As Cersei Lannister once almost said: when you play the Game of Drones, you win or you cry.
When 15-year-old Luke Bannister, from Somerset, won the first Dubai World Drone Prix at the weekend, he won big, bagging $250,000 (£173,000) in prize money.
One of the youngest pilots on the scene, Luke is set to embark on a career that doesn’t strictly even exist yet: flying for the UK-based Tornado X-Blades team.
Luke beat out Australian pilot Chad Nowak, the winner of the biggest US competition last year, and star of Dubai’s Rotor Riot team. Post-race, Nowak said:
“Luke was always a threat. He’s so fast, and doesn’t have the fear or the nerves that the older pilots can have. That was a great race. It felt like we were really pushing the limit of what each other could do, and the crowd were responding, too. They were loving it. I was loving it.”
Back in January, a new venture-backed startup called the Drone Racing League (or DRL for short) was established to capitalise on the burgeoning craze, which is fast becoming a full-blown sport.
Likewise, Airgonay, a French quadcopter racing association, holds an annual drone race in Europe, where groups of men wearing goggle-mounted monitors test their radio-controlled machines at speeds of up to 70mph.
Drone racing looks set to be the future of both gaming and gambling, so pick a team.
