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If you’re a gamer, you’ve likely heard at least one lecture about how it is a waste of time. But what if those hours were putting you on a lucrative and sustainable career path?
Enter Racing Prodigy, the world’s first E2Real sports league, which turns virtual track mastery into a gateway to competing against top professional drivers. Gamers of all ages are jumping from couches into cockpits, proving video games can be more than just mindless entertainment. But to fully bridge the gap between virtual and real-world racing, Racing Prodigy must address one of the sport‘s most enduring challenges. We spoke with the company’s founders to learn their strategy.
Braking Costs, Building Futures
“The biggest barrier to motorsport participation is the cost,” says CEO and co-founder David Cook. A typical three-day racing school, where most drivers get their start, can cost up to $7,000, making the sport inaccessible to most. On top of that, Cook argues, three days behind the wheel is hardly enough to assess talent. His co-founder Matt Fassnacht adds that the pay-to-play system limits access and dilutes the talent pool.
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“Drivers have to buy their way in,” Fassnacht says. “Imagine if I told you you could play in the Super Bowl for $5 million, $10 million, or $20 million, depending on the position. That’s kind of how motorsports works.” He and Cook are determined to change this with Racing Prodigy.
“We want to create a model that gives talented, hard-working racers a sustainable career path,” Cook says. I don’t want this to be about money,” Fassnacht adds. “I want the best people to be there.”
Cook describes the current business model as “broken,” explaining the cost often exceeds the value for participants. “If you don’t have a certain name, how will you raise six or seven figures to compete in a series that isn’t Formula One?” Cook says. He believes the solution is a more modern approach to grassroots talent acquisition—using racing simulator games as a scouting tool. “The best way to do that is through racing games,” he says.
Fassnacht and Cook aren’t just empty suits; both have been behind the wheel and experienced the sport’s pitfalls firsthand. Cook led a program at Mazda in 2014 that trained professional drivers using racing simulators. There are two people in the world who’ve taken sim game or game racers and put them in race cars,” Fassnacht says. “Dave’s one of them.” Cook believes Racing Prodigy surpasses that old project fivefold.
Fassnacht highlights real-world success stories like 2024 Daytona 500 winner William Byron, who began on racing simulators, as proof of Racing Prodigy’s potential. “Racing Prodigy uses games like Street Kart Racing on iOS devices, Gran Turismo, and iRacing,” Cook says. The league’s top driver started on the mobile sim, an industry first.
Watch: Nascar Driver William Byron Learned to Race From Videogames
“We’ve proven that more prodigies are competing in racing games and watching races on TV than actually racing on the course,” Cook says. “It’s just a numbers game.”
Fueling Up the Fandom
Building a dedicated fanbase is critical to Racing Prodigy’s long-term success. Cook believes the best way to do this is by showcasing the drivers’ personal stories. They’re developing a docuseries similar to Netflix’s Drive to Survive, which spotlighted Formula 1. They’ve partnered with Invent TV to pitch the docuseries to platforms like Netflix and Hulu, capturing content from events like Prodigy Week and the Silverstone F1 weekend.
“There are two main differentiators for our program,” Cook says. “The first is our focus on drivers from humble beginnings. The second is that, since this isn’t a pay-to-play league, not everyone will make it—some will have to go home.” He compares it to American Idol, where the contestant pool narrows with each passing round, but multiple drivers advance to real racing championships, forming the world’s first e2Real motorsports league.
In the first series, over 100,000 competed in eSports. Thirty-two earned Prodigy Passes—similar to American Idol’s golden tickets—and advanced to Prodigy Week, where they proved themselves in driving, communication, data comprehension, and fitness. Ultimately, 24 earned paid racing contracts and were drafted by six teams, while six more were saved by a fan vote. Fans must be ready for eliminations, as Racing Prodigy plans to cut nine more drivers before the season ends.
“As fans fall in love with these drivers, some will go home, which will be difficult for both drivers and fans,” Cook says. “That’s critical for building an audience.”
The Road to Success
Fortunately, Racing Prodigy has a built-in audience. “Over a billion gamers say racing is their preferred video game genre,” Fassnacht says. While the preexisting interest is encouraging, Fassnacht warns that this audience is hard to reach without authenticity. “They’ll just be like, ‘Nope, you didn’t do what you said you would do.’ That’s why we spent so much time proving this could work.” Racing Prodigy plans to capture gamers’ attention by bringing familiar faces from the virtual world into real-life racing events.
Another key differentiator is Racing Prodigy’s ownership structure. Unlike most sports leagues, the company is vertically integrated. “We own everything,” Fassnacht says—rules, teams, cars, and governing bodies. In traditional racing, teams control their engineering, testing, and transport. Racing Prodigy, however, houses all vehicles under one roof and manages them with one set of crew and engineers. This reduces operational costs, breaking the financial barrier to entry. “The cost to run operations for our entry-level series, the P3 championship, is less than half of what it costs to operate the Mazda MX-5 Cup series,” Cook says.
Related: He Was Raised by a Single Mom Who Worked Multiple Jobs. Now He Is Co-Owner of a Racing Team He Bought From Larry Ellison. Here’s His Best Advice for Manifesting Greatness.
This efficient model has caught the attention of investors, including Real Madrid goalkeeper Thibaut Courtois, who sponsors his own team, TC Racing. “What stands out to me most about Racing Prodigy is how it provides opportunities in motorsport to individuals who lack the financial means,” Courtois says. “Creating more opportunities and attracting young talent fosters a synergy I couldn’t pass up.”
With its innovative model and people-first culture, Racing Prodigy is transforming what was once just a hobby into a legitimate pathway to professional success—proving pixels can indeed pave the road to glory.
