Racing Prodigy Turns Gamers Into Pro Race Car Drivers

Should you’re a gamer, you have possible heard no less than 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 high skilled drivers. Players of all ages are leaping from couches into cockpits, proving video video games might be extra than simply senseless leisure. However to totally bridge the hole between digital and real-world racing, Racing Prodigy should tackle 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 largest barrier to motorsport participation is the associated fee,” says CEO and co-founder David Cook. A typical three-day racing faculty, the place most drivers get their begin, can price as much as $7,000, making the game inaccessible to most. On high of that, Prepare 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 approach in,” Fassnacht says. “Think about if I advised you you may play within the Tremendous Bowl for $5 million, $10 million, or $20 million, relying on the place. That is sort of how motorsports works.” He and Prepare dinner are decided to alter this with Racing Prodigy.

“We need to create a mannequin that provides proficient, hard-working racers a sustainable profession path,” Prepare dinner says. “I do not need this to be about cash,” Fassnacht provides. “I would like the perfect individuals to be there.”

Prepare dinner describes the present enterprise mannequin as “damaged,” explaining the associated fee typically exceeds the worth for members. “If you do not have a sure title, how will you increase six or seven figures to compete in a sequence that is not Method One?” Prepare dinner says. He believes the answer is a extra trendy method to grassroots expertise acquisition—utilizing racing simulator video games as a scouting instrument. “The easiest way to try this is thru racing video games,” he says.

Fassnacht and Prepare dinner aren’t simply empty fits; each have been behind the wheel and skilled the game’s pitfalls firsthand. Prepare dinner led a program at Mazda in 2014 that skilled skilled drivers utilizing racing simulators. “There are two individuals on this planet who’ve taken sim sport or sport racers and put them in race automobiles,” Fassnacht says. “Dave’s considered one of them.” Prepare dinner believes Racing Prodigy surpasses that previous 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 Road Kart Racing on iOS units, Gran Turismo, and iRacing,” Prepare dinner says. The league’s high 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 truly racing on the course,” Prepare dinner says. “It is only a numbers sport.”

Fueling Up the Fandom

Constructing a devoted fanbase is important to Racing Prodigy’s long-term success. Prepare dinner believes one of the best ways to do that is by showcasing the drivers’ private tales. They’re creating a docuseries much like Netflix’s Drive to Survive, which spotlighted Method 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 foremost differentiators for our program,” Prepare 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 should go residence.” 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, knowledge comprehension, and health. In the end, 24 earned paid racing contracts and have been drafted by six groups, whereas six extra have been saved by a fan vote. Followers should 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 residence, which might be troublesome for each drivers and followers,” Prepare dinner says. “That is important for constructing an viewers.”

The Highway to Success

Happily, Racing Prodigy has a built-in viewers. “Over a billion avid gamers say racing is their most popular online game style,” Fassnacht says. Whereas the preexisting curiosity is encouraging, Fassnacht warns that this viewers is tough to achieve with out authenticity. “They’re going to simply be like, ‘Nope, you did not do what you mentioned you’d do.’ That is why we spent a lot time proving this might work.” Racing Prodigy plans to seize avid gamers’ consideration by bringing acquainted faces from the digital world into real-life racing occasions.

One other key differentiator is Racing Prodigy’s possession construction. Not like most sports activities leagues, the corporate is vertically built-in. “We personal all the pieces,” Fassnacht says—guidelines, groups, automobiles, and governing our bodies. In conventional racing, groups management their engineering, testing, and transport. Racing Prodigy, nonetheless, homes all automobiles beneath one roof and manages them with one set of crew and engineers. This reduces operational prices, breaking the monetary barrier to entry. “The price 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,” Prepare dinner says.

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This environment friendly mannequin has caught the eye of buyers, together with Actual Madrid goalkeeper Thibaut Courtois, who sponsors his personal workforce, TC Racing. “What stands out to me most about Racing Prodigy is the way it gives 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 cross up.”

With its revolutionary mannequin and people-first tradition, Racing Prodigy is reworking what was as soon as only a pastime right into a authentic pathway to skilled success—proving pixels can certainly pave the highway to glory.