Drone Racing and E-Sports, two industries that should be on your radar
As remote entertainment, gaming, drones, and streaming converge, opportunities arise for these two markets.
As we digitalize various everyday activities, new emerging market drivers continue to appear: everything delivery, digital currency, remote-first companies, VR/AR-enabled training and sales, telemedicine, pixel streaming, machine learning, real-time rendering, neural interfaces, vGPUs, and various others.
Innovation is exploration and experimentation, and surely new forms of interaction and distribution will pop up to disseminate these as future forms of enterprise and entertainment models.
In the sports landscape, however, there are two trends that catch my eye: drone racing and e-sports. Rendered and remotely controlled spaces are increasingly becoming an everyday escape, especially after we include social distancing, new forms of human-machine interaction, and video games into the mix.
Drone Racing
With sports on hold, drone racing and similar spaces can step up to the challenge.
Those who know about the internet of things (IoT) and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) know that current broadband capacities and the upcoming telecommunications standards (5G and above) will allow for remote control and automation of machinery. Here’s where drones come in. You see, drones (or whatever comes after, for that matter) could become the new horses.
Transparency market research has published an analysis of the drone racing market and estimated that the 2019 drone racing market goes around ~$719 million, with a whopping 19% annual growth rate until 2027. RedBull, Swatch, GoPro, Pepsi, and Ernst&Young are among the early entrants considering Drone Racing a sport of the future.
Institutions like the US Air Force, DJI, DroneRacingWorld, Uvify, the fully autonomous RacingAI project, and of course, the Las Vegas-based Drone Racing League being covered and broadcasted on ESPN and NBCSN prove strong interest in this market though investment in boosters, obstacles, and tracks. Former sports executives, like ex NBA SVP Rachel Jacobson, are also looking at drones as their new flagship.
Of course, flying at 90 miles per hour (145 Km/h) is not trivial, and crashing these expensive drones can be devastating. Here’s where the adjacent possible technologies come in: 120fps enabled First Person Viewer (FPV) Headsets, online streaming, and Racing Simulators for training.
Investing in the underlying technologies and sponsoring racers definitely makes sense nowadays, as new companies will pop up as the “best racing clubs”, the “longest-lasting high-performance energy systems”, “the most natural brain control interface developer”, or the “fastest drone manufacturers”, or even “the most efficient athletic hardware manufacturer”.
I hope to see a Ford vs Ferrari scenario in this space in the future and would extrapolate this market to other spaces: fighting (robot combat events are a thing since many years ago), surrogates (using machines or augmented athletes that exceed human ability to compete), and AI (using game engines and machine learning to train crash avoidance and steering algorithms).
With the right resources, any stadium, district, or space can be modernized to support drone racing. This implies a global potential for racing sites, precision drone flying, and perhaps future exotic locations tourism (imagine -given the appropriate precautions- ice, fire, underwater, industrial, hazardous, or space race courses that would be impossible with human pilots).
E-Sports
An already huge market for future-ready companies.
As a video game enthusiast, this market comes as no surprise. It doesn’t require much to find the Nintendo World Championships and Fortnite in the news when searching for e-sports, a market initially expected by Newzoo to surpass $1 Billion in 2020, and then adjusted to $1.059 Million to reflect increased viewership and canceled events after the COVID-19 emergency.
Moreover, we’ve also seen new games coming up that consider a competitive factor on their design, including the latest releases for known genres:
- Fighting: Smash Brothers, Rivals of Aether, Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat, Tekken, Dragonball Fighters, Granblue Fantasy
- First-Person Shooters: Call of Duty, Halo, Unreal Tournament
- Third-Person Shooters: Fortnite, Splatoon, PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, Gears
- Team-Based Shooters: Overwatch, Gigantic, Counter-Strike
- Real-Time Strategy: WarCraft, StarCraft
- Sports: FIFA, Rocket League, Pro Evolution Soccer (PES)
- Multiplayer Online Battle Arenas (MOBAs): Dota, League of Legends
- Racing: Mario Kart, Gran Turismo, Project CARS
- Turn-based: Pokémon, Hearthstone
Of course, this is complemented with the strong communities behind these games, and the competition between streaming and team communication platforms like Twitch, Youtube, and Discord. Both live and post-competition streaming are niches that aggregate thousands of viewers. Twitch for example allows for live chatting where communities can gather around events, donate, and get excited together. We all know how expensive Superbowl commercials can get, and how companies bid million in the fight for broadcasting. New entrants like Disney, Amazon, and DAZN into e-sports wouldn't surprise many, and pixel streaming platforms like Google Stadia might even enable global competition in markets where broadband is available. As 5G+ and fiber-to-home adoption increase, barriers to remote competitive gaming in developing economies would also lower.
Large corporations such as Nintendo, Microsoft, Intel, Sony, Riot Games, Nvidia, Asus, Epic Games, and Blizzard are now investing in specialized hardware, sponsoring teams, and organizing large events for the competitive audience, or including a competitive stage within larger gaming events, including the Nintendo World Championships, Blizzcon, Quakecon, the Fortnite World Cup, the GDC eSports Day, EVO, among others. Prizes pools for these competitions range considerably, but can notably exceed millions of dollars. For example, in 2019, The International DOTA Prize Pool amounted to $34,330,069.00, and the Fortnite World Cup Finals Solo category to $15,287,500.00.
Even retro and classic games like Goldeneye 007, Diddy Kong Racing, Tony Hawk Pro Skater, Super Mario Bros, and Tetris are making a comeback for competitive tournaments, and companies are catching up, hosting many of these at their events, either as head to head battles or speed-running competitions. The Mario Maker competition is one such challenge in which competitors are faced with new obstacle courses from a Mario level designer game.
The fact that many of these events gather massive crowds proves there is a profit to be made for the sponsors and game developers. Here’s a 2019 list of the world’s most notable competitive gaming events, by PC Magazine.
Conclusion
Large corporations are betting on drone racing and e-sports, both considerably interesting markets. Recent events can positively affect these to be adopted faster than expected.
- Nations may consider supporting their local teams and identifying compatible locations and institutions to host competitions.
- Brands might want to consider planting a seed in these spaces or engaging these communities to learn about their local ecosystem, evaluate collaborations, and identify opportunities.
- Entrepreneurs are already tackling these spaces to conquer experiential advantage, positioning themselves as key partners for the other two.
- Enthusiastic individuals and non-competitive hardcore gamers and pilots may consider polishing their skills for a hobby that could one day become a career.
As a racing and videogame enthusiast I would love to see these industries flourish, and will actively monitor, research, and perhaps chip into making this a reality.
