Automobilista 2 October 2022 Development Update

I'm afraid I do not see that as a fair comparison at all.

You compared a relatively small series of racing to the two main motorsports in the USA, a country of over 330,000,000 people. When I lived in the US, I'd walk into a bar and see NASCAR and Indy on the screen frequently (even if no one was watching), how often have you seen BTCC in the same situation? Even F1 is only just starting to gain ground in the US, despite being the pinnacle of motorsport in Europe for decades. At first glance It seemingly averages half of what NASCAR does, however:

Nascar: 3.03 million viewers across FOX, FS1, NBC and USA Network (4 channels, US specific). You'll have to tell me if those are all the channels that show it, though I'm guessing Sky also do, so I doubt that figure is accurate, it is probably far lower than it should be.

F1: 2022 season averaged 1.21 million viewers per race across ESPN, ESPN2 and ABC, up 28 percent from the 2021 record of 949,000 average viewers. Yet Sky and F1 TV aren't included here; the two main/only providers of the sport in parts of Europe. Monaco drew 2 million this year for Sky as they have the monopoly in the UK, that would equal 3.21 million. Again, those numbers almost certainly aren't reliable.

Then we would have to factor in youtube and illegal streams, which is impossible to do for any sport. 4 million watched DTS, do we count those too? =P

While in the US viewership is largely focused on NASCAR and Indy, in Europe, there are countless different series that people watch. Which do you think is more popular in Scandinavia, NASCAR or WRC?

In Italy, which do you think is more popular, Indy or F1? Even Ferrari challenge would rival it.

In France I wouldn't be surprised to see even Formula E being more popular than NASCAR.

The Le Mans 24h apparently got 14.2 million.

All of that to say, viewing figures are questionable and certainly don't support the claim that featuring mainly NASCAR and INDY would mean more sales than featuring a variety of motorsports to cater to the European market which mainly prefers other sports, a market more than double the size of the US with over 700,000,000 people.

I wouldn't be here if it were mainly NASCAR/Indy and of all the people I race with on AMS2, I can only think of 2 others who would be, were other sports not featured.

Thankfully it is all irrelevant because AMS2 features a wide variety of motorsports.

 

Yep, AC is basically the Skyrim of racing games, there are so many mods for that game. I think most people play it online on those free roaming maps they are doing, seems like a Fast and the Furious game.

 

Totally fair, but I didn't really have anything to compare NASCAR with because almost every single major racing series in Europe doesn't go on "small European tracks." I looked at my two main options BTCC and WTCR (I did forget about DTM, in all fairness) and I chose what I believe to be the most popular. The main point is to show that oval racing has a massive audience and that the person I was replying to is underestimating how popular something like NASCAR is. It is also extremely difficult to find TV raitings for motorsports like BTCC, DTM, etc. The US is way bigger than the UK and every other country in Europe (well depending if you count Russia's land in Asia or not). I still feel that my post drove my point across that NASCAR does have a larger potential audience compared to those other racing series.

I genuinely believe NASCAR is the second most popular motorsport in the world but I wasn't gonna just say that without finding something to back it up because I don't want to be looked the type of American that thinks the whole world is America and nothing else matters. That I'm not basing my thoughts on something pulled out of my you-know-what. There isn't very many ways I can prove that, if you think there is a better analog please tell me (I did not find any TV raitings for the DTM season finale in 2016). Maybe YouTube subscribers? The NASCAR YouTube has just under a million (974K) while DTM is at 271K , BTCC at 32.3K and WTCR at 45.2k.

 

That is me. I only run the beta.

 

Is there statistics on how many Europeans watch NASCAR?

 

My whole point here is that it isn't just Europe in the motorracing world. And that oval tracks whether it be in Europe and America, Japan or South Africa deserves more than 4 tracks. And remember when bringing up the raitings I was comparing oval racing to small European tracks. Lemans isn't a small European track.

I never claimed that NASCAR and Indy were making big waves in Europe just "not as unpopular as you would think" it isn't a bad thing to open up your game to a market that isn't Europe and Iracing proves that. The only reason we got to this point is that I realized that Iracing's popularity and almost complete monopoly on oval content are most likely connected.

 

Aren’t there also small ovals which can be a fairer comparison to small European tracks? Feel like NASCAR should be compared to another top European racing series instead. It also feels like the top motorsports Europe watches are more global than the American ones. Feels like that with other sports too.

 

A point proven by the shopping cart in R3E (and whatever other sims have done that April fools in the past).

 

Whew, after reading all these impassioned posts about ovals, road courses, Europe, South America, North America, I am glad Reiza has a strict policy of never trying to pick favourites. Anything on wheels that is fun to race and any interesting track those things race on is the only preference shown over the past years. Thank goodness, as it has allowed me and many others to be introduced to otherwise unknown racing series and locations that turn out to be well worth the discovery.

 

No, not to my knowledge, and it would almost certainly would be lower due to timezones. I bet most European NASCAR fans either only watch highlight packages or watch full race replays which are uploaded on YouTube by NASCAR a few days after the race. With YouTube breaking that barrier to entry and the internet letting more people see different kinds of motorsport, it wouldn't surprise me if NASCAR'S popularity in Europe has been going up.

 

The NASCAR truck series (which is the third tier in the NASCAR competitive latter) went to IRP in 2022 and brought in 492K viewers. The ARCA race at the same track (a racing series that is genuinely on death's door and isn't competitive at all) brought in 219K.

And as you said, small European tracks. WEC and Formula 1 wouldn't count because they don't go to small European tracks they go to big ones hence why I didn't mention them

 

Senna could've gone to Indy in '93.

I think that today Indy is much more "pure racing" than F1. I still like F1 more, though, but I think that is because of its history, and not because of current racing.

 

Is indycar still bigger than f1 in america, what is the viewing figures for indycar races (excluding indy 500 which is like super bowl) versus a typical f1 race (but not cota nor miami)?

 

F1 is now bigger than Indycar in terms of TV ratings. The season average for Indy is boosted by the Indy 500, still a big draw, but the other races get less than a million viewers. F1, I believe, now averages close if not a bit more than 1 million a race.

 

A Forza Horizon set in Japan might be able to do it...
AC really highlights something users want: an open world racing game with realistic physics, so in the above example it's still not ideal but would be good enough

 

Practice/Qualifying/Race in Indy 1993 lastet from May, 8th till 30th. Senna would have missed two F1 races by participating at Indy, one of them at Monaco, which was "his" Grand Prix.

 

??? AC is about superb physics for so many cars. Horizon is casual time waster without proper physics (very simple one from Motorsport). There is no overlap, I guess.

 

This is just one weekend here, but Indycar averaged 1.09 M viewers for their race at Road America. F1 averaged 832K for the race at Baku however I don't consider this a win for Indycar because of timezones. My unprofessional and uneducated analysis is that they're probably around the same in terms of popularity here in the states. The huge problem is that Indycar doesn't market themselves all that well.

 

That’s maybe why they are trying to get their liveries in AMS2