GTPNewsWire
Contributing Writer
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This is the discussion thread for a recent post on GTPlanet:
This article was published by Jordan Greer (@Jordan) on February 14th, 2020 in the Gran Turismo Sport category.
Nearly 50 Million People Tuned in to GT Sport's World Tours Last Year, Up 300%
- Thread starter GTPNewsWire
- 45 comments
- 4,868 views
- 571
- Italy
Probably today the WT have surpassed the majority of real motorsports when it comes to audience,impressive numbers.
- 1,116
- Sheffield
- LewisBentley6
Then you look at the other side of the coin, where they struggled to "sell" a handful of free tickets this weekend 
Figures are virtually meaningless, especially from places like Facebook where something simply appearing on your feed is enough to count as a view, where engagement is everything.
Its all well and good saying "Engagement is up 300% from last year", but 2018s competition only started in mid-May and they're pushing out far more content.
The TL;DR is this isn't as impressive as it seems.
Figures are virtually meaningless, especially from places like Facebook where something simply appearing on your feed is enough to count as a view, where engagement is everything.
Its all well and good saying "Engagement is up 300% from last year", but 2018s competition only started in mid-May and they're pushing out far more content.
The TL;DR is this isn't as impressive as it seems.
- 86,815
- Rule 12
- GTP_Famine
- 1,116
- Sheffield
- LewisBentley6
I just think its particularly troubling in terms of how this is actually comparing to real Motorsport, there's a lot of comparisons being drawn to real Motorsport events in terms of viewership numbers, but in Esports you have fewer avenues to draw a profit compared to real Motorsport, so the truth is they need to be doing those extra views.
I edited my previous post with a few extra points as well.
- 86,815
- Rule 12
- GTP_Famine
Quite - esports will always be an arena sport at best and there's little chance of pulling 250,000 spectators into an arena to watch an F1 race at Silverstone in a game.
We did cover that in the article - there's roughly a 100% increase in uploads (700-something to 1500-something), but a 200% increase in engagement across all the channels. And it's across the full year, so six events ('Ring, H7, Euro, Americas, Asia, World; WT1-5, World) in each case. Granted, the first two events in 2018 weren't huge, or well covered, or even (and Yamauchi shook his head in despair recalling the first one) that well done...
Of course, like a certain other emotorsports event*, they could just buy 1m views for their launch video in among the other videos getting 1,500 tops...
*No names, but you can easily spot the odd one out on its YT channel... There's no evidence of such shenanigans on the GT channel...
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- 1,116
- Sheffield
- LewisBentley6
Whilst 2018 didn't have the production value (I think what they're doing with production right now is fantastic), almost all competitors vastly prefer the 2018 Championship format, the new format they've adopted from 2019 onwards feels really all-or-nothing in terms of World Tour qualification, the time investment required to qualify has leapt up dramatically due to multiple attempts per round and now 4 days a week of racing.
That can mean up to 24 hours commitment per week plus practice if doing both Nations and Manufacturers to the best of your ability, and since you're competing against the best in the world, a mediocre round score won't do, so most guys are indeed running all the slots now. Its just gotten really exhausting all of sudden for a championship with effectively no prize, so I'll be bowing out this year. Even Mikail has been pretty much adamant he can't be arsed with the Nations Cup this year
I think the series could be doing better on engagement if everything gets a bit more spontaneous again, the experimental early 2018 events all ran totally different rulesets and I think that was an exciting reason to watch, the 2019 Series we effectively watched the same 5 World Tours which had no real stakes (all Nations Cup drivers who 'won a ticket to the World Finals' were qualified anyway). Around Tokyo I was honestly just clamouring for them to do something different.
We're losing the Top 6 Qualifiers and the Repechage race at Sydney this weekend so I'm glad they're changing something around, but it feels like we've lost a step since 2018 on the impact of results, which I think has a direct effect on the engagement of the broadcasts, its not as exciting anymore. The 2018 Regional Finals had massive stakes and the results of the races literally fully determined the World Finalists, I hope one day we can get back to that level of drama because I think that partnered with the 2019 production is the way to take this forward.
I want to watch these World Tours and be fully invested in the result again because it has a serious impact, not the current 'eh, the Finalists are decided anyway'.
That is basically how real Motorsport works.Whilst 2018 didn't have the production value (I think what they're doing with production right now is fantastic), almost all competitors vastly prefer the 2018 Championship format, the new format they've adopted from 2019 onwards feels really all-or-nothing in terms of World Tour qualification, the time investment required to qualify has leapt up dramatically due to multiple attempts per round and now 4 days a week of racing.
That can mean up to 24 hours commitment per week plus practice if doing both Nations and Manufacturers to the best of your ability, and since you're competing against the best in the world, a mediocre round score won't do, so most guys are indeed running all the slots now. Its just gotten really exhausting all of sudden for a championship with effectively no prize, so I'll be bowing out this year. Even Mikail has been pretty much adamant he can't be arsed with the Nations Cup this year
I think the series could be doing better on engagement if everything gets a bit more spontaneous again, the experimental early 2018 events all ran totally different rulesets and I think that was an exciting reason to watch, the 2019 Series we effectively watched the same 5 World Tours which had no real stakes (all Nations Cup drivers who 'won a ticket to the World Finals' were qualified anyway). Around Tokyo I was honestly just clamouring for them to do something different.
