How many individuals really watched drone racing this 12 months? The Drone Racing League, which is an enormous drone leisure large with races for stay audiences and aired on TV via main shops together with NBC, shared some attention-grabbing stats on its viewership. And these FPV drone racing viewership numbers paint a fairly clear image of the 2023 drone racing viewers.
The drone racing market statistics are largely tied to the 2022-23 DRL Algorand World Championship Season, which kicked off its season in October 2022 with a stay drone race in PayPal Park and just lately held its season finale race in April 2023. Listed here are a few of the standout knowledge factors concerning the 2023 drone racing viewers, based mostly on DRL’s most up-to-date season:
- DRL’s international footprint reached 320 million households globally in its 2022-2023 season (that metric refers to DRL’s worldwide media distribution enlargement).
- Race viewership elevated to 260 million international digital views.
- DRL’s social followers rose to 12 million social followers.
- DRL’s social media channels generated a mean of three million video views per day.
However maybe extra attention-grabbing than the tens of millions of individuals touched by the Drone Racing League is the large progress seen year-over-year. In comparison with 2021-2022 DRL viewership stats, right here’s how a lot greater this 12 months turned:
- That 320 million family international footprint is up roughly 30% from final 12 months.
- The variety of international race views is up 23% from final season.
- The 12 million social followers is up 45% from final 12 months.
Not solely are extra folks watching drone racing, however extra persons are additionally making an attempt it out. DRL gives video games together with the DRL SIM, which is a true-to-life drone racing simulator obtainable on PlayStation, Xbox, Steam and Epic Video games. Then there’s a Drone Racing Arcade recreation for iOS and Android cellular units, in addition to a recreation referred to as Venture Drone Galaxy the place you may design and fly a digital drone (with cute characters concerned too). DRL says it tripled its annual gaming downloads this 12 months.
Associated learn: 5 tricks to grasp drone simulator racing
A quick historical past of drone racing and DRL
Whereas it’s unattainable to say for certain, many cite the primary instance of a “drone race” as having occurred in August 2014.
The Drone Racing League particularly was based in 2015 by Nicholas Horbaczewski. Since then, DRL has raised tens of millions of {dollars} in funding from traders together with Hearst Ventures, CAA Ventures, Muse lead singer Matthew Bellamy and Miami Dolphin’s proprietor Stephen Ross’s venture-capital agency RSE Ventures. In 2020, DRL appointed former NBA govt Rachel Jacobson as president.
Apart from creating digital video games for followers, DRL additionally has constructed bodily 5G DRL racing drones, which makes it potential to stay stream high-definition racing footage. DRL has additionally sought to place itself as a participant in different types of future tech, resembling via a partnership with blockchain platform Algorand and a foray into the drone racing metaverse.
And many extra corporations are diving into drone racing. Different corporations moreover DRL are additionally growing diving into drone racing. In 2022, DJI launched an indoor, Cinewhoop-style drone referred to as the DJI Avata, which follows its earlier DJI FPV drone.
What’s the market dimension for drone racing?
Whereas it’s unattainable to foretell — and the numbers can fluctuate relying on whom you ask — your entire, international drone market is value an estimated $127 billion. After all, drone racing represents only a fraction of that market share, which is shared additionally by different shopper drones like digital camera drones, however primarily by enterprise and business drones.
In accordance with 2023 estimates by Polaris Market Analysis, which is a U.S.-based international market analysis and consulting firm, the worldwide racing drone market was valued at $798 million in 2022. They estimate that the drone racing market may develop to be value greater than $5 billion globally 10 years from now.
That may make the drone racing trade value roughly the identical as what traders would contemplate a mid-cap firm — that means removed from an enormous title like Apple or Disney — however seemingly nonetheless massive sufficient in dimension that standard folks would have heard of it. For context, the clothes Hole model has a market cap slightly below $3 billion, whereas fancy dwelling items retailer Williams-Sonoma has a market hole of simply over $7 billion, so the mixed drone racing trade would sit someplace within the center, by Polaris’ estimates.
And it seems like an inexpensive. Past straight DRL posts, general drone content material has a collective 13 billion video views on TikTok. And drone racing might be a boon for the broader drone trade because it introduces youngsters to STEM careers. In accordance with DRL, the variety of nationwide STEM jobs is predicted to develop by 11% by 2030. To place that in perspective, STEM jobs are anticipated to extend at a 30% sooner price than jobs within the general workforce.
