Motorsport Games Revenues Jump 76% Following Le Mans Ultimate Early Access

Motorsport Games Revenues Jump 76% Following Le Mans Ultimate Early Access .jpg
Images: Motorsport Games
The company is still posting losses and is burning cash, but its recent release has stemmed the flow somewhat.

Revenues for Motorsport Games jumped 76% to $3.0 million in the first quarter of 2024, compared to $1.7m this time last year.

The main progenitor of the swing came from the release, in early access form, of Le Mans Ultimate – the official simulation of the FIA World Endurance Championship.

It also received a follow-up payment from iRacing for the NASCAR game licencing agreement this quarter of $500,000.

“Higher digital game sales were primary drivers for this increase, primarily as a result of the result of the Le Mans Ultimate game for PC in February 2024,” said Stanley Beckley, interim Chief Financial Officer at Motorsport Games.

LMU Bahrain.jpg


Despite this, the embattled racing game developer still posted a net loss of $1,683,398. While still in the red, the results pale in comparison to the $5,259,192 posted (a 67.99% change) in same period last year. It’s also the smallest loss it has reported since 2020.

Similarly, it reported an average monthly cash burn of $1.1m per month in 2023 and $1.9m in that Q1. Whereas, so far in 2024 that is down to $0.3m.

As of 31st March, it has cash and cash equivalents of approximately $1.3 million remaining. Of note, a month later (30th April), its cash equivalents remained valued at $1.3 million.

Its total accumulated deficit to date is a staggering $88,665,020. It has not reported any net debt.

Shares rose 32 per cent during trading on Tuesday.

While these are the most optimistic figures reported by the Miami-headquartered outfit in several years, it remains circumspect.

“The Company does not believe it has sufficient cash on hand to fund its operations over the next year and that additional funding will be required in order to continue operations,” reads the report – as Motorsport Games reports have done now for quite some time.

Le Mans Ultimate Glick.jpg


“We’ve worked hard over the last 12 months and the result is an upturn in our Q1 results," said Motorsport Games CEO Stephen Hood.

“We still have some way to go but I hope you agree we have turned the page and have positive momentum.

“We’re excited about the remainder of this year and in particular the upcoming Le Mans event in June.”

“We are feeling very positive about this Q1, we see it as a stepping stone.”

Le Mans Ultimate is set to expand across the year, with a notable update expected next month to time with the real-world 24 Hours of Le Mans race.
About author
Thomas Harrison-Lord
A freelance sim racing, motorsport and automotive journalist. Credits include Autosport Magazine, Motorsport.com, RaceDepartment, OverTake, Traxion and TheSixthAxis.

Comments

Great news for sim racers everywhere... This is far more positive than I thought it would be even after their upswing from the last report...

Although there's a few unfortunate souls out there that still feel burned by MSGS... They aren't the worst thing to happen to sim racers, we've seen far worse...
 
Premium
Enjoying it so far with limited vehicles on the Grid due to Hamster Wheel Driven PC:rolleyes::D....but this pales into comparison with the money needed to execute such a Game:confused:...best of luck moving forward in the future:thumbsup:
 
Premium
Next big update will be in June. Only bug fixing patches this month.

But I sure hope they will survive because LMU is fantastic. Full WEC grid with Le Mans and Sebring is pretty much the dream come true. Haven't been driving anything else for awhile.

Can I inquire about your CPU / GPU specs, as what do you have?
 
76% increase is a nice way to present numbers if you were almost bankrupt a few months ago :laugh:

But honestly, I think it's a very nice sim that needs polishing and some new features. Hopefully they manage to improve it and perhaps we'll see the LM Virtual comeback next year? I do hope so!
 
Premium
I reluctantly bought Le Mans Ultimate a couple weeks ago and it's actually fantastic.
I like touring cars far more than sports cars, so now I really want a BTCC Ultimate game.
Let's keep this money train chuggin' along!
View attachment 752175
I would also like to see this but I’m not sure on the viability of individual games for each series.

How many people will want to buy a whole new game as opposed to buying the content as Premium DLC for an existing game.

You just have to look through the comments section to see the wide variety of views on how much people are prepared to pay for content.

