An peek inside the Drone Racing Industry

I built and flew my first mini quad in October 2014. Since then I’ve bought many of drones, countless amounts of parts, and have invested in traveling to industry events all over the US. During my years of flying racing drones I’ve seen this sector of the industry grow at a pretty fast rate.

In an attempt to understand the customer, I created a poll with basic information about the habits of mini quad pilots, and will be sharing some data here.

When we take a look at the age data of the average FPV pilot, a total of 55.5% of the 654 pilots surveyed skewed in-between the ages of 17–35. Theres a 6.3% increase in the number of pilots when segmenting the 26–35 from the 17–25 year old group and I believe this has to do with availability of funds to devote to drone racing, having a career with a steady income, and schooling getting in the way for the younger demographic. As expected, if pilots between the ages of 17–35 are not married with kids, their monthly spending habits increase by $100 to $200 a month. More on spending habits later.

So now that we have a basic understanding of the ages of our pilots, lets look at income. I find it interesting that the two largest chunks that make up over 50% of the income range is from those below $15,000, and those above $75,000. The majority of those making under $15,000 comes from those under 25, and the majority of those who make over $75,000 are in-between 25 to 45 years old. As expected, the spending habits of those making over $75,000 increase by at least double and sometimes up to four times more to over $400 a month when compared to the average overall spending habits. However, income generally does not change how many times a month people order new parts.

It’s notable that income is not the deciding factor of how many working aircraft you have. 38% of people reported only having 1–2 quads and within that segment there is incomes of every range. I presume this is due to the fact that mini quads are made up of a collection of inexpensive parts, and it is fairly easy to keep an aircraft operational with minimal monthly spending budget.

Even though racing on the weekends usually ends up in broken parts, I was surprised to see 22.7% of pilots surveyed place orders on a once a week basis. The largest segment of purchase orders for drone parts per pilot is once a month at 35.1%, with the second largest segment being 28.6% ordering 2–3 times a month.

In terms of aircraft ownership the largest segment was 38% reporting they have 1–2 quads. It is notable to mention that 22.7%, the second largest segment, had 3–4 working aircraft in their arsenal. When I started flying I made sure to have 2–3 working aircraft in case I encountered a crash that resulted in an aircraft becoming non-operational, and would always recommend having more than one to those getting started.

When asked what aspect(s) of drone racing interests them the most, 85.3% of those surveyed prefer freestyle. I find that freestyle has a lot of the same cultural characteristics as skateboarding but with much less risk. Both street skateboarding and mini quad freestyle require participants to explore their cities to find architecture that is appealing while exploring with peers who then push each other to do tricks they never thought they could do. While freestyle is expressive, racing requires pilots to fly on a set course as fast as they can regardless of style.

The drone racing industry without a doubt is one of the most interesting and fastest evolving secor of the drone indrusty. However, the barrier of entery still seems too high for the masses to get involved. We’ve seen more beginner friendly product like Tiny Whoop, the Fatshark 101 kit, or Yuneec’s HD Racer drone emerge with popularity and might be the catalus to get new drone users into the drone racing scene.

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