Las Vegas Motor Speedway, "The

Las Vegas Motor Speedway, "the first completely new superspeedway to be built in the southwest region of the United States in more than 20 years," opened in 1996 to its first official NASCAR race (LVMS, 2006). Originally founded by Bill Bennett and Ralph Englestad, the venue was sold in December 1998 to Speedway Motor Sports, Inc., based in Charlotte, North Carolina (Las Vegas News Bureau, 2005). The facility holds about 1,300 events a year and can accommodate up to 137,000 fans on 1600 acres and cost $72 million to construct. The track itself is a 1.5-mile oval (GNEXTINC, 2005).

Located less than 20 miles from the famous Las Vegas Strip, this facility targets primarily NASCAR racing fans and has its eye on becoming a major venue for future cup races (NASCAR, 2006). So far the Las Vegas Motor Speedway has hosted one major event, the NEXTEL cup series race in March of this year. Shortly after this event it was announced that the track would undergo a major reconfiguration to double the banking on the main track to 20 degrees (Hilderbrand, 2006).

This reconfiguration was completed and the venue reopened on the 8th of August 2006. The raised banking better accommodates side-by-side racing, which, in turn, raises the top speed of the track as well. This construction also increased the seating of the venue to around 156,000, and added in a new pit road (LVMS, 2006). The lower banks that the facility opened with were the venue's major stumbling blocks, but this multi-million dollar construction project has raised the Las Vegas Speedway up to be competitive with some of the older, more famous racing tracks.

After these improvements the cost to build this facility has exceeded $200 million (NASCAR, 2006). A venue as big as this one carries some very heavy price tags. The track carries a 5 million dollar liability insurance policy to cover each of the events. A track rental will cost anywhere between $1,500 and $15,000, and it costs $750 just to turn on the lights on the drag strip. The venue maintains fire and safety crews for every event, which is included in the stipulations of the liability insurance policy that was described earlier.

In spite of all of these expenses, the major expenditure goes to maintenance and personnel costs. To meet all of the financial demands outlined above, the Las Vegas Speedway acquires corporate sponsorship for all of their events. Between this corporate sponsorship and the ticket sales, which can range anywhere from $70 to $261.45 per ticket, the speedway can bring in over $50 million per major event (LVMS, 2006). Of course not all the events that are held in the venue are necessarily major.

One way that the Las Vegas Speedway contributes to the Las Vegas local community, besides the generating thousands of jobs both within and without the complex, is that it is open two times a week to local drag racers. This decision was made to help reduce the drag racing activity on the public streets, which was becoming quite a problem for the local authorities, not to mention how dangerous the trend was to the general public (Las Vegas News Bureau, 2005).

The smaller tracks also host local and national events like hot rod shows, funny car races, alcohol races, derbies, bracket racing, and specialized car racing. There are also camping facilities for the fans that travel cross-country to attend some of the larger, professional events. The speedway has four major tracks. The Superspeedway hosts.