First published October 2026

Esports in the stadium: will virtual racing join the line-up?

The question usually arrives from someone who has seen a highlight reel: cars on a giant screen, a stadium crowd, a prize cheque. If virtual racing can do that, why is it not on the programme at every big meeting? It is a reasonable question, and the answer is more interesting than a yes or no.

Virtual racing has become a broadcast product with real money in it. What it has not yet become is a stadium-filling live sport in its own right, and the difference between those two things is worth understanding before anybody books a venue.

2017: Formula 1 commits

On 21 August 2017, Formula 1 announced its own official esports championship. The structure tells you what the organisers thought they were building: semi-finals at the Gfinity London Arena, finals staged at the Abu Dhabi season finale, alongside the real championship. The virtual competition was being attached to the real one, deliberately, rather than launched as a standalone spectacle.

That choice has held. When the series was renamed F1 Sim Racing for the 2023-24 season, it returned to a LAN format - competitors in one room - which is a broadcast decision as much as a sporting one. A room full of drivers is easier to film than a hundred bedrooms.

2018 and 2019: the numbers get serious

The 2018 season is the one usually cited. Around 66,000 players entered qualifying, a 26-driver Pro Series contested the championship, and the prize fund was $200,000. F1 reported a total audience of 5.5 million for the series.

That last figure deserves a careful reading, because it is the one most often repeated without context. It is a sum of television viewers, live stream viewers and people who watched later. It is not a concurrent audience, and it is not comparable to a match attendance figure. A single number that adds three different kinds of viewing is a marketing number, not a crowd count.

In 2019 the prize fund rose to $500,000. Whatever else is true, the money stopped being symbolic.

2020: the accidental experiment

When real racing stopped in March 2020, virtual racing briefly became the only racing available, and the audience followed. Formula 1 launched a Virtual Grand Prix series on 22 March 2020 with a virtual Bahrain round - half race distance, 28 laps - and qualifying that set the grid by fastest lap. It was broadcast on F1’s YouTube, Twitch and Facebook channels, which is to say it was given away rather than sold.

NASCAR took a similar route. The eNASCAR iRacing Pro Invitational began on 22 March 2020 and drew 903,000 viewers. The second race, at a virtual Texas, drew 1,339,000 across Fox and FS1 - reported at the time as a television record for esports. Those are both United States television audiences on the same broadcaster, which makes them at least a like-for-like comparison, unlike most figures floating around this subject.

iRacing itself grew by roughly half its subscriber base in early 2020, reaching about 160,000 by April that year. That is a pandemic peak, and it should be read as one. It is not a current baseline, and nobody should plan an event on the assumption that the 2020 audience is still sitting there waiting.

What stadiums have actually hosted

The clearest stadium-scale esports example is not racing at all. The Fortnite World Cup ran at Arthur Ashe Stadium in New York from 26 to 28 July 2019, sold out its 23,700 seats and paid out a $30 million prize pool. It proved that a video game can fill a tennis stadium for a weekend.

It did not prove that a racing simulator can. Those are different products with different audiences, and the crossover has not been demonstrated at that scale. Anyone who tells you that sim racing is a stadium sport is describing a hope, not a record.

The crossover that did happen

The more solid evidence runs in the other direction - from screen to track. GT Academy, which ran from 2008 to 2016, took people who were fast in Gran Turismo and put them through a real driver development programme. It produced 24 graduates into real racing, including Jann Mardenborough and Lucas Ordonez, and two of its graduates won the 2015 Bathurst 12 Hour.

That is a stronger claim than any viewing figure: the simulation was accurate enough to identify driving talent that transferred to real cars. In 2025 the Nurburgring Nordschleife licence system went further, recognising sim racing participation in its Digital NLS programme as counting toward a Permit B. The sport’s governing structures now treat virtual mileage as mileage.

So what does this mean for a sports day?

Two things, and neither is a stadium.

First, the audience for racing content is bigger than the audience for racing events, and a screen plus a leaderboard is a proven way to hold a crowd. A stadium spectacle needs seating, broadcast infrastructure and a headline attraction. A sports day needs a queue that moves and a scoreboard people care about, which is a much lower bar and a much better fit.

Second, the format that works in a public space is the time trial, and that is not a compromise - it is how the sport has always handled open entry. Everyone gets a number, everyone gets a few attempts, and the best lap wins. No heat sheets, no contact, no disputes. Pole Position required a one-lap time trial to qualify in 1982; iRacing’s Time Attack gives unlimited attempts; the principle survives because it scales.

Our own version is modest by design: three VR arenas plus the Speed Freak sit-in race rig, up to six players at a time, each station on a 2.5 m by 1.5 m footprint, indoors, on standard 220-230V wall power, with a facilitator running the timing. Racing is time trials only, best lap wins.

Whether virtual racing eventually becomes a stadium fixture is a question for the broadcasters and the promoters. Whether it works as the loudest corner of a sports day is a question we can answer from experience - and it does.

If you would like the rig at your event, VR Sports brings the arenas, the timing and a facilitator, in Gauteng and beyond - tell us about your event.

Sources

Planning a sports day? Check your date - or call +27 83 733 5133 and ask Richard what will work in your space.

This site sticks to racing. For team-building events, the guides on vrteambuilding.co.za cover what we do from another angle.