Originally Posted by
Franky
Flying cars don't sell, otherwise all car commercials would be of cars jumping.
WRC will thrive, if there are several heroes and not to mention rivalries that the media can feed on. Also driver's with a good sense of humour and rather limited PR filter - Grönholm would be a viral hit in this decade. The Average Joe wants emotions, to root for someone and some spectacle.
Now, if Meeke would be going head to head into the last two rounds fighting for the championship with Ogier, then even the ladyboy sports (F1 in N.O.T's vocabulary) crazy British media would take notice. Once the mainstream media catches on and starts to pump their resources into covering a sport, you can reach the Average Joe and increase the viewership. And maybe someone in the new audience will become a die hard fan of the sport, but they'll always be the minority.
Also a crew from a smaller nation, who has the potential to win rallies, could do wonders to the fan base size from that country. Maybe New Zealanders can comment, if there's been any increase in the way rallying is covered in NZ after Paddon's win.
In Estonia the amount of active rally fans was in a decline after Märtin and Aava retired and we had guys only in the feeder series. And then the rally wins started to come from those series and the media fed on it. When at one point you were happy to find a small news bulletin in the news paper, then now you can find plenty of full page stories during the year.
Also does Mikkelsen have the same kind of fan army like Petter Solberg had during his Subaru days (when he still won)?