It's the intensive man hours that bump the cost up, scanners are in the ££££'s, it's a case of more money = a better scanner for sure , then you have to have someone to operate them, then turn the point cloud into something that you can use to overlay your mesh over.
It's not just a case of scanning an area and the jobs done, point cloud data can be quite hit and miss, and in some cases require a lot of cleaning up.
The simplest thing to do is get hold of some SRTM mesh (Shuttle Radar Topography Mission) where shuttle missions have collected worldwide data, in some cases, all the way down to 2mtr res, should be enough to get at least a half decent representation, I think the GT series used SRTM mesh for the Nurburgring.
In short, this laser scanned track business is a marketing thing IMO