Even just a few years ago if you’d asked F1 if they’d be interested in Esports you’d probably have gotten a response from Bernie along the lines of “What’s an Esport?”
Last month in Abu Dhabi though we saw the first ever Formula 1 Esports Series World Championship and let’s be honest, it was much more exciting than the actual Grand Prix itself.
Now stats have been released about just how well the F1 Esports Series did and the answer is very.
According to eSports Marketing Blog the final gathered more than 20.5 million impressions and an impressive 6 million views.
On Facebook, the final event saw a total of 1.8m video views (72% higher than the semi-final). Also, there were 2.8m minutes viewed on Facebook which is equal to the time watched for the semifinals content.
The event generated 54,000 views on Twitch, and was watched by an average 5,734 viewers (peaking at over 8,000).
Instagram also had a strong performance, with 6.1m impressions and 310k engagements, while video views on this platform reached over 1.6m.
Twitter had more than 7.8m impressions across the event with over 830k engaging on the day.
YouTube’s top performing video for the World Finals’ content reached over 3.5 million minutes watched, after being published for only two days. Total video views have reached over 950k so far. F1 eSports finals video (494k) on YouTube has gained more video views than the NBA 2K17 all-star tournament championship (259k video views) and the NFL Madden 17 Championship Final (227k) in 2017.
According to Frank Arthofer, F1’s Director of Digital and New Business, we can expect to see a full season of F1 Esports next year.
“The audience numbers we reached with this first edition have been incredible, confirming we made the right choice when we decided to begin this new adventure for Formula 1. The engagement with a broad and committed younger generation of F1 and eSports fans is something that we are proud to support and nurture, and we look forward to establishing a season-long series in 2018.”
So it looks like F1 Esports is very much here to stay. What did you think to the first year and will you be watching in 2018?
