RACER.com hits all-time high despite pandemic shifted events
Takuma Sato leads Scott Dixon and Graham Rahal to win the spectator-less 104th Indy 500 in August. Photo: Barry Cantrell / LAT
The 2020 racing season will be remembered as the year when racers, teams, manufacturers, sanctioning bodies and event promoters adapted rapidly to lead the sporting world back to action amid the pandemic. Regardless of the uncertainty, RACER’s audience remained engaged and passionately devoted to the sport, driving record growth in the process across all our digital media and social channels in the first three quarters of 2020. Here are some highlights illustrating how RACER.com’s audience remains a bright spot in a year of upheaval.
During the 30 days this summer that encompassed the spectator-less Indianapolis 500 and 24 Hours of Le Mans (Aug. 22 - Sept. 20, 2020):
Google Analytics reports that RACER.com generated all-time high traffic with 891,007 users visiting the site during the period
Compared with last year’s normal window for Indy and Le Mans (May 18 - June 16), the 2020 user tally was up by 31.47% over 2019, a year in which Fernando Alonso non-qualification at Indy drove a surge in users.
August attracted a record 802,586 users (up 36.74% over August 2019) on
RACER.com driven by the rescheduled Indy 500 taking place on August 23August 2020 also set an all-time record of 460,356 shares of stories directly from the site and 9,043 reader comments highlighting the huge organic growth and engagement generated by RACER content
Normally half a million fans flock to Le Mans every June. But like many other major events, they were asked to stay home this year for rescheduled September race. Sam Bloxham / LAT
For September 2020, the 24 Hours of Le Mans helped to deliver a new monthly record of 810,946 users on RACER.com, growing 47.55% over September 2019
Continued high engagement with RACER content on social media generated 387,401 shares of content directly from the site and 8,790 reader comments posted on site in September
Despite the ongoing pandemic, there has been a 45.29% growth in RACER.com users during the first nine months of 2020 vs 2019. Remarkably, this nine-month total has already eclipsed 2019’s full 12-month user total (4,984,896 vs 4,430,894)
The audience growth has also contributed to a changing audience demographic. During the first nine months of 2020, the age composition of RACER.com users shifted younger, with 40.49% of the site’s users now under the age of 45 versus 36.42% in 2019. The biggest percentage gain occurred in the 18-24 age segment. (Growth over 2019 shown in brackets for each age segment)
As RACER.com users grew during the first nine-months of 2020 the gender composition had a seven-point gain in female share.
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