Look! Up in the sky. It’s a bird. It’s a plane.
No, it’s a drone, able to zoom at breakneck speeds through a complex three-dimensional obstacle course. And it’s coming to your living room.
In its latest foray into non-athletic sports – does the name Chris Moneymaker ring a bell? – ESPN has reached an agreement to broadcast the Drone Racing League (DRL) season. Competition begins Oct. 23.
“It’s must-watch TV,” Matt Volk, director, programming and acquisitions at ESPN, said Wednesday. “We’re always exploring ways to deliver quality and exciting content. We see this as being an emerging sport with an emerging audience. We’re excited to see how it does, but we feel good about its growth potential.”
Sky, which broadcasts to the United Kingdom and Ireland, and 7Sports, a sports business cluster in Germany, also will air 10 one-hour episodes of the five-race 2016 DRL season, including a winner-take-all world championship Nov. 20.
Drone racing is simply the latest so-called extreme sport, and ESPN and the DRL are banking on the rising popularity of the craft worldwide.
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