How many subscriptions are too many in sim racing?

Do you know how many subscription services you currently pay for? Do you know how much money you currently spend for those? I’ll hazard a guess that you have a ballpark figure, but nothing precise. People who get frustrated by that experience a phenomenon called “subscription fatigue”. So let’s take a look at how that all looks in sim racing.

What can you subscribe to?

Starting with the possible subscriptions, of course a few games have subscription connected to them. One of the longest-standing products in sim racing, iRacing, is a subscription software. You only get access to it if you pay up to a bi-yearly fee. More recently, other sim racing games try to penetrate this system, with RENNSPORT and Le Mans Ultimate both having announced plans or even set subscriptions into action.

Next up, there are a whole lot of extra software services that allow you to rent their offering. Analysis tools such as Coach Dave Delta (Affiliate Link) are classics in this regard. More recently, services like trophi.ai (Affiliate Link) have started to crop up, this one promising AI-driven coaching of ones driving style. Additionally, the bigger league platforms like SimGrid (Affiliate Link) or Low Fuel Motorsports offer free as well as paid tiers, giving users access to more features or data.

That’s not all, though. Many content creators in the sim racing space, YouTubers or mod makers, offer their own subscription services to support them personally. Oftentimes, these are hosted via Patreon or similar services. Personally, I also support a modding group called GUERILLA Mods I really like the content of via Patreon. And on a side-note, we also rely on gracious donations via our own tracc.eu Patreon.

When is it too much now?

With a wide selection of different subscription ways, people can feel overwhelmed. Having so many subscriptions can be quite untransparent and make it hard to have a good overview over personal finances. That’s why the term “subscription fatigue” has been coined and scientifically researched, mostly in combination with the rise of video streaming services, so called OTTs (Over-The-Tops) like Netflix, Amazon Prime Video or Disney+.

Many of the scientific papers I found in my own research focus on the side of “subscription fatigue” which benefits businesses. Namely, how to circumvent the effect. A 2024 paper by two Yonsei University (Seoul, South Korea) graduates Jeong and Lee “seeks to understand the decision-making process behind users’ discontinuation of OTT multihoming”. OTT multihoming means subscribing to multiple streaming services. Additionally, “it offers insights for OTT providers on strategies to reduce the rate of multihoming attrition”.

The findings of that study basically come down to the preferences of the user. Unsurprisingly, if a user values variety in content, they are more likely to keep being subscribing to a service. On the other hand, if a user values monetary value more and tends to compare pricing, they are more likely to unsubscribe from services down the line.

Now, this is not completely applicable to sim racing, but let me draw a comparison anyways.

Subscribing to different sim racing games

The study is most applicable if we compare the sim racing games alone, without the aforementioned added subscriptions. The finding was that diversity in content is what keeps users subscribed to multiple services. In that regard, let’s look at the three prominent sim racing games that offer subscription services at the moment.

• iRacing
• Le Mans Ultimate
• RENNSPORT

Admittedly, RENNSPORT does not currently offer a subscription. It has been mentioned several times, though, that they will be “free-to-enter” but will have the option for a subscription. Le Mans Ultimate, on the other hand, is now the first competitor to iRacing as in sim racing with a subscription model. Still, the model itself is quite different.

Subscription comparison (as of Feb 24th, 2025)

How RENNSPORT will handle their subscription service is yet-to-be-announced. Though, because of the “free-to-enter”, it seems to be more along the lines of the approach Le Mans Ultimate is going for, except for the upfront purchasing price.

Content Comparison (as of Feb 24th, 2025)

Before we get in too deep about the specifics of the subscriptions, though, the aforementioned study concluded that content variety is what keeps people subscribed. So the real question is how the content of the three compares.

Since iRacing has had a head start of more than a decade on the other two games, I will list up the content for Le Mans Ultimate and RENNSPORT and then just say what of that iRacing cannot provide. Because iRacing just has a much broader palette of cars and circuits.

