FIA Release Sim Racing Esports Survey Findings

iRacing FIA F4.jpg
Image: iRacing.com
In an attempt to garner an idea of what direction they should take when it comes to sim racing and esports, the FIA released a survey in which 12,000 people took part. They have now just unveiled all the findings.

The FIA has become more and more involved with sim racing and esports in recent years. From 2018 to 2021, Gran Turismo's official championship was FIA-certified, and the motorsport governing body has formed an alliance with iRacing which resulted in the introduction of the F4 car to the service.

To test the waters of a potential expansion of their sim racing involvement, the FIA conducted a survey which launched in November. In this survey, they have been exploring which avenues to go down in the event they expand their ventures in sim racing esports. The results are in, with a few interesting findings.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1805586692859900166

Community Choices​

Many different racing platforms were available as options to be selected, and the consensus is that 68% of people picked iRacing as the sim racing title to be used in national and international competition.

Considering the global popularity of different types of racing, it is also little to no surprise that a strong majority of 94% selected circuit racing as the most interesting discipline, as opposed to oval and dirt. Additionally, 84% of those surveyed have specified that they use a PC for sim racing.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1799153386589176284

Of course, it is also worth pointing out that out of the supposed sim racing and esports fans who took the survey, only 62% are actually interested in sim racing and esports. More surprisingly, however, only 61% of responders claim to be extremely interested in real world motorsport.

You would think that sim racing fans being motorsport fans and vice versa would be formalities, but this does not appear to be the case. In a community question on our website in May 2023, roughly 73% of those who responded claimed that real motorsport was their first love, which then led to sim racing.

The FIA's Next Step​

What will the FIA do with these findings? They may be looking into making their own dedicated sim racing championship after the Gran Turismo partnership ended. The FIA are closely aligned with iRacing, with their upcoming F4 Esports Global Championship and the Esports F4 Cup competition in October's FIA Motorsport Games. The GT portion of the esports discipline will be run on Assetto Corsa Competizione.

It remains to be seen what the FIA make of their findings. But the insight itself is already interesting to have.

What do you make of the FIA Esports Community Survey findings? Let us know on Twitter @OverTake_gg or in the comments below!
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About author
RedLMR56
Luca Munro
Biggest sim racing esports fan in the world.

More in F1 & Motorsport

Comments

P
More surprisingly, however, only 61% of responders claim to be extremely interested in real world motorsport.
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This is the only stat published that surprises me, and that I find worrysome. The interest on motorsports as a whole seems to be on the decline, and the business opportunities inside of it are more complex to make work compared to some decades ago. But having nearly a third of people actively using sims to not have an interest on what the real counterparts of the virtual cars they use are about is not a good thing, for several reasons.

Both parts should continue to work together and find ways to have an activity feed from the other. And no, I'm not talking about porting simracers into the track or viceversa, that's more of an interesting experiment than anything but does not add value on the long run. What could be, I don't know, and perhaps it's not even possible to make happen, but a better put-together effort is nowadays lacking. Maybe this survey was the first step? I hope so.
 
B
Only 12000 people taking part in a sim racing survey? Would hardly call that a conclusive set of results. There are probably more members on Overtake than that.
 
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Richard Wilks
BruceD said:
Only 12000 people taking part in a sim racing survey? Would hardly call that a conclusive set of results. There are probably more members on Overtake than that.
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I guess what that shows is that nobody cares about racing esports, except the people involved in it... which we all already know. Something reinforced by what Pai highlighted, a big chunk of them dont even care about real racing, and are only here because they are gamers who want to make money, or are affiliated with esports business in on way or the other.
 
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P
BruceD said:
Only 12000 people taking part in a sim racing survey? Would hardly call that a conclusive set of results. There are probably more members on Overtake than that.
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A 1% sample size will give quite conclusive results on the overall result, as clear trends are not turned around easily as the sample size grows. You will find that many polls published on several subjects use sample sizes that are even smaller than that, and taken as truth

My take on this is that this poll is indicative of what a million of simracers think about this subject. That's a bigger number than what some well established racing series have on overall followers at their social media platforms.

Edit: or maybe not, see post below.
 
