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The Drone Racing League (DRL) is a professional drone racing league based in the United States. With custom built racing drones traveling in speeds above 80 MPH, pilots race FPV (First Person View) through three-dimensional courses. Founded in 2015, and launched publicly in January 2016, the league’s inaugural season featured five races across the United States and was broadcast on ESPN, Sky Sports and ProSiebenSat.1 in Germany. DRL’s 2017 broadcast season began in June.

As described by Quartz, DRL “feels like pod-racing from Stars Wars” with “hopes [of becoming] the Formula 1., NASCAR and MotoGP of drone racing.

Format and Broadcast
DRL enlists elite drone pilots from around the globe to compete on original courses. With multiple heats per event, pilots are awarded points based on their placement in each heat and the pilot with the most points at the end wins the race.

The 2017 season featured four regular season races, one playoff and the finale.

DRL is responsible for capturing all of its races for a broadcast audience. In order to capture racing quadcopters that fly almost 90 MPH, DRL designs and manages the entire drone racing and broadcast ecosystem for its events, including the timing and length of races, to best capture the sport.

The DRL broadcast team uses 50 to 60 cameras per event and the drone itself has two cameras: an SD low latency analogue HS1177 600TVL for pilot navigation and a GoPro Session 5 for post-production, both of which operate automatically with no remote controls.

Ryan Gury, DRL’s Director of Product, built a proprietary radio system and LED rigs, which make the drones easier to follow and as described by Wired, “lend a Tron-like aesthetic to the races.

The races are not broadcast live and are post-produced for television.

DRL’s Drones
According to DRL Founder & CEO Nick Horbaczewski, DRL “develop[s] all of our drones in-house” in order to “create a level playing field” for races. For Horbaczewski, “it was important to make sure that when you saw a pilot win a race, you knew that was the best pilot, not necessarily the person flying a faster drone.

The league builds the drones used in races from scratch for each pilot to use, eliminating the need for pilots to build and supply their own.

Since its launch DRL pilots have flown two types of drones; the Racer2 in 2016 and the Racer3 in 2017.

Racer2
In 2016 DRL traveled with a fleet of 100 Racer2 drones to its races. The Racer2 had two or three minutes of battery life, topping out at 80 MPH. The drone weighed slightly heavier than a normal racer drone due to the LED lights covering each craft, needed for visibility and pilot identification.

Racer2 drones also had exposed electronics that made than more susceptible to damage from crashes.

Racer3
In 2017 DRL introduced the Racer3, its new drone for the 2017 season. The Racer3 is more powerful and agile than its predecessor and can accelerate from 0 to 80 MPH in less than a second and fly as high as 6-8 kilometers.

The Racer3 has 16 pounds of thrust which allows it to lift 16 pounds with a top speed of around 85 MPH. Unlike the Racer2, the Racer3 has a hard shell or canopy to protect it from crashes.

Although the Racer3 is not for sale, DRL has partnered with Toy State to create a toy quadcopter that will be available for purchase in stores later this year.

RacerX
In July 2017, Ryan Gury, DRL’s Director of Product, and his team of drone engineers designed and hand built the DRL RacerX, setting the Guinness World Record for the Fastest Ground Speed by a Battery-powered Remote-controlled Quadcopter. Weighing less than two pounds, the RacerX hit a top speed of 179.6 miles per hour, the official record-breaking speed was recorded as 163.5 miles per hour.

Earlier prototypes of the RacerX burst into flames when hitting its peak acceleration due to the amount of power it used.

History
Nicholas Horbaczewski is the CEO & Founder of the Drone Racing League. Since DRL’s inception in 2016 Horbaczewski has been named as a Crain’s 2017 Forty under 40 member

Before launching DRL, Horbaczewski served as the Chief Revenue Officer at Tough Mudder, “which he helped grow into a global brand generating more than $100 million in revenue.

Horbaczewski first became aware of drone racing as a hobby in 2015 behind a warehouse in Long Island, New York. He partnered with Ryan Gury, DRL’s Director of Product, to launch the Drone Racing League.

Season One
DRL launched its first season in January 2016, becoming the only global professional racing organization at that time. The league hosted five professional races in its inaugural season. Races took place across the country at venues such as the Miami Dolphins NFL HardRock Stadium, the abandoned Hawthorne Mall in Los Angeles, a laboratory in New York, a paper mill in Hamilton, Ohio and an auto plant in Detroit.

Sponsors of the Drone Racing League in 2016 included Toy State and Bud Light.

In its first season DRL was broadcast in over 40 countries, on SkySports, ESPN and ProsiebenSat.1, and over 75 million fans tuned in to watch DRL races and content, either online or on TV.

Jordan “Jet” Tempkin from Fort Collins, Colorado won the inaugural Championship, earning a $100,000 contract to become the first professional drone pilot. Jet’s victory earned him an automatic place in DRL’s 2017 season.

Season Two
The league’s 2017 television season kicked off on June 20 on ESPN and was broadcast in more than 75 countries with additional broadcast partners including Sky Sports, ProSiebenSat.1, Disney XD and OSN. The 2017 season included 16 hours of DRL original content. Races in 2017 took place at the Miami Dolphins NFL Sunlife Stadium, an emergency response and disaster training center in Atlanta, a float storage warehouse in New Orleans, a paper mill in Boston, an abandoned motorcycle factory in Munich and in London’s iconic Alexandra Palace.

Defending champion Jet beat out fellow pilot Gab707 in the last heat of the final, claiming the title of the world’s fastest drone racer for a second year in a row.

Sponsors of the 2017 season included title sponsor Allianz, Toy State, Amazon (Prime Video, Swatch, FORTO Coffee Shots and the U.S. Air Force.

Investments
In its first round of fundraising, DRL closed $12mm in Series A funding, led by RSE Ventures and Lux Capital. MGM Television also invested directly in DRL as part of the deal to develop TV programs and other content tied to racing events and pilots. Additional investors include CAA Ventures, Hearst Ventures and Strauss Zelnick.

In 2017, DRL nearly doubled its total funding with a close of an additional $20mm of Series B investing funding, expanding stakeholders to include WWE, Allianz (its global title sponsor), Sky and Liberty Media. DRL also added investor CRCM Ventures, supporting the league’s expansion into China.

DRL Simulator
DRL launched the DRL Simulator, downloadable on Steam, that allows potential pilots to practice and fly the actual DRL race courses to test their skills. Pilots who did well in the simulations were invited to compete in the 2017 Bud Light DRL Tryouts in New York City. The winner of the contest earned a spot in the 2017 DRL season. The 2017 tryout winner, Jawz, was awarded a $75,000 professional contract to compete. "He basically went from a gamer to a pilot in just a couple of weeks," said Horbaczewski.

Recognition

 * In its first season, Fast Company named DRL as one of its Most Innovative Companies and the third Most Innovative Sports Company in 2017, ranking it along the likes of Amazon, Google and Apple.
 * Listed by Ad Age as the 2017 “Startup to Watch.”
 * Named 2017’s most innovative sports production by Cynopsis Sports Media.