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For many non-motorsport fans, Formula 1 – and perhaps all of motor racing in general – has a reputation of being quite nerdy and dry, maybe even uninteresting.
But F1 is certainly making efforts to attract the attention of people who otherwise would have little more than a passing interest in the championship. The Netflix Drive to Survive series is a prime example of that and has been a great form of marketing for Formula 1.
The latest move by F1 to try and reach a broader audience is with a multi-year partnership with the video game Rocket League.
In simple terms Rocket League is a game where you play football with rocket powered cars. It first came out in July 2015 and is one of the most popular video games around with 75 million people having played it in the first five years of its life.
And shortly after its fifth anniversary, the game went to a free-to-play model so that player base has likely increased significantly since then.
From tomorrow players will be able to use a licensed F1 car that can be given the livery of any of the current F1 teams.
Formula 1 isn’t the only brand to have used Rocket League to promote itself. NASCAR added licensed content earlier this month and previously manufacturers such as Lamborghini and Ford have allowed their cars to be in the game, the latter even having its own themed esports event in Rocket League.
The Rocket League tie-in won’t be F1’s first attempt at incorporating itself into the arcade driving game genre. Multiple F1 games in years gone by had an arcade mode alongside the more traditional, serious racing mode.
Formula One Arcade on the PS1 and most recently F1 Race Stars, a Mario Kart clone based on the 2012 Formula 1 season, have been previous forays into less simulation focused racing games.
Neither of those games received sequels, which is an indicator as to how well they did commercially. Ultimately, only people who are already fans of Formula 1 are going to buy a game based around the sport and many of those will be put off by the concept of a game that strays so far away from F1’s reality.
Also most of the F1 Esports drivers, and plenty of casual players, are hoping for the F1 games to become more realistic. That existing captive player base won’t be all that interested in a game that actively goes against the direction they want licensed F1 games to go in.
However incorporating Formula 1 cars and teams into a game that already has a less serious, more arcade, image and legions of fans is a much easier and likely successful route to market the championship to people who aren’t already fans of F1.
While the F1 cars will be a tiny and purely cosmetic part of Rocket League, the access F1 will get to a vast player base will be worth it.
Players won’t have to make their car look like an F1 or NASCAR car and there would be no advantage to doing so but other games that have a free-to-play model, such as Fortnite, have made huge sums of money because players buy unnecessary cosmetic items.
Strangely there are trends and fashions since people who play the game a lot don’t want to have a standard appearance, and people are more likely to buy them when they haven’t had to pay anything for the game upfront.
Rocket League also has a big presence on social media through YouTubers and Twitch streamers as well as a massive esports community that completely dwarfs most simracing competitions.
Those players are the most committed to it and undoubtedly they will use the F1 cars and skins while they’re the newest items in the game.
Given that Rocket League is a car themed game it’s possible some players are already huge F1 fans and will gladly adopt F1 branding for their own car.
Given videos and live streams of the game are among the biggest in all of gaming, that’s some valuable marketing F1 will get for minimal effort or expense.
