It’s recently been announced that massive racing franchise NASCAR has been preparing to debut its brand new eSports league, the eNASCAR Heat Pro League. eNASCAR, in association with NASCAR and 704Games, will be making use of 704’s simulation NASCAR Heat 3 game, and will make its first debut in spring of 2019.

eNASCAR will feature a total of 16 teams, which will include standout teams such as Hendrick Motorsports, Richard Childress Racing, and Joe Gibbs Racing. Each will be drafted into two virtual drivers that will compete on the PlayStation4 and Xbox One consoles for the 16-race series.

Their decision to break into the eSports scene comes as little surprise following the NBA, NHL, NFL, and MLS, who have all debuted their own teams in the eSports industry. The NBA is currently preparing for their second season of their NBA 2K League, which brought in over 152 million viewers during their debut season.

The Madden NFL Championship Series, known as eMLS, which is part of the FIFA eWorld Cup, as well as the NGAL Gaming World Championship have seen similar success, although to varying degrees. Major league baseball remains the only professional sports league in the United States that has yet to break into eSports, but there has been some interest shown before.

The Untapped Market of eSports

The eSports industry has seen incredible growth in the last few years, and research products have shown that global revenue in the industry was in excess of $1 billion by the end of 2918.

With this level of financial success, more and more professional sports leagues are starting to view their online counterpart as an entirely new, untapped market, and many hope that breaking into it will give them a chance to market their products to a new generation of fans, and could see an entirely new wave of betting sites created alongside it.

For NASCAR, the eSport scene could become the future of spectatorship; especially as viewership and attendance has plummeted in recent years at live NASCAR events, mainly due to competition from rival leagues, such as Formula E, as well as the retirement of many recognised and popular racers.

It’s believed that NASCAR hopes to use eSports to gain new fans from younger generations, while also reconnecting with lapsed fans.

NASCAR’s Virtual Races

These virtual races will also be far less expensive to host, but will see much higher profit margins. Unlike live events, which require a huge amount of planning, coordination, concessionaires, TV crews, and dozens of different employees, eNASCAR will only require the correct gaming equipment, and the events can be live streamed directly to households around the nation and even around the world. Accessibility is the major selling point of eSports, with leagues like the NBA2KL and eNASCAR allowing players of all nationalities and ages to compete against each other without the physical limits that come with traditional sports, as well as the complete removal of all potential injury. Whether eNASCAR proves to be popular among gamers is yet to be seen.