Broadcasters aim to pilot drone racing to mainstream popularity

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Football, basketball, athletics and cricket may be about to get new competition for popularity as drone racing looks set to fly into the TV schedules.

Recent weeks have seen a number of international broadcasters sign up to the rights to organized events in this young but exciting sport, which involves unmanned aerial vehicles being piloted around obstacle courses.

“We're going to begin airing our sports content with our global distribution partners ESPN, Sky Sports and ProSieben. It's going to be the first chance for an audience around the world to actually see competitive drone racing on TV,” said Nick Horbaczewski, founder and CEO of the 15-month-old Drone Racing League (DRL).

Sky has reportedly agreed to invest a million US dollars in the DRL, and Eurosport last month also joined the broadcasting race by signing a one-year deal with DR1 Racing, a Los Angeles-based drone racing organization.

"A year ago, drone racing didn’t exist. It’s a growing sport, it’s a new sport. It’s exciting, it marries technology, sporting competition and storytelling altogether, and that’s really what you want in good entertainment and good sport," said Jon Ollwerther, COO of drone builder Aerobo.

Drone race organizers have faced challenges figuring out the best way for spectators to follow the action.

"It's just very hard to film them,” said Horbaczewski. “These things are the size of a dinner plate and they go 80 mph (130 km/h). We're racing them on complex three dimensional courses, which is unlike any other form of racing. It took us the better part of a year of experimentation and technology development to get the right knowhow and the right equipment to film the drones in a compelling way.”

So far, the TV audience for drone races has been small. Only 223,000 people watched the US Drone Racing Nationals that were held in New York in September and broadcast on ESPN, according to Nielsen data. That’s not even a blip compared to the 13 million viewers on average that watched Monday night football games last season.

But broadcasters are betting it’ll only be a matter of time before this sport hits the big league.