- with pro drivers i mean LFS driver who have IRL sponsors
and get payed for their racing?

I think the STCC Sim Touring Car Cup is a step in the right direction.

TV/internet coverage with commentators is the keyword.

The more people who are interested in watching it,
the more the companyes gets interested in advertising in LFS via
sponsoring drivers and have their logos on cars (and track ads).


Is it only me having a unrealistic dream of this coming true?
- or is it posible at all?

Quote from bo-kristiansen :

Is it only me having a unrealistic dream of this coming true?

Yep it's a far fetched dream. I can't see this ever happening and tbh I hope it doesn't. The closest its ever come to happening was probably in N2003 when there were races with an entry fee that was turned into prize money for the winner.

I think things have already started in this direction. For example the leagues organised by ESL Germany where they've had several 'pro' seasons with important races shown on GIGA TV and broadcast on the net.

(There's a 'pro' season coming soon to ESL UK - subscription required, but this will be reflected in the prizes and coverage.)

And there's several teams with real world sponsors. My team, RSC Motorsports, is sponsored by Virtual Performance Parts, clara.net, and Stario Media

I can't see anyone making a living off simracing yet, but it's a beginning.
I think this will promote simracing in general which can only mean good things for our hobby

In my opinion, Live for Speed leagues (and for that matter other racing simulations) should be a totally amateur sport. That's it.

My upcoming league (well, second attempt at launching) will try to seek a balance between permitting teams that have RL sponsors (AFAIK a few teams do ATM), and the ideal state of amateurism (I will NOT inject any Pierre de Coubertin quotes... yet). The teams will be permitted to race, but their entries will have a lower priority than those of amateur teams in the event of the competition being oversubscribed.

Quote from duke_toaster :

...teams that have RL sponsors...
The teams will be permitted to race, but their entries will have a lower priority than those of amateur teams in the event of the competition being oversubscribed.

Why?

Quote from P1lot :

Why?

Read the first bit of my post. It is a sensible trade-off between the pro teams and the vast majority of amataur teams. Obviously, we will need to filter the joke applications (the FIA must get tonnes for F1). Also, there will be other regulations. You will get the rulebook when the preliminary entry form is completed. Jeeze, the thing hasn't been scheduled, and the rulebook isn't even finished!

Also, you had to got out of your way to advertise in that post, didn't you Funny that RSC prohibit advertising in their posts and sigs, but permit their drivers to do it on other forums.

I'm an admin at ESL also, so there's more advertising in my post !
The other mentions where to highlight that IRL sponsorship is already happening. I think these were relevent to the original discussion regarding the direction of simracing.

Also, I hope you're not taking me as an official voice of RSC, because I am only a lowly driver.

Regarding sponsored teams; I fail to see what advantage a driver with a real-life-sponsored-team has over anyone else.
At the ultimate destination in the future (still way off) I think there's room for amateur simracing and more 'pro' simracing, just like in real life motorsport.

Duke, I am guessing that the 26 million pound bond or whatever it is probably keeps the joke F1 applications to a bare minimum.

(Although Super Aguri seem to be determined to get to their punchline ).

On the general topic of turning sim racing into a professional sport, I don't know what to think about that. To the OP: have you ever played online poker? If not, you should try it. Look at some of the abuse and bad feeling that gets generated by even quite small amounts of money changing hands. If you put the monetary aspect into a sim-racing environment, I think you cannot even begin to imagine the fragfest that would result.

Quote from jtr99 :

Duke, I am guessing that the 26 million pound bond or whatever it is probably keeps the joke F1 applications to a bare minimum.

Last time I checked you didn't have to include the cheque with the entry form

Quote from thisnameistaken :

Time for you to come clean: Just how many spoof entry applications have you sent to the FIA?

Just the 1:. What did I call it ... oh yers ... Super Aguri . (lmao)

Quote :

That started a while back with MoE, they've had coverage of several events.

Well, actually the German ESL Pro Series has had races covered ever since it existed, only most times in German and also pay-per-view. MoE was free to watch and in English mostly.

First off thank you Bo for mentioning the STCC. As I read through the replies I was actually quite suprised to see how far things had got in sim racing already, I had no idea.

I suppose in some way small levels of sponsorship are inneviteable and exists in all sports at all levels, even tic tac toe championships probably have a sponsor or two. Take for instancce the humble STCC, we (well I say we, in this instance I mean "I") dont pay for web hosting at all and in exchange for that xrshosting.com (who offer excellent fully featured hosting at affordable prices) gets lots of mentions in posts like this, also xrshosting.com appears on the safety car bonnet, and xrshosting.com will have a little discreet banner at some point during or at the start of the coverage...

Also ukct.net provide the race hosting and they aren't charging for that either, so ukct.net get the same service as xrshosting.com.

