Sport of the future: drone racing

Adam Tinworth

Are you ready for tomorrow's spectator sport - drone racing?

Quartz ran a fascinating feature yesterday on drone racing – a new sport that’s booming as drones become every cheaper and more sophisticated:

Today, the Drone Racing League (DRL) announced its inaugural racing season. The league hopes to be the Formula 1, NASCAR and MotoGP of drone racing, and has secured backing from venture capital firms and celebrities to make that a reality.

The videos are compelling:

Is drone racing the sport of the future?

Welcome to the multimillion-dollar Drone Racing League. It feels like pod racing from Star Wars, but could very well become the first sport of the 21st century.

Posted by Quartz on Tuesday, 26 January 2016

Of course, it’s not all plain sailing (or flying):

The video feed between a drone and the video goggles needed to pilot is currently rather grainy. Higher quality HD videos cause the feeds to lag, which can lead to acute motion sickness for drone pilots and a sense that you’re watching a beat-up old VHS recording for the audience. The DRL’s solution to this problem is a bold one: Forget live viewing (at least for now).

So we’re not in spectator sport territory – yet. But given how quickly professional sports has grown (as we heard at NEXT15), it would be unwise to bet against this…

Learn more at the Drone Racing League.