How to make ERC a real stepping stone?

[Franky]

They could do so much more with it. Just watched the highlights on UK Eurosport, on at 12.30am, hardly gonna capture a bigger audience this way. The U.K. Commentator is awful, Carlton Kirby, keeps pronouncing the names wrong. I really don't believe Eurosport care about it, which makes me wander why they became the promoters...

Why are the broadcasts so late? I'll try to work back from the broadcast start time and you might get part of the answer.

12.30 am - Broadcast time
21.30 - File is uploaded/downloaded to the TV station server for ingestion, preferably not less than 3 hours before transmission
20.30 - Start of upload. Let's say file is 20GB and average upload speed is 10MB/s. Estimated upload time 35 minutes.
19.30 - Start of exporting the TV programme
18.37 - First car enters the evening service
17.35 - Start of the last stage

I haven't watched the programme yet and I do not know the exact workflow of the ERC TV programme production, so all the values are just estimations. But you can see that there really isn't much time between the beginning of video export and the start of the last stage.

Today the last service is in 2,5 hours earlier than yesterday and also the TV guide shows the Eurosport event review programme is 2 hours earlier than yesterday.

[RS]

No one cares about rallying in France. Only Monte and Tour de Corse - since they are back in WRC- had small interest by the non-motorsport medias.

Really? Even with Loeb, Ogier, Citroën, Peugeot, Camili...

[EightGear]

I think 'No one cares about rallying in France' still means there's a lot more interest there than in a lot of other countries.

[focus206]

Fore sure, ERC in France would have no impact on the press. And I guess that's more or less the same in Germany ... maybe not in Italy ?

In Italy not even the Italian WRC round has impact on the press, no chance for an ERC one...

[RS]

Reading these comments it seems as if nobody cares about rallying anywhere (apart from maybe Finland and Czech Republic)

[focus206]

Reading these comments it seems as if nobody cares about rallying anywhere (apart from maybe Finland and Czech Republic)

Well, all European countries have rally fans, but the non-specialistic press and the Average Joes don't care for sure... I guess that's what we mean when saying "nobody cares about rallying here"

[AndyRAC]

Reading these comments it seems as if nobody cares about rallying anywhere (apart from maybe Finland and Czech Republic)

Thats my impression. Certainly as far as the UK goes it's not great. Last weekend was a pretty quiet one for Motorsport; yet neither the BRC or WRC events made much impression on the popular Motorsport forums. F1, BTCC, Sportscars, bikes are all far more popular.

[tommeke_B]

Maybe we must question, what's wrong with rallying not being the most popular sport, and not most covered in newspaper? Also, could events (especially WRC ones) still handle much more spectators and keep it safe at the same time? Remember what happened in the 80s when rallying became too popular... Times have changed but I think the same still applies. In crowded events we can see it's often impossible to maintain the safety for spectators... Anyway I think rallying as a sport is too complex to be appealing to the general public. Rallying has a relatively small but very dedicated audience, there aren't so many sport disciplines that make so many people travel to see it live (be it inside a country or around the world).

[Lousada]

No one cares about rallying in France. Only Monte and Tour de Corse - since they are back in WRC- had small interest by the non-motorsport medias.

Fore sure, ERC in France would have no impact on the press. And I guess that's more or less the same in Germany ... maybe not in Italy ?

Precisely that should be the job of the promotor. The promotor should be doing everything to get the ERC in the various medias.
But okay, that would require a lot of work and the benefits only appear in a long time. Apparently that is not in Eurosports mind at the moment...

[Lousada]

Maybe we must question, what's wrong with rallying not being the most popular sport, and not most covered in newspaper? Also, could events (especially WRC ones) still handle much more spectators and keep it safe at the same time? Remember what happened in the 80s when rallying became too popular... Times have changed but I think the same still applies.

Sorry, but I think this is a ridiculous statement. Rallying exists solely because of spectator interest. On the one hand because the sport is heavily financed by sponsors and on the other hand because city councils only allow permits for rallies because of the public interest. I do not think many rallies would continue if spectators were banned.

Anyway I think rallying as a sport is too complex to be appealing to the general public. Rallying has a relatively small but very dedicated audience, there aren't so many sport disciplines that make so many people travel to see it live (be it inside a country or around the world).

It is a big mistake to think the 'general public' is stupid. They can understand rallying perfectly well, it is not that complicated after all. It is not about knowing about it, it is about caring about it. For example, I know of the existence of Volleyball, I know the basic rules, I know it is very popular, but I simply do not care about it so I won't follow it. Ultimately it is the promotors job to get people to start caring about rallying.