However much people might moan about various issues with games it’s got to be pretty tough to make the numbers work in Sim development.
 
Premium
I reluctantly bought Le Mans Ultimate a couple weeks ago and it's actually fantastic
And now I love LMU. He is great. I eagerly await the next update. There is a lot of work to do.
Congrats and keep up the good work!
 
So 3M revenue and 1.7M net loss in a quarter. That means they spent 4.7M in the quarter. On what? Not mostly on developers, I think there are only 10-15 people working on this game. So probably this is servicing debt?

In any case I hope there is a business case for having 10-15 people in S397 work on rfactor 2 games and make money even if the whole of MGS goes belly up and the debt is wiped out hy bankrupcy.
 
Premium
All of the people saying they love LMU and they do nothing but play it and yet according to this article it's the least played sim at the moment. It has even less players than rF2, which is unfortunately pretty much deserted.

It has no console release, which is the biggest market for this kind of games (look at the F1 and MotoGP franchises), the only marketing is done at the WEC weekends and even the official commentators spelled it wrong with Graham Goodwin calling it "Le Mans Unlimited".

That cash flow from back in february is just a momentary thing which has already stalled. There's no momentum and they should do something fast.
 
Premium
RF2 and I believe LMU do tend to rely quite heavily on a few CPU cores so on some systems when running full grids it will be your CPU that is bottlenecking rather than the GPU. If you run monitoring software you will probaly see one core maxed out, a couple quite high and the rest fairly low.
 
I would also like to see this but I’m not sure on the viability of individual games for each series.

How many people will want to buy a whole new game as opposed to buying the content as Premium DLC for an existing game.

From a developer's and publisher's veiwpoint it actually makes a lot of sense to make individual games, and is almost certainly more viable than just releasing DLC for an existing game.

Releasing a dedicated BTCC game is likely to sell way more than the BTCC content for rF2 did. There are hell of a lot of people who would be interested in a BTCC game who are not hardcore simracers. In fact I'd say most of these people probably don't know much about rF2, let alone know that there's BTCC content available for it.

By producing a standalone BTCC game the publisher can reach a far far wider audience than just through rF2 DLC alone, and therefore sell a lot more copies.

From my personal point I've view I'd much rather have separate sims that are focused on particular disciplines of motorsport than a sim where everything is just lumped together. I have rF2 and all of the content, but I never use it because despite it being an excellent sim and driving experience the rest of it is just a disparate disorganised mess. Therefore LMU was a no brainer for me, as will be a BTCC title based on rF2.
 
Premium
From a developer's and publisher's veiwpoint it actually makes a lot of sense to make individual games, and is almost certainly more viable than just releasing DLC for an existing game.

Releasing a dedicated BTCC game is likely to sell way more than the BTCC content for rF2 did. There are hell of a lot of people who would be interested in a BTCC game who are not hardcore simracers. In fact I'd say most of these people probably don't know much about rF2, let alone know that there's BTCC content available for it.

By producing a standalone BTCC game the publisher can reach a far far wider audience than just through rF2 DLC alone, and therefore sell a lot more copies.

From my personal point I've view I'd much rather have separate sims that are focused on particular disciplines of motorsport than a sim where everything is just lumped together. I have rF2 and all of the content, but I never use it because despite it being an excellent sim and driving experience the rest of it is just a disparate disorganised mess. Therefore LMU was a no brainer for me, as will be a BTCC title based on rF2.
It probably depends what price you charge, the content and who you are marketing it to.

A BTCC game just covering 2024 is 8 Tracks + 2 variations and 6 cars. If you are PC only most of that content is already available in various games and mods. Console development and jumping through MS and PS hoops costs a whole lot more for the developer.

As I said I’d quite happily buy it, but how big is the market, S397 obviously couldn’t get the numbers to add up Raceroom the other big TC game does it as DLC.
 
I bought it the first day it was released. I turned it on for 10 races, it crashed 6 times, lag problems and I have Ryzen 7800X3D and Radeon 7900 XTX. I haven't turned it on since then, and in fact I won't until it hits the league event servers. I remain loyal to rFactor 2 and super races. In the last month, we drove 24 hours of SPA, 8 hours of LeMans and endurance races.
 

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