Record Audience and Significant Growth for the Asian Le Mans Series

The Asian Le Mans Series goes from strength to strength with significant audience growth,  big returns for partners, and attracts more Asian teams and drivers.

The 2019/ 2020 season delivered record exposure for the Asian Le Mans Series and its partners. The growth in the audience was significant for both the live streams and highlights programmes with over 7 million viewers recorded during the season. This cumulative audience grew by 25% from the 2018/ 2019 season and equates to, on average, 1.8 million viewers for each of the four rounds of the 2019/2020 season.

The Series achieved a live stream audience of 5 million viewers around the world. In addition 2.19 million people watched the 700 hours of Series highlights broadcast to 167 countries, on 77 channels.

Making the live stream available for free and in full around the world continues to be a priority for the Asian Le Mans Series and makes it one of the most accessible race series globally. The Series’ TV package alone is broadcast to 85% of the world’s countries.

Social Media Engagement:
The Asian Le Mans Series continues to deliver a more engaging social media presence. The Series saw significant growth in reach on its social media platforms throughout the season. The results included the Series hashtag (#AsianLeMans) achieving 44.2 million impressions and reaching 6.2 million users on twitter alone.

Media coverage:
The Series attracted interest from media from around the world with an average of 102 accredited media attending each round. This helped to generate thousands of articles, achieving 7,535 million digital impressions.

Extensive coverage in China:
In China, there was a live streaming audience of 3.95 million watching the races and a TV audience of 300,000. For the 2019 / 2020 season, in addition to the live and highlights coverage of the Series in China, there was also segments on Maxspeed (a motorsport focused Chinese TV Series), and a stand-alone programme called Asian Le Mans Talk.

Chinese Social Media Activation:
Launched just before the start of the season, the Series new Chinese TikTok campaign generated over a million views during the season and Weibo activations also attracted almost a million views.

Media and influencer engagement in China: 
The Shanghai round was attended by 88 accredited Chinese media from both lifestyle and motorsport publications. This activity generated approximately 100 articles, attracting around 10 million views. The Asian Le Mans Series has also engaged a number of other influencers including a new athletic footwear brand (KIKS) to reach a broader audience.

Exposure for partners:
All of this combined to deliver the Asian Le Mans Series partners, teams and drivers with record return on their investment. On average the QI value offered to Series partners more than doubled and in some cases, it tripled from what was already a strong performance in 2018/ 2019.

Growth in Asian teams and drivers:
The Asian Le Mans Series is committed to becoming the reference endurance racing series in Asia and is the perfect springboard for Asian teams and drivers to rise up the ACO racing ladder to the 24 Hours of Le Mans.

During the 2019/ 2020 season, 97 drivers from 31 different nationalities competed in at least one race, with 44 of those coming from the Australasian region. This included 11 drivers from Japan.

The Series also attracted the first ever Japanese LMP2 team, K2 Uchino Racing who scored a podium finish in their debut prototype season. The team was one of four Japanese teams racing in the Series.

20 teams entered at least one race this season, with half of them coming from Asian countries.

Pierre Fillon, President of the Automobile Club de l’Ouest:
“The Asian Le Mans Series continues to go from strength to strength. I was fortunate to see this first-hand this season in Australia and in Thailand. The Asian Le Mans Series continues to form an important step in the ACOs endurance racing ladder. The growing interest from local audiences, as well as the new Asian teams and drivers the Series is attracting is truly exciting.”

Cyrille Taesch Wahlen, Managing Director of the Asian Le Mans Series:
“The success of the 2019 / 2020 Asian Le Mans Series is a credit to everyone involved. From the operational, technical and support teams, Series partners, TV production crew, and of course the teams and drivers that race with us – this is a shared success!

“I am proud of what we have achieved so far, and I am confident that together we will be able to overcome the new challenges we are facing as we head to our new Season. We will continue to deliver a world class product both on track, and through our broadcast programme, and will seek to continually offer exceptional results for all of our partners.” 
 

Just after the final round of the 2019 /2020 season we lost a highly valued member of our team. Gary Khor contributed greatly to the success of the Series, ensuring the events ran smoothly whilst always keeping a smile on his face.  Thank you Gary – we miss you greatly.