How drone racing used TikTok to find its fan base

The Drone Racing League's TikTok strategy could serve as a lesson for other professional sports on the platform, proving the power of fan insights coupled with crossover content could help widen fan bases. 

The six-year-old organization has more than 4 million TikTok followers, racking up several viral videos, including one with over 20 million views. The league is holding its own against other sports, including Major League Soccer (503,000),  NHL (1.8 million), and Formula 1 (3.9 million). According to Chief Marketing Officer Anne Marie Gianutsos, drone racing fans are a particular niche—they love technology, but they aren’t fans of traditional sports, or even esports. 

“For leagues looking to take their TikTok to new heights, I’d encourage them to get out of their comfort zone,” said Gianutsos, who advises leagues to showcase their sport with trending sounds that have low, but rising, video counts.

The Drone Racing League is also looking to pair athletes in other sports with DRL pilots for cross-over content. 

The league started posting on TikTok in late 2019, but its first viral video came in early 2020. The drone shot of a couple enjoying the Hotel Hubertus pool in Italy has almost 5 million views. TikToks range from snippets of races to conversations with racers, but the favorites tend to be views from the drone whizzing through obstacles. 

The league worked with the agency Wasserman to research its fans by using email lists and scouring social media accounts. “We wanted to determine their fan data and then help them find partners,” said Shelley Pisarra, executive vice president of global insights at Wasserman. “We found value in an audience that wasn’t being talked about because they weren’t following the top five sports.”

But that’s not to say they aren’t interested in traditional sports. The league’s drone racers have helped make drone content around big athletic events, such as a drone tour of SoFi Stadium and Fenway Park for the Red Sox’s season opener. “It’s a way to bring a new layer to traditional sports,” said Pisarra.

Wasserman also found that 41% of Drone Racing League fans are also likely to be interested in crypto or blockchain technology, which is why the league’s title sponsor is Algorand, a blockchain platform.

After seeing the insights, the league leaned into its TikTok presence. They have a team that focuses on TikTok and works to predict videos that will go viral. The first ingredient is the first-person-view video of a drone zooming through a race layout or old warehouse. The second is setting the video to the right music.

“Our team looks at the video counts on new music and sounds to see what’s trending,” said Gianutsos. The sounds that get 1,000 new videos each day can be an indicator that they are on the rise, and so the league uses that music for a video. 

Drone video has made its way into mainstream entertainment. Alex Vanover, a former drone racing world champion, helped capture film for Michael Bay’s “Ambulance.” Justin Beiber used drones for his music video “Hold On.”

“Those first-person-view shots on TikTok are interesting,” Pissara said. “They don’t have to say anything or show someone’s face, they literally have a distinct point of view from the drone.”