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Leeston Bryant

McLaren

SESSIONS

Motorsports and esports - how F1 Esports and Virtual Grands Prix opened a new esports frontier - Speaker

Motorsports has a long and storied tradition in the UK, and so it's perhaps no surprise that the booming space sees disproportionate representation within the sim racing space. As with so many things, the pandemic brought huge exposure to a long established alternate hobby and the Sky Sports broadcast of Virtual Grand Prix to fill the slots left vacant by cancelled races - mirrored across the pond as major linear TV Stations turned to similar solutions to replace their NASCAR and Indy Car Programming - sparked a boom that sees demand for Sim Racing Peripherals and viewership on streams remain significantly higher than it was at the start of 2020.


But what of the future? Barely a week goes by without a new entity moving into sim racing, whether that be with a new tournament series or a new partnership to support a team in one of the myriad already extant. Is there space for the diversity of motorsports in the sim racing space? Is the growth displayed in the last year sustainable without outside influences?