MUMBAI: The franchise-based X1 Racing League – a concept brought to fruition within an 18-month time frame by Indian racers Armaan Ebrahim and Aditya Patel – will hit circuits on November 30-December 1 in New Delhi and December 7-8 in Chennai.
The six-team league, which revealed the names of five of six franchise owners at a launch event here Wednesday, will be powered by JK Tyre Motorsport.
Launching simultaneously as an adjunct to X1 Racing League is an esports league – X1 Racing eSports.
Of critical importance here is that X1, which is sanctioned by the FMSCI (Federation of Motor Sports Clubs of India ), under the aegis of the FIA (Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile), holds the exclusive commercial rights to 4-wheel racing leagues in India for the next ten years.
Ebrahim said: “We are excited to partner with extremely passionate team owners who have a long-term vision to develop and build motorsports in India. We thank JK Tyre for believing in us and coming on board as our Powered-By sponsor. Personally, for Aditya and me, this is completing a full circle with them, and we thank Sanjay Sharma for his enthusiastic support.
“We are excited to partner with OnePlus – they are a global leader and have made pioneering advancements in technology. With them as a title sponsor for X1 Racing eSports season 1, we are aiming to set the gold standard for the ecosystem in India and make motorsport accessible to all.
“It is a huge opportunity for aspiring racers from India to make their mark and all eyes from the racing community will be on the league thereafter.”
Commenting on financials, Abhinandan Balasubramanian, CBO, X1 Racing, revealed that X1’s investor consortium, consisting of prominent business leaders, family offices, VCs, and high-profile tech entrepreneurs, bankers and fund managers based in India, UK and Singapore, had together committed Rs 250 million a year for production and execution of the league for at least the next five years.
Why five? Balasubramanian tells SportzPower that five years is the timeline horizon that had been promised to the franchise owners to begin seeing returns on their investments.
Queried by this website as to what the franchise fees were and whether they were uniform for all the six teams, Balasubramanian, for whom X1 is his second shot at running a sports league (in his earlier avatar he was CEO of the short-lived Premier Futsal), said each owner group had committed $10 million to be spread over ten years as franchise fees.
The league will have six teams comprising of four drivers and two cars in each team. Of the four drivers in each team there will be one international male, one international female, one India international and domestic racer. Each race will last for 30 minutes and will have three unique team-based race formats per day. The X1 Racing League will follow the eSports competition and will take place at the Buddh International Circuit in Delhi NCR and the Madras Motor Race Track in Chennai.
Sanjay Sharma, head-Motorsport, JK Tyre, noted: “We at JK Tyre have been nurturing and honing talents in the country for almost over three decades now and seeing our boys Armaan and Aditya who started their motorsport careers with us come up with this concept is so heartwarming.
“We are happy to be associated with X1 Racing League which is an interesting new format that brings international motorsport talent to interact with Indian talent in this composition. It will appeal to a larger fan base and with the addition of the eSports league, will make the sport more accessible.”
The international male racers include former F1 Italian racer Tonio Luizzi, Malaysian Alex Yoong, son of legendary Austrian F1 driver Niki Lauda – Mathias, China’s Frankie Cheng and Englishmen Oliver James Webb and Freddie Hunt, son of former F1 world champion, James Hunt. The international female drivers are English racers Pippa Mann and Alice Powell, Switzerland’s Rahel Frey, Denmark’s Michelle Gatting and Christina Neilsen and Polish racer Gosia Rdest.
The franchise owners of the X1 Racing League teams, representing six cities, were also announced Wednesday.
These include: Chennai team owned by India’s first F1 driver and the fastest Indian in the world Narain Karthikeyan; Delhi team by The Private Office of Sheikh Tahnoon Bin Saeed Bin Tahnoon Al Nahyan, a member of the Abu Dhabi royal family; Pune team by Ghadoke Group promoter Ameet Ghadoke; Hyderabad team owned by renowned industrialist Akhilesh Reddy and Ahmedabad by Pen India Studios promoter Dhaval Gada. The sixth team ownership has been confirmed and will also be announced shortly, the organisers stated.
X1 Racing eSports
Adding to the innovation in the Indian realm of motorsports, OnePlus, the global technology brand, has joined hands with X1 Racing team as the title sponsors to launch the X1 Racing eSports Season 1, a digital simulator-based racing competition with a prize pool of Rs 15 million. The first-of-its-kind eSports initiative in India will be organized between October 10 and November 17, 2019 across all franchise cities. The eSports competition will happen at the Phoenix Mall in Chennai, Mumbai and Pune, DLF Mall in Delhi, Manjira Mall in Hyderabad, and One Forum Mall in Ahmedabad. It will also take place in colleges across the country.
Further addressing the eSports initiative, Vikas Agarwal, general manager, OnePlus India, shared: “We are thrilled to be collaborating with X1 Racing eSports Season 1 in this one-of-a-kind gaming initiative. OnePlus has been one of the pioneering technology brands to invest in the gaming space and develop gaming-friendly features for its users globally. We believe that there is a plethora of remarkable, yet unexplored ideas for gaming enthusiasts in India. And with launching X1 eSports initiative, we would be a step closer to unravelling these exciting, new opportunities in the gaming space.”
Ravi Krishnan, non-executive chairman X1 Racing feels that India is potentially a big market for motorsports if curated in the right format. He said: “X1 is creating, developing and commercializing a unique ecosystem for motorsports via 3 pillars – League, eSports and Speed Summit – to create a community that includes the avid motorsports fan, the general sports and automobile enthusiast, the youth of the nation, aspiring racers and previously untapped consumers.”
Mohit Burman, vice chairman of Dabur India and investor in X1 Racing, said: “I am excited to back the young and dynamic X1 Racing founders. We are redefining and reinventing motorsports, and this is poised to be a pioneering endeavor.”
X1 RACING FACT FILE
Investors
Mohit Burman vice-chairman Dabur India, owner Kings XI Punjab
Jitendra Gupta Venture Investor, CitrusPay founder (sold $150mn)
Kunal Shah Cred founder, Freecharge founder (sold $500mn)
Rattha Group $500mn Family Office
Angellist Early Stage Investor, Invested $800mn+ since 2010
Raghunandan G Venture Investor, TaxiForSure founder (sold $200mn)
White Unicorn Ventures, $25mn VC Fund
Anupam Mittal Shaadi.com founder, Venture and LP Investor
LetsVenture Early Stage Investor, Invested $75mn+ since 2014
Nirav Choksi Credable founder, Venture and LP Investor
Platform distribution & marketing
X1 Racing League
16 hours of live broadcast
8+ hours of additional programming
3 month high-intensity campaign
X1 Racing eSports
100+ hours of content
Packaged programming for brands
1 month high-intensity campaign
