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Should you’re a gamer, you’ve got possible heard a minimum of one lecture about how it’s a waste of time. However what if these hours have been placing you on a profitable and sustainable profession path?
Enter Racing Prodigy, the world’s first E2Real sports activities league, which turns digital observe mastery right into a gateway to competing towards prime skilled drivers. Avid gamers of all ages are leaping from couches into cockpits, proving video video games will be extra than simply senseless leisure. However to totally bridge the hole between digital and real-world racing, Racing Prodigy should deal with one of many sport’s most enduring challenges. We spoke with the corporate’s founders to be taught their technique.
Braking Prices, Constructing Futures
“The most important barrier to motorsport participation is the associated fee,” says CEO and co-founder David Cook dinner. A typical three-day racing college, the place most drivers get their begin, can value as much as $7,000, making the game inaccessible to most. On prime of that, Cook dinner argues, three days behind the wheel is hardly sufficient to evaluate expertise. His co-founder Matt Fassnacht provides that the pay-to-play system limits entry and dilutes the expertise pool.
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“Drivers have to purchase their manner in,” Fassnacht says. “Think about if I informed you you could possibly play within the Tremendous Bowl for $5 million, $10 million, or $20 million, relying on the place. That is type of how motorsports works.” He and Cook dinner are decided to vary this with Racing Prodigy.
“We wish to create a mannequin that offers proficient, hard-working racers a sustainable profession path,” Cook dinner says. “I do not need this to be about cash,” Fassnacht provides. “I need the most effective folks to be there.”
Cook dinner describes the present enterprise mannequin as “damaged,” explaining the associated fee typically exceeds the worth for individuals. “If you do not have a sure title, how will you elevate six or seven figures to compete in a sequence that is not System One?” Cook dinner says. He believes the answer is a extra fashionable strategy to grassroots expertise acquisition—utilizing racing simulator video games as a scouting instrument. “One of the simplest ways to do this is thru racing video games,” he says.
Fassnacht and Cook dinner aren’t simply empty fits; each have been behind the wheel and skilled the game’s pitfalls firsthand. Cook dinner led a program at Mazda in 2014 that educated skilled drivers utilizing racing simulators. “There are two folks on this planet who’ve taken sim sport or sport racers and put them in race vehicles,” Fassnacht says. “Dave’s certainly one of them.” Cook dinner believes Racing Prodigy surpasses that outdated venture fivefold.
Fassnacht highlights real-world success tales like 2024 Daytona 500 winner William Byron, who started on racing simulators, as proof of Racing Prodigy’s potential. “Racing Prodigy makes use of video games like Avenue Kart Racing on iOS gadgets, Gran Turismo, and iRacing,” Cook dinner says. The league’s prime driver began on the cell sim, an business first.
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“We have confirmed that extra prodigies are competing in racing video games and watching races on TV than really racing on the course,” Cook dinner says. “It is only a numbers sport.”
Fueling Up the Fandom
Constructing a devoted fanbase is vital to Racing Prodigy’s long-term success. Cook dinner believes the easiest way to do that is by showcasing the drivers’ private tales. They’re creating a docuseries much like Netflix’s Drive to Survive, which spotlighted System 1. They’ve partnered with Invent TV to pitch the docuseries to platforms like Netflix and Hulu, capturing content material from occasions like Prodigy Week and the Silverstone F1 weekend.
“There are two important differentiators for our program,” Cook dinner says. “The primary is our deal with drivers from humble beginnings. The second is that, since this is not a pay-to-play league, not everybody will make it—some must go house.” He compares it to American Idol, the place the contestant pool narrows with every passing spherical, however a number of drivers advance to actual racing championships, forming the world’s first e2Real motorsports league.
Within the first sequence, over 100,000 competed in eSports. Thirty-two earned Prodigy Passes—much like American Idol’s golden tickets—and superior to Prodigy Week, the place they proved themselves in driving, communication, information comprehension, and health. Finally, 24 earned paid racing contracts and have been drafted by six groups, whereas six extra have been saved by a fan vote. Followers have to be prepared for eliminations, as Racing Prodigy plans to chop 9 extra drivers earlier than the season ends.
“As followers fall in love with these drivers, some will go house, which can be troublesome for each drivers and followers,” Cook dinner says. “That is vital for constructing an viewers.”
The Street to Success
Thankfully, Racing Prodigy has a built-in viewers. “Over a billion players say racing is their most popular online game style,” Fassnacht says. Whereas the preexisting curiosity is encouraging, Fassnacht warns that this viewers is difficult to achieve with out authenticity. “They will simply be like, ‘Nope, you did not do what you mentioned you’ll do.’ That is why we spent a lot time proving this might work.” Racing Prodigy plans to seize players’ consideration by bringing acquainted faces from the digital world into real-life racing occasions.
One other key differentiator is Racing Prodigy’s possession construction. In contrast to most sports activities leagues, the corporate is vertically built-in. “We personal all the things,” Fassnacht says—guidelines, groups, vehicles, and governing our bodies. In conventional racing, groups management their engineering, testing, and transport. Racing Prodigy, nonetheless, homes all automobiles underneath one roof and manages them with one set of crew and engineers. This reduces operational prices, breaking the monetary barrier to entry. “The fee to run operations for our entry-level sequence, the P3 championship, is lower than half of what it prices to function the Mazda MX-5 Cup sequence,” Cook dinner says.
This environment friendly mannequin has caught the eye of traders, together with Actual Madrid goalkeeper Thibaut Courtois, who sponsors his personal group, TC Racing. “What stands out to me most about Racing Prodigy is the way it supplies alternatives in motorsport to people who lack the monetary means,” Courtois says. “Creating extra alternatives and attracting younger expertise fosters a synergy I could not go up.”
With its modern mannequin and people-first tradition, Racing Prodigy is remodeling what was as soon as only a passion right into a reliable pathway to skilled success—proving pixels can certainly pave the street to glory.