Apparently, car racing esports are not nearly as popular as sponsors and developers make them out to be.

Your average sanctioned iRacing event can barely get 5,000 views on YouTube, the official esports teams have very small social media presences and only like and retweet each others tweets; and at official Gran Turismo and F1 esports events, the crowd sizes tend to be rather underwhelming.

When you do see an audience, that's because it's mostly made up of sponsors, VIP members, and family members. There is almost no organic, grassroots fanbase around racing esports.

Gran Turismo Sport was curated around esports to the extent of being online only, and only a fraction of that game's players play the esports modes it was designed around.

Furthermore, that game has official FIA (the promoter for WRC, F1, and other big name real world racing leagues) championships, and the participants don't even get paid. They all have to pay for their own travel and accommodation, and in especially egregious cases, have had to give controllers and other prizes earned in the events back to the organizers.

All those hours spent behind the wheel of a pretend racecar, sacrificing one's life to become a top pro racing game player; are essentially for nothing other than maybe bragging rights. The same is almost certainly true of GT's contemporaries like iRacing as well.

Apparently, car racing esports are not nearly as popular as sponsors and developers make them out to be.

Your average sanctioned iRacing event can barely get 5,000 views on YouTube, the official esports teams have very small social media presences and only like and retweet each others tweets; and at official Gran Turismo and F1 esports events, the crowd sizes tend to be rather underwhelming.

When you do see an audience, that's because it's mostly made up of sponsors, VIP members, and family members. There is almost no organic, grassroots fanbase around racing esports.

Gran Turismo Sport was curated around esports to the extent of being online only, and only a fraction of that game's players play the esports modes it was designed around.

Furthermore, that game has official FIA (the promoter for WRC, F1, and other big name real world racing leagues) championships, and the participants don't even get paid. They all have to pay for their own travel and accommodation, and in especially egregious cases, have had to give controllers and other prizes earned in the events back to the organizers.

All those hours spent behind the wheel of a pretend racecar, sacrificing one's life to become a top pro racing game player; are essentially for nothing other than maybe bragging rights. The same is almost certainly true of GT's contemporaries like iRacing as well.

I want to encourage everyone on this forum to check out the YouTube channel Austin Ogonoski.

He's done an excellent job of breaking down what really happens behind the scenes of racing game culture and how it has sometimes even affected real world racing. He has also discussed how esports participants in this genre are essentially tricked into thinking they'll be big stars by dedicating their whole life to a game only to be taken advantage of by greedy promoters.

He's currently a game tester, but also an oval race car driver at the grassroots level, so he knows exactly what he's talking about having come from both scenes and understood their respective ins and outs.

Because of this, he's also discussed how the esports to real life racing stars are grossly misrepresented in the media. Essentially, such drivers like the GT Academy graduates and NASCAR racers like Josh Berry or Willliam Byron already had a good amount of real world race experience; therefore, their performances in video games were another way the people around them helped market them to teams and sponsors better.

I know this was a long comment, but there are a lot of factors behind why racing esports work the way they do.