On Sunday 18 June, the chequered flag of the 24 Hours of Le Mans marked the end of a week of sporting splendour. Media coverage was remarkable. Figures show excellent performance across the board, reflecting the immense popularity of the world’s greatest endurance race. Here’s the facts and figures that show the popularity of the race and trackside event:
The race itself:
60 cars on the starting grid, representing 41 different teams and 16 countries;
180 drivers, with licenses from 31 countries;
The fastest among them:
- Kamui Kobayashi in the #7 Toyota TS050 – Hybrid who clocked a lap in 3:14.791 in the second qualifying session, at an average speed of 251.9 kph, which earned him the pole position.
- Sébastien Buemi in the #8 Toyota TS050 – Hybrid who registered 3:18.604 on the actual race time sheet – an average of 247 kph.
Class winners:
– LMP1. Porsche LMP Team – #2 Porsche 919 Hybrid – Bernhard/Bamber/Hartley
367 laps, 5,001.84 km at an average of 208.41 kph.
– LMP2. Jackie Chan DC racing – #38 Oreca 07-Gibson – Tung/Laurent/Jarvis (2nd overall)
366 laps, 4,988.21 km at an average of 207.84 kph.
– LMGTE Pro. Aston Martin Racing – #97 Aston Martin Vantage – Turner/Adam/Serra
340 laps, 4,633.86 km at an average of 193.08 kph.
– LMGTE Am. JMW Motorsport – #84 Ferrari 488 GTE – Smith/Stevens/Vanthoor
333 laps, 4,538.46 km at an average of 189.10 kph.
Trackside Spectators
- 258,500 spectators watched the race at the circuit.
- 31 300 spectators at the first day’s practice (Wednesday 14th June), 54 700 the second (Thursday 15th June)
- 23,000 attended the Test Day on Sunday 4 June.
Media
- 1,225 accreditations for 928 journalists representing print press, radio and new media, plus photographers, press officers and bloggers.
- 660 media outlets were represented.
- The 1,225 people who produced content came from 45 different countries.
- Over 7,000 articles about Le Mans 24 Hours were published online between 3-19 June, with a potential readership of over 2 billion. Articles came mostly from France (35.29%), the USA (11.61%) and Japan (8.02%). Altogether, this coverage represents an equivalent advertising value of €122,750,745*.
(*source Meltwater)
Television
- Some 380 people were on site to manage 24-hour coverage of the race, thanks to 96 cameras, including 54 onboard cameras on 16 cars, 14 cameras in the pit lane, one on cable and one specifically for slow-motion images (100 per second).
- Another 700 people, including 230 journalists, produced television coverage for media outlets around the world.
- In all, 80 TV crews were present.
TV broadcasting
- Some 35 international television networks purchased the right to broadcast the 2017 race.
- They covered 190 countries.
- With a potential audience of 802 million.
- Eurosport: This year 14.5 million European viewers watched the race on Eurosport and Eurosport 2 – an increase of 10% compared to 2016; and over 38 hours of air time, including live coverage.
- The audience in Germany was 52% larger than last year (40% in the Netherlands and 13% in Italy).
- In France, 1.5 million viewers were exposed to images of the race. Eurosport 1 registered its highest audience since June 2015 with a record number of viewers for the motorsports programme Dimanche Méca.
Source: Médiamétrie.
– France Télévisions: 15 hours of live coverage were broadcast on France Télévisions. For the fist time, France 3 broadcast live coverage throughout the night. On Saturday 17 June, 1.2 million viewers tuned in to watch the start of the race, with 1.5 million switching on for the end of the race the following day. In total, over 6 million viewers in France watched the 2-hour marathon via France Télévisions.
Source Mediamat/Mediametrie
24 Hours of Le Mans application: The WEC/24H application was as popular as ever, with 743,057 downloads since it was launched. Now that the 24 Hours of Le Mans is over, the app has switched to coverage of the next six rounds in the FIA World Endurance Championship.
Website: The race website lemans.org recorded 1 495 635 visits, 3 089 601 page views by 900 326 users (12-19 June). France comes first in terms of users (29.02%), followed by the USA (10.89%) and the UK (10.19%).
Social Media: Facebook – 24heuresdumans
- The 24 Heures du Mans Facebook page has 511 307 fans (up from 461,621 in 2016) and attracted 28 000 new fans between 1 and 20 June.
- 175 posts
- Video posts scored 4.9 million views.
- French Twitter account – @24heuresdumans
- The French language Twitter account has 119 000 followers and attracted 4,500 new followers between 1 and 20 June.
- 566 Tweets were sent in that period
- which were retweeted 15,000 times
- English Twitter account – @24hoursoflemans
- The English language Twitter account has 240 000 followers, and attracted 13,000 new followers between 1 and 20 June.
- 295 Tweets were sent in that period
- which were retweeted 13,000 times
- Instagram – @24heuresdumans
- The race instagram account has 102,000 followers, including 14,000 new followers between 1 and 20 June.
- 198 posts
We are looking forward to 16–17 June next year, for more captivating action at the 24 Hours of Le Mans.