In the case of xrshosting.com it wasn't specifically for the Sim Touring Car Cup though, they actually sponsor me and my other projects so the Sim Touring Car Cup just became a part of that.

This post has been brought to you by:
Sim Touring Car Cup
xrshosting.com
ukct.net

Thank you

I thought becky posted that... Have they taken over?

The only way u could earn money with simracing would be if LFS had such a community like Counter Strike , or Quake or any other game played at World Cyber Games . The more people like it, more buy it, more interest from the sponsors, imho!

:ices_rofl You get 10 points in subtle advertising.

I didn't even click one of them, and that wasn't a conscious decision either.

I very rarely click sponsor ad's full stop, in fact I often get irritated by them. I think companies should bear that in mind when spamming us with adverts.

You normally only really rarely make mistakes, dont you?

@zeugnimod

hmm... I wish I could earn money with lfs like Fatal1ty does o_O

The sim racing community is a) not big enough and b) too much divided to really get it to the pro level. And compared to community's like CS or WoW, we already have a real life counterpart to compare ourselves to (real racing). If I really want to be a pro driver, I'd go drive in real life and not in LFS. You can't do that with a gun in your hand unless somethings really wrong in your head :pillepall

For most leagues, some kind of sponsorship is needed to keep things running, unless the admin likes to throw around with money. I'm not going to say names, but without our sponsors we wouldn't have decent servers or the support we get from our team in the OWRL.

To get some broadcast coverage is just a way to get more attention to your league. It's a good strategy in trying to attract drivers, but I don't see how it reaches many people outside of the sim racing community and therefore how it could make LFS more pro.

Quote :

I don't see how it reaches many people outside of the sim racing community and therefore how it could make LFS more pro.

I don't invision the STCC being a series that attracts 'professional' LFS racers or indeed any other LFS league doing it, I can see the scenario but I just don think it will happen and it's certainly not the goal of the series as I see it.

It will however get marketted to motor racing fans in the hope of generating non-LFS based spectator viewing and you can see that in the design of the site and the wording of the tag lines - and that's the intended goal, a spectator driven LFS league.

I dont think any other leagues have intentionally pitched themselves and actively marketted themselves to do this yet, so hopefully it will be a good thing for LFS.

Commercial support and interest, on any level, should be welcomed. Money makes things happen in real life sponsorship situations, it can in sim racing too. ESL show an example of taking things to a new level and there are various sponsored teams in LFS.

If it creates a greater number of organised online racing events, bring it on I say.

Cool topic.

Briefly, to get to where LFS would be watched by an audience, it would have to present something unique and/or significantly interesting compared to what is already out there.

As someone who spends a lot of time observing LFS races, I can tell you that we aren't there yet.

I love watching live races, and I think it's simply amazing to be able to hop from one car to another, with unlimited camera angles (not yet perfected but you get the picture). Also, the LFS community has some incredible talent on the side of the drivers, and also on the side of developers who create the environment.

Having said all that, I only really appreciate the racing because I know how hard it is.

In real life, I bet half the crowd only goes to a race in case there is an accident, so they can see something thrilling. Just having a thousand kilo hunk of metal flying by you at an astonishing speed is a thrill. LFS is on a computer screen. (also sitting trackside and watching cars go by in a live race is something of a stutter-fest at the moment, at for me on my sub-par machine)

So where does that leave us? We already have a great base: the environment, the driving talent. What we need is something unique, something people will be thrilled by, even if it's on a computer screen, and the human support side of the broadcasting.. the organisation and commentary, and the sponsorship hunting etc.

Personally I think if it will ever happen, the key will be that we as sim racers are not limited by reality. We already see this a bit in the way we can have unlimited camera angles to observe the race. From LFS's spirit so far, we can gather Scawen doesn't intend to publish billion horsepower cars, magnetic wheel cars, thousand foot jumps, space driving, etc etc etc as part of the LFS universe. So to attract people.. hmmm

mortal avatars?
something at stake during the race?
exceptionally dangerous courses that drivers would be too afraid to try for real?
some link to reality for comparison with real racers?

Ok ramble mode off.

Quote :

What we need is (...), and the human support side of the broadcasting.. the organisation and commentary, and the sponsorship hunting etc.

It's been said before here and I will say it again: Such things do already exist since the release of LFS S1. It's been growing ever since.

For MoE for instance we've already now had people from North America asking wether they could broadcast our races and neither the official starting date nor the schedule has even been released.

Its plain and simple. There is a very open market out there atm. Pro Racing is on the up in the Sim World. It can happen, and its down to us to make it happen.

If we sit around and do nothing, nothing will happen. If we persue opputunities, we contact Companies with a solid business plans, things do happen.

/me takes off my ESL Hat now