Side note: While going into RENNSPORT to check the currently available content, I got softlocked by not being able to leave the car store. I got stuck looking at the free M2 they forced me to take while I had to Alt+F4 to quit the game so I could look at the available content.

Now, let’s see which content from above is not available in iRacing, currently.

Circuits

• Bahrain International Circuit
• Jeddah Corniche Circuit
• Goodwood Hillclimb
• and the two fictional circuits from RENNSPORT

Cars

• Hypercars (5 WEC-level hypercars are available, but Le Mans Ultimate has a few unique ones)
• LMP2 (while LMU has the Oreca 07, iRacing has the Dallara P217)
• GTE (iRacing is missing LMU’s Aston Martin Vantage, but has 3 other ones)
• GT3 (Again, iRacing is missing the Aston Martin Vantage but has a lot more GT3s otherwise)
• Praga R1 Cup (missing, although suitable alternatives are available like the Radical SR10)

As you can see, for content that iRacing is missing, there are suitable alternatives available. The only reason, contentwise, to prefer either Le Mans Ultimate or RENNSPORT in the future, in terms of a subscription, is if you are either a big Aston Martin fan or a fan of any of the unavailable circuits. Although, iRacing does have a much broader selection of 136 cars and 126 circuits total according to this article.

Overlapping content is more dependent on other aspects

There are, however, three main other topics affecting decisions here.

1. Single-player possibility
2. Online racing availability
3. Handling

To quickly answer those topics, if a driver likes to race offline, they will have different preferences to others about computer opponents. LMU, iRacing and RENNSPORT offer different AI opponents in terms of how they are to drive against. Online racing availability is by far most prevalent in iRacing, while LMU and RENNSPORT struggle to fill some sessions. And handling, again, is purely based on preference.

Are three (or two) game-subscriptions such a big thing already?

So will this already be too much for some people?

Yes, probably some people will either have to or want to decide between either of these subscriptions. Others may not care about that.

What’s important to note here is that the games are not the only subscriptions drivers can face. As mentioned earlier, additional software or supporting creators is also on the tab. So, let’s say someone pays 10€ a month for a tool like Coach Dave Delta (Affiliate Link) and supports creators for another 20€ a month. Subscribing for 5€ a month of iRacing and 5€ a month on Le Mans Ultimate might not seem like much at first, but those subscriptions now come up to 40€ a month. Then a person might have Netflix, Amazon Prime, loan instalments, food subscriptions, racing-specific streaming services and many other potential recurring payments.

Altogether, it adds up and many people will, sooner or later, look at their expenses and check what is not necessary. And as it currently looks, rather than iRacing, the one left behind is more likely to be LMU or RENNSPORT. Simply because you CAN play them without subscribing. In iRacing, you are locked out completely if you don’t renew. This plays into the sunken cost fallacy, although that doesn’t apply here since iRacing still offers so much more than the competitors.

Closing Thoughts

Le Mans Ultimate and RENNSPORT would have to become much more unique in what they offer to even think of chipping recurring users off from iRacing. And even if they do, they will not be able to “take away” everything. But maybe they don’t need to.

Maybe sim racers are collectively wealthy enough to fund several subscription-based games at the time. Still, with games like Assetto Corsa or the upcoming Assetto Corsa EVO, sim racers might feel like subscription is not necessary and abandon at least what is not iRacing. It does seem to me like iRacing is currently the “too big too fail” in sim racing.

Would the sim racing market survive more subscription-based games?

Yes, the market would survive. But no, I don’t think at this moment the “more games” would survive easily. Sim racing is still a sector in which many people have been for decades. This core of racers from the beginnings of the genre is sizable and, from my experience, generally opposed to much shakeup and change.

Many young sim racers of a different generation are coming to the hobby, but is it enough to fund ever-increasing development costs for multiple studios? Only time will be able to tell. And I’m looking forward to finding out.