Sitting in the press conference room at Daytona in January 2020, when IMSA and the ACO first revealed the global LMDh concept, paving the way for a “merger” of the WeatherTech SportsCar Championship and the FIA ​​World Endurance Championship’s flagship categories, it was hard to imagine how it would all come about. It all sounded great, but would it work?

That day, senior representatives from the sport’s governing bodies and manufacturers described LMDh’s announcement as a “game changer,” a “logical approach,” “monumental,” “massive” and “historic.” But no one really knew where things would go or whether manufacturers would be outnumbered once the ruleset was released globally.

Fast forward four years and we have a growing IMSA GTP field that will feature six factories next year and a WEC Hypercar grid with almost 20 full-season cars from nine manufacturers. It started and now the task at hand is very different.

Previously, policymakers focused on building networks, attracting new manufacturers and encouraging future investment. Now, it’s about maintaining what we have and building an audience for products on rails that have never looked better.

Looking specifically at IMSA, it’s fair to say that the level of growth the WeatherTech Championship is experiencing within its walls has currently exceeded all expectations. IMSA President John Doonan is encouraged by recent developments, but he is not complacent.

This astonishing period of unification in sportscar racing is reaching its peak and accelerating rapidly, with crowds turning out in record numbers almost every week and broadcast viewing figures trending upwards globally.

But Doonan knows as well as anyone that could change in a heartbeat. This is an inherently cyclical area of ​​motorsport, with manufacturers coming and going as the rules evolve. We are now in the midst of an era that will be cherished for decades to come, but champagne celebrations are not a weekly feature at headquarters. No one at IMSA is under any illusions that this will last forever.

As a result, the hard work has not stopped and continues behind the scenes to build the audience for IMSA’s WeatherTech Championship and support series. Fundamentals matter — they need to be as strong as possible to weather any future storms.

A great example of IMSA’s forward thinking came in March when it began streaming races at Sebring on YouTube for free for fans outside the U.S. IMSA didn’t promote the addition to its streaming offering that week; instead, it did a soft launch. Officials wanted to see what would happen if streams were placed on its channel, which has more than 350,000 followers and potential to grow via the “algorithm.”

It was a literal overnight success. The live race broadcast for the 12 Hours now lives on the IMSA Channel with 542,000 views, prompting the decision to add YouTube as a permanent home for race broadcasts alongside the desktop platform and app.

With moves like this, IMSA is seizing the moment. The WeatherTech Championship may be based in the United States (except for the annual race at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park), but the “I” in IMSA stands for “International,” and growing and serving the championship’s global fan base becomes more of a priority as time goes on.

“With the merger, sports car racing has come into the spotlight more than at any point in our careers,” Doonan told RACER. “When we went to YouTube at Sebring for America’s oldest endurance race, we had about 500,000 viewers at the peak of that broadcast. We had high hopes, but it was far beyond what we thought possible.

“The North American market is incredibly important to our OEMs, drivers and partners. IMSA is the largest ‘international’ racing series in North America. Those two points, combined with the fact that we have 18 manufacturers who choose to compete with us and dozens of drivers from around the world on our grid, mean that bringing our IMSA product and broadcasts to a growing international audience is incredibly important.”

The post-Sebring data continued to show encouraging signs. Viewers outside the U.S. didn’t just tune in to watch and avoid the highest-profile race. Instead, Doonan explained, fans stayed in their seats and made a significant statistical leap forward each year.

“There were 4.3 million hours watched on YouTube in 2023 and 15 million hours watched since the beginning of the year. This is a special opportunity for us and we are really happy,” he says. “It also makes our manufacturers and partners happy. The North American market was named by almost every manufacturer as the most important market for them when it comes to growing a brand.

“But with 18 manufacturers, their global headquarters may not be in the U.S. — they may be somewhere else. So it’s critical to provide an easy way for executive teams — and people across the board who agree that racing is a viable marketing tool and an R&D tool — to watch the racing and see the return on investment.

“Alpine (IMSA’s next target in GTP) is a great example. They want to come to the U.S. and sell road cars. If you bring the racing program as part of the brand launch, that’s an authentic way to launch a brand. You need a lot of assets, a retail outlet and a distribution network to do that, but more than anything, you need awareness. What better way to do that than to show the public what you can do on the track?”