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P
Richard Wilks said:
I guess what that shows is that nobody cares about racing esports, except the people involved in it... which we all already know. Something reinforced by what Pai highlighted, a big chunk of them dont even care about real racing, and are only here because they are gamers who want to make money, or are affiliated with esports business in on way or the other.
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Well, that's another thing to ponder. The number of people showing interest on esports seems twisted to a higher value than expected. But it wouldn't be the first time that cold numbers debunk my perceptions :)

More important that % sample size is making sure that the people polled are representative of the communities you want to get data from. And I frankly don't know how this poll was conducted.
 
mouzerofficial
Only 12000 people taking part in a sim racing survey? Would hardly call that a conclusive set of results. There are probably more members on Overtake than that.
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12,000 is more than enough of a sample size bro, I actually was surprised it was 12k and not 1,200. I can also get what they are saying, as many of us have full time careers (which goes hand in hand with the higher cost of "entry") and got into Sim Racing originally just to RACE, not watch others race. I believe this is the subset of sim racers who joined the community because of the pure interest in the sim, and did not have any prior racing fandom experience. I literally just bit the bullet and got a logi at a pawn shot 12 months ago and now I have a full tr160 rig with an alpha mini, but have probably only watched a handful of actual races in my life. Best move I ever made though.
 
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P
mouzerofficial said:
12,000 is more than enough of a sample size bro, I actually was surprised it was 12k and not 1,200. I can also get what they are saying, as many of us have full time careers (which goes hand in hand with the higher cost of "entry") and got into Sim Racing originally just to RACE, not watch others race. I believe this is the subset of sim racers who joined the community because of the pure interest in the sim, and did not have any prior racing fandom experience. I literally just bit the bullet and got a logi at a pawn shot 12 months ago and now I have a full tr160 rig with an alpha mini, but have probably only watched a handful of actual races in my life. Best move I ever made though.
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This makes me genuinely curious :) What drove you to get you a Logi kit first? And second, has not your interest in motorsports been increased by one tiny bit after a full year of simracing? I mean, many of the titles featured on this website are about trying to simulate real life motorsports, so I'm intrigued about the PoV of somebody who did not have an interest on it.
 
mouzerofficial
pai said:
This makes me genuinely curious :) What drove you to get you a Logi kit first? And second, has not your interest in motorsports been increased by one tiny bit after a full year of simracing? I mean, many of the titles featured on this website are about trying to simulate real life motorsports, so I'm intrigued about the PoV of somebody who did not have an interest on it.
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I was trying to expand my interest in Gaming beyond just shooters etc., and just wanted to try it out and see how I liked it. I actually first tried flight sim but just too much for me to invest into with the learning curve. Next logical step was sim racing. I will admit I have been more interested in whats going on in the racing world, reading news, learning about drivers, rules, strategies (90% from here tbh). The problem is I work full time and when I get the chance to finally sit at my Rig, that would be the time I would have to watch recaps, check upcoming schedules, or whatever. Also It got me into modding for AC (I made the St. Pete 2024 map from April), which took even more time from even Sim Racing. So I feel just the interest for me is THERE, but I can only squeeze so much out of the hobby lol. :)
 
B
pai said:
A 1% sample size will give quite conclusive results on the overall result, as clear trends are not turned around easily as the sample size grows. You will find that many polls published on several subjects use sample sizes that are even smaller than that, and taken as truth

My take on this is that this poll is indicative of what a million of simracers think about this subject. That's a bigger number than what some well established racing series have on overall followers at their social media platforms.

Edit: or maybe not, see post below.
Click to expand...
I disagree, because it all depends where you post that survey. 8160 of your 12000 may say iRacing, but then you get say 24000 people on a Gran Turismo forum suddenly do the survey and you get a different result. So I doubt they have a very accurate result of the entire sim community.

Real world example, here in South Africa we've just had our national elections. One province was won comfortably by one party with 45% of the votes because they all voted based on tribal heritage. But when the other 8 provinces were tallied their total dropped to 15% and they dropped to 3rd in the country. 27 million people voted but if you'd asked 1% of them who to vote for and they all happened to be in that one province, your result would look quite different to the overall one.

A bit like that time the FIA released a survey result saying 360 million people watched Formula E.... but only asked 6000 people what they thought...

Nothing against iRacing itself, I'm sure it would win anyway, just irritates me when surveyors are lazy and get a tiny group of results and then act like it's the definitive results.
 
P
BruceD said:
I disagree, because it all depends where you post that survey. 8160 of your 12000 may say iRacing, but then you get say 24000 people on a Gran Turismo forum suddenly do the survey and you get a different result. So I doubt they have a very accurate result of the entire sim community.

Real world example, here in South Africa we've just had our national elections. One province was won comfortably by one party with 45% of the votes because they all voted based on tribal heritage. But when the other 8 provinces were tallied their total dropped to 15% and they dropped to 3rd in the country. 27 million people voted but if you'd asked 1% of them who to vote for and they all happened to be in that one province, your result would look quite different to the overall one.

A bit like that time the FIA released a survey result saying 360 million people watched Formula E.... but only asked 6000 people what they thought...

