Just yesterday, (Thursday, September 15th) the Drone Racing League (DRL) and ESPN aired their first of ten partnered broadcast. Each episode, set for release once a week every Thursday, can be found on ESPN2 until the series comes to its conclusion with the DRL World Championship on November 20.
“Coverage of DRL lets us merge storytelling, technology, and competition into compelling weekly content that we believe will appeal to a growing audience,” said Matthew Volk, ESPN’s director of programming and acquisitions.
If this news excites you, there’s a reason for that. The DRL has already hosted two events before this series, the “Gates of Hell” which took place over a year ago in July of 2015, and the “Miami Lights” where pilots raced each other in heats around the Miami Dolphin’s stadium, courtesy of one of the project’s investors, the team owner Steve Ross. Both of these races were had an enormous amount of work put into them, from making sure the location looked great, to placing huge numbers of cameras in order to get the best shot at every turn, to even showing some personalities of the racers themselves. Clips of the two races can be found online, revealing some amazing footage
The Thursday’s episode was a “Viewer’s guide to drone racing”, which isn’t exactly a high-brow race to get the blood pumping. It is, however, a good way to introduce new viewers to a sport they have never seen before. It’s not clear what the remaining 9 episodes will consist of, but it is likely the previous two races will be broadcasted, as well as the four remaining projected races.
More information can be found from the original article here, as well as the Drone Racing League’s official site.