FAI e-Drone Racing World Cup
Pilots race this FAI World Cup in simulation, from home, on equal terms with the rest of the world. As the FAI's technical partner for the discipline, we ran the first event in 2023 and have run the World Cup since.
- Client
- FAI, Fédération Aéronautique Internationale
- Year
- Since 2023
- Our role
- Technical partner: simulator, event systems, race direction, live-stream
- Services
- Real-time 3D & simulation, Esports & live production, Competition & data platforms
The challenge
We had to take a world-governed air sport online and keep what makes it a sport: equal conditions for each pilot, results that officials can verify and a show worth watching, whether pilots race on site or from home.
What we did
- We ran the first FAI e-Drone Racing World Cup in 2023, alongside the FAI World Drone Racing Championship in Namwon, South Korea, with pilots on site and remote.
- Pilots race on EreaDrone with a dedicated World Cup drone, so each one flies under identical conditions.
- We built the competition systems for qualifying, heats and rankings in-house. Our Event Management System handles registration, brackets, auditing and results exports.
- Our own team directs and judges each round, so it runs fair and on time.
- We produce the live-stream of each round, with commentary and overlays fed by live data from the simulator: brackets, live times, track progress and lap times.
- We rebuild the official tracks of real-world championships in the simulator, so competitors can practise before they travel.
- We run the Challengers, a lighter event series where newcomers race before they step up to the World Cup.
- With the FAI, we're working to bring e-Drone Racing to the Olympic Esports Games, and we took part in the IOC's Olympic Esports Games Publisher and Developer Forum in Lausanne.
The outcome
The FAI has a new esport that any pilot with a PC can enter, and proof that simulation can carry an official international competition. We have run 14 international events and 5 Challengers since 2024, for a field you won't find in other FAI disciplines: countries new to drone racing, pilots as young as eight, and women among the regular podium finishers.