Nothing against iRacing itself, I'm sure it would win anyway, just irritates me when surveyors are lazy and get a tiny group of results and then act like it's the definitive results.
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Well, that's why I followed up saying that how the poll was conducted was more important that the percentage of sample size, as I do recognize all the problems that may stem out of it, like the examples you mentioned.

I don't think the sample size is a problem at all here. But if it was taken from just a handful communities with a defined mindset that will be quite different from other big communities outside of it, then results will be skewed, no matter if sample size is 0.1, 1, 10, or even 100%.
 
P
mouzerofficial said:
I was trying to expand my interest in Gaming beyond just shooters etc., and just wanted to try it out and see how I liked it. I actually first tried flight sim but just too much for me to invest into with the learning curve. Next logical step was sim racing. I will admit I have been more interested in whats going on in the racing world, reading news, learning about drivers, rules, strategies (90% from here tbh). The problem is I work full time and when I get the chance to finally sit at my Rig, that would be the time I would have to watch recaps, check upcoming schedules, or whatever. Also It got me into modding for AC (I made the St. Pete 2024 map from April), which took even more time from even Sim Racing. So I feel just the interest for me is THERE, but I can only squeeze so much out of the hobby lol. :)
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Thank you. In your story I see something that I think could be happening more: an activity feeding from the other back and forth. An interest of exploring another gaming genre had you involved in simracing, then your interest in real life motorsport increased in a way, and you even delivered something back to simracing via a mod. Yours is just one case, but I don't think it's far fetched to have more, and that's the kind of symbiotic relationship that should be incentivized IMO.
 
Chatopex
I’d probably only watch a documentary about how virtual racers have come up with this crazy cheating scheme that's totally ruining eSports. The number of cheaters in sim racing is just as bad as the mess the real motorsport world is in. In the end, thanks to a few greedy folks, we'll all be chilling in our pajamas, watching Netflix, and reminiscing about the good old days.
 
Pete Conway
I recently performed my own survey on sim racing, albeit with less participants... the results were surprising.

I asked my everyone in my household would they rather
A: eat Orio's for a day
or
B: watch a Sim race
it was an equal 50/50 split

I then asked everyone in my household would you rather
A: watch a Sim
or
B: race a sim race
This again was inconclusive as 50% of the participants refused to answer and walked off, but the remaining participant answered B... that's 100% would rather do it than watch it (now where have I heard that before)
 
I
There is smth wrong with their sample data, if they choose iRacing it will be a GIGANTIC mistake. You can't have AC in the millions, GT in the millions & choose iRacing. Makes absolutely ZERO sense. I bet the new AC EVO will also go into the millions.
 
M
Premium
ivanalesi said:
There is smth wrong with their sample data, if they choose iRacing it will be a GIGANTIC mistake. You can't have AC in the millions, GT in the millions & choose iRacing. Makes absolutely ZERO sense. I bet the new AC EVO will also go into the millions.
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The ac player base has very diverse interests , they are not all into online competition. GT is the same , there is a strong single player base ( which everyone always seems to forget about ). People only play iRacing for one reason in general , the competitive online , because the rest of it is bang average so why else would you be there ?
 
Botmeister
ivanalesi said:
There is smth wrong with their sample data, if they choose iRacing it will be a GIGANTIC mistake. You can't have AC in the millions, GT in the millions & choose iRacing. Makes absolutely ZERO sense. I bet the new AC EVO will also go into the millions.
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  • For an FIA approved e-sport series, you'll probably want a simulator where (official) sporting regulations can be applied. And with all due respect AC is very popular because of its versatility, but not for applying specif sets of rules.
  • You can't continuously improve your e-sports series with an out-of date 10-year-old simulator. It will be hard to get Kunos on board for such a plan, because they're focussed on their 2nd (!) game after AC.
  • The ability to cheat is probably also a factor when choosing a sim. Difficult subject because it can also happen with iRacing. But at least you would want the ability to check certain data before/during/after the race somehow. I think iRacing is more suitable for this.
  • Sample data is never wrong. At most it's incomplete. Only the conclusions you take from the data can be wrong.
 
I
Depends on how you get the sample. I can make a poll amongst racing fans in 99% in China who is the greatest racing driver & it'll be 68% Zhou!
Clearly this one is pretty engineered hand picked sample. Even if 1% of AC or GT users are into online racing, they'd totally outnumber iracing.
I mean, this is like the elections in some crazy totalitarian country type of rigged poll. I've been having low opinion of iracing for technical matters, but this is just another level of fakery... Do you remember Comical Ali? I guess he's their new PR guy!
 

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