2020 Sim Racing’s Big Boom
By: Simracer Coin
Tags: Blockchain, Cryptocurrency, Sim Racing, Blockchain Application, Blockchain Startup

2020 has been a very good year for gaming, perhaps as an effect of the lockdowns imposed as an answer to the COVID-19 pandemic. This market growth is expected to continue with this rhythm and it is forecasted to surpass $200Bn in 2023. The global games audience is estimated to be between 2.2 and 2.6 bn people.

Esports, or competitive gaming has also experienced significant growth in 2020 with global eSports revenues estimated to grow to $1.1 billion in 2020, a year-on-year growth of +15.7%, up from $950.6 million in 2019. Globally, the total eSports audience is projected to reach 495.0 million people in 2020 while dedicated eSports fans will consist 222.9 million of this number.

This general growth in gaming was even greater when we think about Sim Racing. Even though Sim Racing was lagging behind the most established competitive gaming titles such as League of Legends, Counter Strike and others, it was experiencing a boost in popularity as early as 2019 and this was greatly expanded during 2020.

Sim Racing’s COVID-19 Boost

After motorsports ground to an abrupt halt as COVID-19 policies went into effect, sim racing experienced a tremendous growth in attention. This was primarily driven by motorsports series switching to sim racing and organizing events to fill the void as well as popular drivers participating and streaming virtual races.

During the period of halt the world’s key racing series moved from the real circuits to those virtually re-created. Formula 1 organized a series of virtual F1 Grand Prix instead of real races. The virtual eSports series was a tremendous success and achieved more than 30 million views during the COVID-19 lockdown. In addition, Nascar, Indycar also launched their own sim racing series on the well know sim racing platform, iRacing. Their races were broadcasted on television in North America reaching similar audiences to the real races. At the same time, the world-famous 24 Hours endurance race of Le Mans was organised and was met with enormous interest and participation.

And not only racing series have been turning their attention to sim racing, even before the pandemic initiatives were started by all the most well-known motorsport organisations. Ferrari, Mercedes, Red Bull, McLaren and Williams teams have specific eSports driver development programs. Scuderia Ferrari team principal Mattia Binotto said: “We understand the importance of gaming for the new generation, and eSports is part of our Ferrari Driver Academy program. It’s not something which is fully separated, it is a part of it”. BMW also continued to grow its presence in sim racing, with GT trio Bruno Spengler, Nicky Catsburg and Jesse Krohn getting a podium at the IMSA Sebring race on iRacing. Its drivers also took part in iRacing’s Nürburgring Endurance Series, while the Junior Team turned to rFactor 2 for the BMW SIM M2 CS Racing Cup.

McLaren’s Lando Norris and Carlos Sainz, as well as Red Bull’s Max Vertsappen are also well-known in the sim racing community and can be often seen competing. Their online live streams are watched by thousands of viewers and the regular sim racers have a chance to compete against professional drivers.

Max Verstappen caught leading a NASCAR A Fixed race at Charlotte Roval in iRacing (October 2020)

More sim racers and more viewers

These events and the lack of on-track action increased the visibility of sim racing and led to a dramatic increase in active users and viewers.

By April 2020 the total number of active subscribers to the most popular simracing platform, iRacing, had increased by almost 50%, totaling 160.000 subscribers from 110.000 in January. iRacing has seen a tremendous growth of new subscriptions, with the subscription rate being 8 times more than what it was before the COVID-19 crisis.

The rise of popularity was also accompanied by a rise of spectators watching sim racing events. Sim racing viewership saw an increase of +117% for live hours watched on Twitch and YouTube between February and April. The niche simulation racer genre boasted its highest PC player share ever in March — up 28% since January.

The sim racing market is projected to increase by almost 50% between 2020 and 2022 with a projected value of over $9bn. This growth also reflects the general growth of eSports the market for which is estimated to double, reaching more than 1.6 Bn in 2023.

It is in this environment that we think makes it an ideal time for the innovations the Simracer Coin project will bring into the simracing ecosystem.

The Simracer Coin Project

The Simracer Coin project is building a decentralized financial infrastructure for the growing sim racing ecosystem.

Building on Ethereum, our decentralised marketplace will allow anyone to sell and purchase sim racing assets such as car modification setup files, car paints and skins and also services such as online coaching from expert drivers. The private leagues will also have the chance to add a new dimension to the competition, a parallel management game where you can own your car and it’s parts, represented by crypto assets, manage a budget, deal with damage costs and realistically manage a racing team.

By putting these digital assets on the blockchain, they will be transformed into tradable crypto assets with increased liquidity and ease of exchange. We aim to develop our platform as the backbone of the microtransactions involved in the simracing ecosystem driven by adoption from drivers, leagues and fans.

Project’s current phase

After successfully deploying our token in the Ethereum blockchain, at this stage we are in the process of raising seed capital and we expect to do an IEO (Initial Exchange Offering) in a major exchange in the coming months. We’re currently listed in one exchange, Catex.io, where you can buy/sell the available Simracer Coin for Bitcoin or Ether. In order to keep up to date with the development of our project follow us in our social media or message us in our Discord.

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