Take off at high speed, dive to sprint, pass through obstacles, and then do a 360-degree roll… If you operate it properly, you can "drive" this fluorescent-colored drone to the finish line and greet the cheers from fans around the world; but If you are unlucky, an experienced veteran may "explode" within 3 seconds of the start, and a drone costing several thousand dollars may be scrapped.
This is the thrill of drone racing, much like racing a car.
Racing drone appearance. DRL's drones used for racing are better known in China as "traversing machines". This emerging sport was born around 2014. It is regarded as a combination of e-sports and sports. It is also known as "Aerial F1" – professional racing drones can reach a top speed of more than 200km/h, and the competition rules are the same. It’s a points system, and the viewing experience is similarly tense and gripping.
Drone racing events first emerged in Europe and the United States, and gradually attracted many players and audiences around the world. Several organizations and events were established one after another. Among them, the Drone Racing League DRL (Drone) from New York, USA is the largest one. DRL was founded in 2015 and received US$20 million in Series B financing in 2017. It has currently held more than 50 related events around the world.
Although there are no statistical data on the domestic racing drone market, broadly speaking, the domestic civilian drone market has huge potential. Data from the China Business Industry Research Institute shows that the domestic market size of civilian drones (including aerial photography, competition, etc.) has increased from 2.4 billion yuan in 2015 to 22 billion yuan in 2019, an increase of nearly ten times in five years. It is predicted that it will reach 36.1 billion yuan in 2020. Jiemian has also reported on its domestic competitions earlier.
As early as 2017, Huayan Capital, a domestic capital investor in DRL, stated that it would support DRL’s entry into the Chinese market. This plan has made new progress in 2020. DRL signed its first Chinese professional pilot last year and announced that it will hold the world championship in China for the first time in 2020 to tap more Chinese professional players.
Due to the epidemic, the final time of this championship, originally scheduled to be held in Shanghai in September, cannot be determined for the time being. Jiemian News recently conducted an exclusive interview with the chairman of DRL and its first Chinese contracted pilot Lai Jinghao (MODA). They talked about their views on the epidemic, the development of Chinese drones and other topics.
Domestic time traveling machine players: Witness from 0 to 1
Drone racing is an emerging technology sport in recent years. Together with e-sports and robot fighting, it is also known as the three "smart technology sports".
Although drones are used to define it at home and abroad, it is actually more like a model aircraft: it lacks autonomous cruising capabilities, but is much lighter than an aerial drone and can be assembled freely to complete many stunts. It also has an additional accessory: FPV (First View) glasses, which look like AR glasses. After wearing them, pilots can control the drone more clearly and immersively.
The speed is so fast that the body is covered with more than 1,000 luminous lights to allow spectators to distinguish the players by color. Lai Jinghao, who was born in DRL in 1995, is one of the earliest players in China to be exposed to drone racing. He liked model airplanes since he was a child. When he was in college, he learned about the flying aircraft through a forum, and he couldn't stop it.
"I practiced in the open space of the school almost every day." He said, but because domestic equipment had not yet developed, the hardware became a flaw at that time. "At that time, we didn't even have FPV glasses, so we could only use a small monitor to see the picture. The equipment was not very user-friendly, and it was easy to burn out. It took a lot of effort to debug it by yourself."
Someone else wrote an article and joked that crashing into a plane, falling into a net, falling into the water, and the extremely high scrap rate are the speed and passion of drone racing.
Unlike e-sports games that can be started with a mobile phone or computer, the threshold for ordinary people to play racing drones is indeed not low. The cost of purchasing equipment and the frequency of equipment maintenance are relatively high, and they must be assembled by themselves, just like a niche circles. An insider in the drone industry told Jiemian News: "Although our company also produces flying drones, its market is relatively small and can be basically ignored compared with consumer (aerial photography) drones."
Because of this, specialization and competition are the main development directions of racing drones. From small local clubs to large leagues such as DRL that hold global broadcast events, they not only design racing competitions to be more watchable, but also support and train pilots in terms of technology, equipment, and funds.
Around 2016, there were also racing competitions organized by enthusiasts in China. Lai Jinghao went from regional competitions to large-scale events. In 2019, he went abroad for the first time to participate in the DRL China Invitational Tournament. After winning the championship, he got one of the 12 places in the DRL global tournament that year. At this point, he signed a contract with DRL and began his official career as a professional pilot.
Now there is a more affordable way to become a professional pilot: a simulator. Alliances or game manufacturers, including DRL, have launched their own simulators. The chairman of DRL said: "DRL SIM (simulator) can be purchased on steam for 37 yuan, and our professional pilots also use it for training. "On the forums and forums of time-travel machine players, more and more new players are getting started with DRL, DCL, and other simulators, and then decide whether to get a real machine.
In addition to simulators, the circle of travel machine players has gradually grown in recent years due to the rise of domestic manufacturers such as DJI. However, Lai Jinghao still admitted that this sport "does not have as many people playing it as abroad." He believed that part of the meaning of his participation in international competitions and rankings was to "bring up the entire atmosphere and cultivate the Chinese team of DRL."
With heavy investment into the Chinese market, can DRL make drone racing out of the circle?
This is not the first time that an international drone competition has landed in China. As early as 2018, the European DCL Alliance tried to cooperate with domestic companies and held an international invitational competition in Beijing, but it did not seem to cause much splash.
DRL, which held competitions in China two years later than its rival DCL, has put a lot of effort into local marketing in China this time. Since last year, in addition to high-profile signings of Chinese pilots and announcements of holding competitions in Shanghai, DRL has also been very active on social media. Its main Weibo currently has 1.1 million fans and has released many live and recorded videos of events. In addition, DRL has also reached a streaming media cooperation with Youku. According to reports, its game videos currently have more than 70 million views.
DRL said it hopes to convert viewers into fans through video playback on the platform. In other words, the focus is to attract new audiences in China who are not yet familiar with drone racing and convert them into fans, as well as encourage them to experience the sport first-hand.
A data is also given: after viewers watched the DRL game, the downloads of DRL SIM (simulator) increased by nearly 30%.
In terms of audience, DRL targets young people, which is consistent with the audience of domestic aerial photography drones. But DRL's ambitions don't stop there. He told Jiemian News that DRL's audiences are "sports fans interested in innovation, technology, and adventure." It not only attracts teenagers, but is also friendly to family audiences. For the common contradictions such as "parents do not support e-sports", their solution is to directly include families into the audience system.
DRL promotes the Weibo of a family playing with drones. In terms of specific actions in the Chinese market, DRL participated in China Joy last year as part of the newly introduced CET national e-sports tour, and was evaluated as "technological and representative of the future." At the beginning of this year, DRL broadcast the 2019 DRL Allianz World Championship season online. According to reports, the average viewership increased by 70% compared with the 2018 season.
DRL, headquartered in New York, where the epidemic is severely affected, has also done some related work. During the school closure, DRL launched a STEM project, using free online courses to teach interested children how to fly and assemble drones on the DRL SIM simulator. In addition, DRL is hosting an online event, with funds raised also being donated to Covid-19 relief efforts.
In the next step, DRL's goal is to attract more Chinese players to become professional players through simulators with lower thresholds, "giving Chinese pilots the opportunity to become the next DRL champion."
From high-profile publicity to social media operations to multiple online competitions, can DRL’s series of initiatives truly break the circle of drone racing in 2020? How many young people will be attracted by it? When its offline events are launched this year, perhaps we will see the answer.
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