Drone racing league (DRL) founded by Nick Horbaczewski in 2015 has been making progress and its popularity has been on the rise too. It raised $12M last year but this year they have been successful in raising the funds to almost double from the last year’s numbers.
Corporate giants like Allianz and Sky et al have contributed approximately $20M to the extravagant drone racing sport.
Nick Horbaczewski was reported to confirm an increase in the viewership of the newly formed sport. He boasted a 33M television viewership with 40M watching it online in the year 2016 alone. The money that has been raised will be used in growing the broadcast audience as well as in improving the drones and investing more in the drone technology.
Emma Lloyd who is a director of business developments and partnerships at Sky broadcaster said that the drone racing was favourable and in a ‘sweet spot’ between the technology, media and sports world.
“It’s unusual for a company at this stage to have high consumer traction and significant corporate traction,” she added.
“When we found out we could follow our initial investment and be a lead investor in this round we did it.”
Jean-Marc Pailhol who is a head global market management & distribution at Allianz spoke that Allianz was first a sponsor of the sport but seeing the great potential and uniqueness of the game they bought an equity stake of the sport.
He also said that this investment in the drone racing is only a part of the broader vision of building and creating digital sports just like Red Bull, the drinks company, which has started off with its own digital sport, the cliff diving.
