How many individuals really watched drone racing this yr? The Drone Racing League, which is a large drone leisure large with races for reside audiences and aired on TV by way of main retailers together with NBC, shared some fascinating 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 reside drone race in PayPal Park and not too long ago held its season finale race in April 2023. Listed here are a number of the standout knowledge factors relating to the 2023 drone racing viewers, based mostly on DRL’s most up-to-date season:

• DRL’s world 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 world 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 fascinating than the hundreds of thousands of individuals touched by the Drone Racing League is the big progress seen year-over-year. In comparison with 2021-2022 DRL viewership stats, right here’s how a lot larger this yr turned:

• That 320 million family world footprint is up roughly 30% from final yr.
• The variety of world race views is up 23% from final season.
• The 12 million social followers is up 45% from final yr.

Not solely are extra individuals watching drone racing, however extra individuals are additionally attempting it out. DRL provides video games together with the DRL SIM, which is a true-to-life drone racing simulator accessible on PlayStation, Xbox, Steam and Epic Video games. Then there’s a Drone Racing Arcade sport for iOS and Android cellular gadgets, in addition to a sport known as Undertaking 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 yr.

Associated learn: 5 tricks to grasp drone simulator racing

A quick historical past of drone racing and DRL

Whereas it’s unimaginable 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 hundreds of thousands 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 government Rachel Jacobson as president.

In addition to creating digital video games for followers, DRL additionally has constructed bodily 5G DRL racing drones, which makes it potential to reside stream high-definition racing footage. DRL has additionally sought to place itself as a participant in different types of future tech, equivalent to by way of a partnership with blockchain platform Algorand and a foray into the drone racing metaverse.

And lots extra firms are diving into drone racing. Different firms moreover DRL are additionally rising diving into drone racing. In 2022, DJI launched an indoor, Cinewhoop-style drone known as the DJI Avata, which follows its earlier DJI FPV drone.

What’s the market measurement for drone racing?

Whereas it’s unimaginable to foretell — and the numbers can fluctuate relying on whom you ask — your entire, world drone market is value an estimated $127 billion. In fact, drone racing represents only a fraction of that market share, which is shared additionally by different client drones like digital camera drones, however primarily by enterprise and industrial drones.

In accordance with 2023 estimates by Polaris Market Analysis, which is a U.S.-based world 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 take into account a mid-cap firm — which means removed from an enormous identify like Apple or Disney — however seemingly nonetheless giant sufficient in measurement that ordinary individuals would have heard of it. For context, the clothes Hole model has a market cap slightly below $3 billion, whereas fancy residence 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 looks like an affordable. Past straight DRL posts, general drone content material has a collective 13 billion video views on TikTok. And drone racing may very well be a boon for the broader drone trade because it introduces children to STEM careers. In accordance with DRL, the variety of nationwide STEM jobs is anticipated to develop by 11% by 2030. To place that in perspective, STEM jobs are anticipated to extend at a 30% quicker charge than jobs within the general workforce.

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