The same company produces both WRC+ All-Live and the TV programmes to each countries. Just need to buy rights from Promoter to show them free-to-air on TV.
From the next event they produce Live TV programmes from 6 stages out of 10.
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Does Red Bull TV still show one live stage for free?
"Servus TV" in Austria, in Germany and i think also in Switzerland shows live stages in free-tv or free live stream on their website.
At Monte they had 3 stages and will do it at every round.
https://www.servustv.com/videos/aa-1s5mu79r51w11/
So, lack of visibility and success mentioned as a main reasons for not getting sponsorship. It could be very much so, but would still repeat the earlier comparison to prototype and GT circuit racing, e.g. IMSA or ELMS. European Le Mans Series having over full grids of seemingly well sponsored cars. Have some doubts that e.g. ELMS would have better global or local visibility than WRC. Yet don't know how much per km is the cost of running LMP vs. WRC, but running LMP can't be affordable especially with the amount of crashes they are normally having.
All live runs through discovery+ also. From what i can see the WRC has almost twice as many viewers now than in the early 2000's, add social media views on top of the 800 million+ you can't be far off 1.5 billion. F1 at 1.9 billion tv viewers so maybe it should have been even more.
Circuit racing coverage is probably much cheaper to produce with cameras around a single track showing different race catagories for hours over a weekend.
The UK guys are right - all rallying is almost invisible here to all but the hardcore fans. The average viewer sees very little coverage. Last season Elfyn Evans was fighting for the WDC but I bet 99% of the UK public have ever heard of him.
BTCC is live with all the support races for 8 hours on a Sunday - and all the grids are full of sponsor-backed cars.
If the coverage was there then M-Sport would find the sponsors.
For Germany the answers is quite simple. We have a divided TV landscape with state owned stations (paid in parts by a monthly fee of ca. 18 Euros from everybody who owns a TV) and private stations.
The state owned stations ARD (and it's local subsidiaries) and ZDF basically only care for German competitors. They i. e. cover Ski Jumping at any place as long as a German is flying as well. When Volkswagen was in the WRC - stupidly without a German driver - they only got coverage for ads in exchange. Even Rallye Deutschland was only covered by the local station in Trier area. To ask for a licence fee is the best way to get ignored completely.
The private stations only cover events when it's a business for them. Meaning, when they have to pay a licence fee of i. e. 100,000 Euros (plus maybe the costs of a team travelling to the event) they need to make at least something more than 100,000 Euros from ads related to this event. Because no outside brand has any interest in WRC, that money has to come from the manufacturers/teams/sponsors involved. Thanks mostly to VW, Sport1 and even RTL for a while broadcasted WRC. Today, none of this three parties seems to be interested in TV coverage in Germany. And believe me, Sport1 really tried.
End of story.
If i was the boss of WRC+/redbull media/whatever they call themselves, i would offer a seasons highlights for free at all the biggest tv-channels in in every country.
Easy to get it back thru wissible sponsorship in the wiew.
Then you have a fundation to sell the next year, and the wiewers want to se it.
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