Formula 1: Is Maurizio Arrivabene right about video games threatening F1’s popularity?

Scuderia Ferrari team principal Maurizio Arrivabene believes that video games are threatening the popularity of Formula 1. Is he right?

Scuderia Ferrari team principal Maurizio Arrivabene recently stated that he believes that PlayStations (and pretty much any form of gaming machines) are becoming direct competitors to the sport of Formula 1 itself.

Is he right? Are racing video games really harming the popularity of racing? Specifically, are Formula 1 games, the most recent one being F1 2018 by Codemasters, harming the popularity of the world’s most popular racing series?

Here is what Arrivabene had to say about the matter, according to Autosport.com.

"“Our competitors today, and this is my personal opinion, they are the PlayStations. Most probably we need to switch our mind and focus attention on our competitors. Today we have a broad offer of entertainment and we need to look at everything, not only certain sports or trying to equalise everything.“Is the PlayStation our competitor? In my opinion, yes. What do you have to do to beat the PlayStations? You have to do something that is more interesting, most probably. Today the offer is bigger than many years ago.“We need to be honest with ourselves [and ask] ‘How is the level of interest in F1 vs yesterday?’ What we need to do is not the budget cap – it is one of the solutions but is not the [only] solution. We need to relaunch the sport [and] relaunching the sport, it is kind of a complicated and complex equation.“If at a certain point the audience is becoming older, older, older and you work to maintain what you have and your attention is less focused on acquiring the younger generation, that means you have a problem. And you have to find a solution.”"

In general, it’s hard to argue with Arrivabene. This sentiment is shared by many in this day and age, as it has become increasingly obvious that the youth of today would rather be playing video games than actually watching or attending sporting events.

But as far as racing is concerned, this may not be the case. Are there racing video games that people would probably rather play than watch Formula 1? Absolutely, especially considering the fact that an overwhelming majority of racing video games that exist have nothing to do with Formula 1.

But a lot of the people who play these games as opposed to watching Formula 1 were probably never going to be Formula 1 fans anyway even if video games didn’t exist.

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While it is true that the number of people who play racing video games in general unfortunately outnumbers the number of people who are actually interested in racing in this day and age, you would not see these people turn to watching racing if they could not play racing video games. They would find something else to do.

A better way of looking at this particular situation is by looking at the game F1 2018. Simply put, F1 2018 is not a competitor of Formula 1 itself. No one, and I mean no one, is going to drop $60 on this game without knowing anything about Formula 1.

No one who can’t tell Lewis Hamilton from some hot dog vendor is going to drop $60 just so he or she can play as Lewis Hamilton on his Xbox in a silver car that he or she has never seen before. This would be like someone who knows nothing about the NFL going out shopping for a shirt and spending $150 on a Tom Brady jersey. It just doesn’t happen.

Literally every detail of F1 2018 is based on real-life Formula 1, not the other way around. The people who play Formula 1 games are Formula 1 fans; it’s really that simple. This game is not sucking away fans from the sport itself.

While those who purchase and play this game are, in fact, Formula 1 fans, the game could actually end up attracting more non-fans to Formula 1. Certainly not everyone who is exposed to the game on some level is a Formula 1 fan, so this exposure could potentially generate interest in the sport itself among these non-fans.

This could, in turn, lead them to purchase the game, and them purchasing and playing the game would certainly not result in them suddenly becoming disinterested in Formula 1 itself, just like someone purchasing and playing Madden NFL 19 doesn’t cause him or her to suddenly become disinterested in the NFL itself.

To sum it up, yes, there are many people who play racing video games but do not watch racing itself. But the fact that they play racing video games is not the reason why they are not interested in racing. Regarding Formula 1 specifically, the Formula 1 games are doing absolutely no harm to the sport’s popularity no matter how you slice it.