The Drone Racing League (DRL) has partnered with Google Cloud to bring the first professional drone race to Silicon Valley, launching during the 2022–23 DRL Algorand World Championship Season.
The pair will introduce the DRL Race in the Cloud – presented by Google Cloud – which will kick off the 2022-2023 racing season on 11 October at PayPal Park in San Jose, California.
DRL President, Rachel Jacobson, said: “Google Cloud and the Drone Racing League are globally recognised for technology innovation, progressive thinking, and making the future happen today.
“We are thrilled to partner with Google Cloud to engage their worldwide community of developers through our sport. Together, we will launch our 2022–23 DRL Algorand World Championship Season with a spectacular drone race as part of Google Cloud’s marquee event of the year.”
As the pair look to ‘reimagine a new era of tech-driven sports’, the race will be held on the opening night of the annual conference – Google Cloud Next.
The firm has also outlined that participating developers will be able to utilise DRL’s race data to predict race outcomes and provide tips to DRL Pilots in a bid to enhance their season performance.
“The Drone Racing League represents a new frontier of real-world tech-driven sports and games that can only be achieved with the scale and performance of the cloud,” added Anil Jain, Global Managing Director of Media and Entertainment Industry Solutions at Google Cloud.
“We look forward to collaborating with DRL through advanced AI/ML and data analytics capabilities that will allow the league to reimagine how they engage with and delight their millions of tech-savvy fans, who we are excited to welcome into the Google Cloud community of innovators.”
As the season prepares to air from 19 November, DRL has stated that it is expanding its media distribution to top streaming platforms this season, including TikTok, YouTube, Twitch, Instagram and Facebook.
