The first round of Supercars’ 10-event All Stars Eseries saw similar success to that of Nascar’s Eseries competition as the opening broadcast totalled 44 percent of the average Supercars live event.
The opening round was broadcast live on Fox Sports 506, Kayo, Ten Play and Supercars’ Twitch and Facebook channels, seing two-time defending Virgin Australia Supercars Champion Scott McLaughlin come out on top, winning two out of three races in his virtual Shell V-Power Ford Mustang.
Initial reports indicated 70,000 tuned in for the broadcast on Fox Sports 506, along with an average audience of 6,500 on Twitch and 330,000 total views on Facebook.
The success of the virtual competition measures up quite evenly to that of the Nascar online competition in the US, that reported the average audience for their Eseries event was 40 percent of the average audience for live competitions on the same networks.
In addition to the broadcast attention, Supercars also impressively held the place of the number one trending topic on Twitter throughout the entire broadcast.
The Race Torque reported a prediction of over 100,000 people as the ‘true live audience’ for the concurrent broadcasts, as Kayo and Ten Play did not release their broadcast figures for the coverage.
In an interview with the commentary team following the event and his second race win of the opening round, McLaughlin said he enjoyed the event and it was a “full-on” experience.
“It’s been full-on, I think just trying to get the lead early and get out of the group and then we got away with it,” McLaughlin said.
“I had so much fun today and I think a lot of people as well had a lot of fun and that’s the main thing.
“I hope everyone at home enjoyed it and I really think it’s going to be cool and it’s a good interim thing that we can do in the meantime while we wait for the real racing to begin again,” he said.
McLaughlin is followed in the standings after the opening three races by Cam Waters, Chaz Mostert, Andre Heimgartner and Fabian Coulthard to round out the top five.
Round two next Wednesday night will see drivers head to virtual Europe circuits, first the renowned Silverstone followed by Barcelona in Spain.
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