first quarter of this year, casino takings were down 12% according to Bloomberg and consequently resorts are looking to restructure.
According to Forbes; the SLS Hotel & Casino, which originally opened in 1952 as the Sahara, was re-launched in August and, according to its president, Rob Oseland, it only anticipates to get 30% of its revenue from gambling. That compares with an average of 45% across Nevada casinos today and 62% in 1984, according to the Center for Gaming Research at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.
There is still a long, long way to go, but wheels are definitely in motion. Ecclestone is keen to expand F1 in the United States, as are the manufacturers, and with New Jersey, certainly as we know it, looking to be a dead duck, the glitz of Las Vegas might make a worthy substitute.
Yes, Bernie does like to divert attention, but this project appears to a bit more than smoke and mirriors.