F1 Sim Racing 23/24’s dramatic season was the most-watched F1 esports series yet
The F1 Sim Racing World Championship 2023/2024 season has finally come to a close. The seventh season of the Formula One Esports Series was cluttered with organisational mishaps, strange event cancellations, and an overall lack of advertisement for the series. The 23/24 season is the first season of the series to be held fully through LAN events, and although the watch time for the series has grown, average and peak viewership keep falling. The series has also faced public criticism, with many involved with the event speaking out publicly against the issues they have faced.
The season began in November 2023, with the first F1 Sim Racing World Championship 2023/2024 - Event One announced only days before the actual event itself. The season’s opening event received a relatively low 34.2K Peak Viewers, thousands of peak concurrent viewers fewer than the series had enjoyed in recent years. Nevertheless, drivers and fans were excited for the remaining races of 2023, but the F1 esports scene suddenly went radio silent, and none of the remaining events of the year took place.
The remainder of the 2023 races were cancelled due to a significant disagreement between the team drivers and the F1 esports organisational body. Formula 1 covered the drivers’ travel expenses for events, but required drivers to use racing equipment from their sponsor Fanatec in all published videos, regardless if these videos had anything to do with F1 at all. After the teams did not agree to these terms, Formula 1 therefore stopped covering travel expenses for the teams, and the remainder of the 2023 season fell apart.
Finally, on April 2, it was announced the season would resume; this announcement came only a week before the next upcoming event was scheduled. While F1 esports and their partners ESL tried their best to reignite fan passion for the series, many drivers and professionals involved with the sim-racing series had already spoken out harshly against them, damaging the public image of the series. Nathan Tague, Head of Sim Racing at G2 Esports, explained on Twitter that there were multiple LAN events planned throughout 2023 which were silently cancelled, although he did highlight that ESL had done their best to make these events a reality.
F1 Sim Racing World Championship 2023/2024 Viewership Statistics
In total, the three events spread across 2023 and 2024 received 786.6K Hours Watched. While this figure is significantly more than other past series of the F1 esports circuit, it is reflective of the increased broadcasting time for the league. This year, the league was live for over 43 hours, making it the longest F1 esports season to date.
The most-watched event of the season was the F1 Sim Racing World Championship 2023/2024 - Event Two, which was responsible for 444.3K HW of the season’s total. This event spanned Rounds 2 through 7 of the season, hosting races on the Jeddah Corniche Circuit, the Red Bull Ring, Silverstone Circuit, Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps, Circuit Zandvoort, and the Circuit of the Americas. This event was held over three days from April 10-12, and was live for over 20 hours.
The final event of the season ended on May 9, with the F1 Sim Racing World Championship 2023/2024 - Event Three receiving 41.3K PV for its final championship-deciding race. Although the event’s peak viewership was similar to the previous one, average viewership fell drastically. The third and final event of the circuit received only 14.8K Average Viewers, and outside of the final handful of races that decided the championship, very few viewers were interested in the other races.
All events of the season were broadcast on the official Formula 1 YouTube channel, which boasts over 10.5M Subscribers. However, due to the lack of advertisement for the circuit, and the announcement of events coming only a week before they kicked off, the Formula 1 brand was unable to bring its full viewership potential to the esports circuit.
For comparison, Formula 1 hosted virtual Grand Prix races featuring Formula 1 drivers throughout 2020, and the F1 Esports Virtual Grand Prix Series Vietnam reached 472.2K Peak Viewers. The event’s viewership was boosted by the live streaming pandemic boom and the appearance of Formula 1 drivers in the event, but it also was also much more advertised by the official Formula 1 brand. The official F1 twitter account announced many of these virtual events, but has not advertised F1 esports for years. The viewership achieved by this Virtual Grand Prix Vietnam event was far higher than any event of the 23/24 sim racing championship, thanks to proper advertisements and awareness of the event spread among fans.
Comparing the past three seasons of F1 Esports, which officially rebranded to F1 Sim Racing for this past season, average and peak viewership have been steadily declining for years. However, the series has been able to significantly increase its watch time on a yearly basis, thanks to a constantly expanding esports circuit, and the organiser increasing the race length for the 23/24 season.
For the 23/24 circuit, peak viewership declined by 20.6%, and this follows a prior decline of 16% for the 2022 season. The 2022 F1 Esports circuit was also no stranger to drama. Some professional drivers lamented the lack of a functional anti-cheat for the game, with many users around the world qualifying for F1 esports through cheated times.
Some drivers took it even further by accusing another F1 esports professional driver of cheating and using some form of external assistance. Whether this is true or not, the rumours of rampant cheating within the league negatively affected how the average Formula 1 fan views the esports circuit, and was a one of the factors contributing to the declining viewership of the series.
As it stands, the F1 Sim Racing professional circuit receives fewer viewers than third-party events. 2023 was the second year in a row that the official esports circuit received fewer peak viewers than a Twitch Rivals event. The Twitch Rivals F1 23 Launch Showdown received 45.4K PV, and F1 esports driver Jarno Opmeer received 15.6K PV alone on his personal Twitch channel while streaming and competing in the event.
Jarno Opmeer’s coverage of this Twitch Rivals event was therefore more popular than some of the final F1 Sim Racing 23/24 races of the year. The audience for competitive F1 sim racing is clearly there, but F1 Esports have struggled to effectively use the power of the Formula 1 brand to bring viewership to their events.
Throughout 2023 and 2024, the F1 Sim Racing World Championship 2023/2024 circuit rebranded itself, reimagined how the esports circuit would function, and went through many tumultuous controversies. No news has come on how F1 Sim Racing will look in the future, but if it is to succeed, the organisational behind-the-scenes aspects of the esports title will need to improve drastically, as well as a possible total overhaul of how the events are advertised.
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