Opinion: Please, someone, invest in Le Mans Ultimate

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I’m flying down the Mulsanne straight, without chicanes, a layout that was the epoch of endurance racing for some.

I blast by a tardy LMGT3 competitor, dicing with a Toyota Hypercar in my thunderous V8-powered Cadillac.

This is Le Mans Ultimate, the apogee of virtual sports car driving. Player numbers are slowly but surely increasing, too, as a groundswell of positive opinion circulates.

But, so often when my colleague John is livestreaming LMU, people are ready with internet pitchforks.

The game is blighted by parent company Motorsport Games’ reputation for delivering half-baked titles and aggressively soaking up exclusive licencing deals. And, doesn’t the company know it…

“We’re looking at the near competitors, and they’ve got their own challenges but they’ve also got the brand,” explained Motorsport Games CEO Stephen Hood to me recently.

“It’s like somebody will go and buy a Porsche because it’s got this history associated with it. We’ve got the complete opposite. People say because it’s [LMU] attached to Motorsport Games, ‘I’m not buying that’.

“We also don’t pay any marketing dollars. We don’t pay any influencers. We get people knocking on the door all the time saying, ‘We’ll work with you, can we do a paid promotion?’ and we decline as we don’t have the money for it.

“But to start to turn that around and then to get our elbows out versus some rivals, that’s pretty powerful for us.”

The outfit needs further investment sooner rather than later to capitalise on the moment, and if some murmurings are to be believed, cash should soon be on the way.

If passion begets success, then Le Mans Ultimate will be just fine.

This opinion piece was originally part of a prior Traxion email newsletter – sign up to receive these early, direct to your inbox, every week.