We're losing the Top 6 Qualifiers and the Repechage race at Sydney this weekend so I'm glad they're changing something around, but it feels like we've lost a step since 2018 on the impact of results, which I think has a direct effect on the engagement of the broadcasts, its not as exciting anymore. The 2018 Regional Finals had massive stakes and the results of the races literally fully determined the World Finalists, I hope one day we can get back to that level of drama because I think that partnered with the 2019 production is the way to take this forward.
I want to watch these World Tours and be fully invested in the result again because it has a serious impact, not the current 'eh, the Finalists are decided anyway'.
There is a dude that lives his own reality in GAF using your quote to say the news is fake and GTS FIA 2019 had lower popularity than GTS FIA 2018.
He even reached the point to say the author of the news created the data because nobody else shared it when it was Kaz that shot the number today at ore-event presentation.
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- ScottPuss20
- CheetahsMeow
How could there be 17 million total views of the World Tour Final livestream when only 174,000 people viewed the English commentary on YouTube? Something doesn't seem right here. For PR purposes this all sounds brilliant but the numbers don't make any sense.
- 86,815
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- GTP_Famine
You've not quite got the numbers right. There's 16.6m total views of the livestream uploads since they went live, not views when they were live.
All YouTube livestreams, as-live, totalled 797k. All Twitter livestreams, as-live, totalled 1.2m. It was Facebook that had the bulk of the views, with all FB livestreams, as-live, totalling 9.6m. Instagram isn't mentioned on the as-live tally (can you live stream on IG? I don't know IG that well).
The total as-live views were 11.6m. Views since then have added another 5m to that, with 12.1m on FB, 2.6m on Twitter, 1.65m on YT, and 330k on IG.
- 16,096
- Melbourne
- ScottPuss20
- CheetahsMeow
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- Earth
- BadFlounder
- BadFlounder
Many major motorsport series attract zero paying spectators. SRO GT3 events for example are usually free entry. Outside of a few diehards. Most spectators are hospitality guests.Then you look at the other side of the coin, where they struggled to "sell" a handful of free tickets this weekend
Figures are virtually meaningless, especially from places like Facebook where something simply appearing on your feed is enough to count as a view, where engagement is everything.
Its all well and good saying "Engagement is up 300% from last year", but 2018s competition only started in mid-May and they're pushing out far more content.
The TL;DR is this isn't as impressive as it seems.
And yet they are still able to fund multi-million £$€ programs. This comes largely from business-to-business sponsorship and associated benefits. Not unlike Toyota and Michelin’s involvement in GT Sport. It’s the year long (and beyond) association that garners the promotional benefit. Not just live viewership, be it online, or at the venue.
It’s also notable the GT Sport streams now draw in more live viewers than a series like SRO GT3. We really need to see where the sport is in 5-10 years time. Because for many, including myself, they’ve only taken an interest in Esports in the last year or two.
- 982
But its even sadder in the digital world where we have a much better handle on metrics.
Companies like Facebook have already been exposed in how fake their viewcount is. Youtube secretly includes paid ad views as part of viewcount now, not to mention how its recommendation algorithm now can choose what goes viral.
Then there's the complete arbitrary definition on what a view or a player is.
It's already easy to track concurrent viewers and unique viewers. Anything else is simply trying to inflate itself.
Thats plain wrong. The streams have had higher concurrent viewers and videos have more views right?
I think PD have done a fantastic job, in production, getting community figures on board, and planning these event. GT is the premier racing eSport, I can only think of the F1 eSport being close.
Silver Arrows
(Banned)
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- Brandon, MB
- Silver-Arrows21
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- bloodyboyblue
How does Greenland count as part of the NA region when someone playing there would most likely be using a Danish account? Don’t think that map is coloured in properly.
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- Sydney
- Archer28
Then you look at the other side of the coin, where they struggled to "sell" a handful of free tickets this weekend
As someone who lives in Sydney I can tell you people here don't go and watch real-life motorsport, so I'm not surprised that they didn't totally sell out for the GT World Tour.
Can you please let me know where you saw that, as the image on the website is correct? Thanks!
https://www.gran-turismo.com/gb/gtsport/fia_championships/2020/
WOW awesome... thank you for share it even when you don't need it.
GTS took a lot of inspiration from iRacing for their online system.
Said that I think GTS have a bigger marketing behind it that will make it always bigger and more exposed than iRacing even on eSport.
iRacing deserves more love but GTS will be the one to be remembered by most.
Both are doing a great job with eSport.
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- 982
I thought iRacing was niche. How many concurrent viewers does the championship stream get, and what are its youtube views?
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