Betting on someone playing a video game used to be a joke. Then the prize pools got real. Then the teams got real. And now we're here, in 2026, with esports betting sitting at $15.39 billion according to Spherical Insights and sim racing quietly becoming one of the categories bookmakers actually want to cover. Bettors on 1xBet Somalia already see virtual racing listed next to football and basketball in the esports sections, which tells you where things are heading. 532 million people watched esports in 2024 and about 29% of them wagered at least once a month. Those aren't niche numbers anymore.
The Leagues Driving All of This
So there are three competitions you need to know about if you're even slightly curious about where sim racing meets betting.
F1 Sim Racing World Championship
Red Bull, Ferrari, McLaren, Mercedes. Nine of eleven actual F1 teams field sim racing squads, and these aren't hobbyist setups. They're factory-backed with real budgets. The whole thing runs on F1 25 across four LAN events, broadcast live, $750,000 prize fund. Jarno Opmeer picked up his third title in 2025 (nobody else has more than one), and the 2026 season wrapped up in May. If you follow real F1, you can read form and driver tendencies here without learning a completely new sport. That crossover is a big part of why betting markets on this series have gotten so deep.
eNASCAR Coca-Cola iRacing Series
This one runs long. Twenty-four rounds, forty drivers, twenty teams, $511,000 in prize money. Steven Wilson won 2025 with Spire Motorsports. NASCAR treats it as official, which isn't nothing. They added three vehicle categories to qualifying in 2026, first time they've done that. But what really makes eNASCAR work for betting is oval racing itself. Pack drafting, restarts where ten cars go three wide, last-lap wrecks. That kind of volatility is hard to predict, and hard-to-predict is exactly what live betting markets thrive on.
Gran Turismo World Series
Different animal entirely. Sony runs this one, and the field comes straight from the game's online rankings. You don't need a team contract. You need a PlayStation and enough skill to survive qualifiers. Four rounds in 2026, May through December, three cities, World Finals at the end. Because the field is open, upsets show up more often here than in iRacing or F1. And upsets are what keep betting markets from getting stale.
What Makes Racing Bettable When Other Esports Aren't
Most esports are a headache for bookmakers. A team fight in League of Legends involves dozens of split-second decisions that are nearly impossible to model. Racing gives them cleaner numbers to work with.
- Lap times and sector splits you can compare session to session
- Qualifying grids that tell you who's fast before the race even starts
- Pit strategy and tyre calls that swing results in measurable ways
- Seasons with fixed calendars, not random tournament brackets
- Drivers who race each other repeatedly, building trackable head-to-head records
74.3 million people bet on esports in 2024. That number passed 80 million in 2025. Sim racing's cut is still small next to Counter-Strike, but it's growing quicker because the audience trends older, with more money to wager. Sportsbooks notice that.
Why the Money Keeps Coming In
Red Bull's sim racing recruitment mirrors their junior driver programme. Scouting, structured practice, data review. Some sim racers have turned these positions into actual motorsport careers, and that kind of crossover gives the whole scene credibility that bookmakers can build on.
League | Game | Prize Pool (2026) | Format |
|---|---|---|---|
F1 Sim Racing World Championship | F1 25 | $750,000 | 4 LAN events, 9 teams |
eNASCAR Coca-Cola iRacing Series | iRacing | $511,000 | 24 rounds, 40 drivers |
Gran Turismo World Series | GT7 | TBA | 4 rounds, open entry |
Esports Racing League | Multi-platform | TBA | 5 rounds + LAN final |
Porsche Esports Supercup | iRacing | TBA | Regional + global |
Virtual sports betting reached $17.60 billion in 2026 according to Coherent Market Insights, heading toward $56.69 billion by 2033. Sixty percent of esports wagers come through mobile now. You watch the race on your phone, you bet on your phone, you never leave the app. That's not a gimmick. That's how an entire betting vertical gets built.