TV ratings rise for WRC

TV ratings on the rise for WRC
Increases for fifth consecutive year *(C'mon SPEED... bring it back!!!!!)

Three winners from three rounds so far in 2007

International Sportsworld Communicators, the media and commercial rights holders for the World Rally Championship, has announced the latest TV audience statistics and data, illustrating that the cumulative global television audience of the WRC has increased 46% since 2002, from 554 million to 807 million, reaching almost every country in the world.

The 2006 season saw a total number of dedicated WRC broadcasts of 8,522, an increase of 27% since 2005, equating to a total of 4,544 hours of coverage worldwide, an increase of 155% since 2002.

Despite tough competition in the global TV marketplace, WRC's portfolio of broadcasters continued to grow last year and landmark agreements were concluded with pan-regional cable and satellite broadcasters

in Asia (ESPN Star Sports), Latin America (ESPN), the Middle East (Al Jazeera), Africa (Supersport) and Europe (Eurosport). Most significantly most of these agreements are multi-year contracts which underpin the future success of the WRC TV programming and provide an excellent base from which to grow the sport and develop the WRC brand on a global basis.

Key terrestrial channels, such as ITV in the UK, France TV, TVE Spain, RTL Germany, YLE Finland and RTR Russia, also renewed agreements, which is testament to the growing momentum of WRC with many of them actually increasing the amount of coverage. This is proven by three of the key European markets which showed significant increases in their audience figures for 2006, with France increasing by 10%, Germany by 69% and Spain by 56% compared to the year before.

TV agreements with new broadcasters in new territories were also secured for the 2006 season, such as RTE Ireland, various terrestrial networks in Belgium, Sport TV Portugal, MMS Ukraine and CTV Belarus.

E.A.
Source WRC

Guess you haven't heard.

RaceCentralTV has acquired the rights to the WRC in the US.

They will begin their coverage with Mexico, but it will likely take more than the week of lead in time they have to get their full distribution network and content pacakge together, but they will have something for Mexico and all the rest of the events.

Hehe, you can do anything with figures ;)

I don't think there is any country where WRC on TV has gone in the right direction in the last years. In Finland it is mainly on pay TV, in Estonia there is nothing at all for the last 2 years in USA also nothing at all, in Australia also on pay TV. Not looking good to be honest.

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Originally Posted by Jaanus

In Australia also on pay TV. Not looking good to be honest.

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It's not only available on Pay TV - it's recently signed a deal with our smallest free-to-air network, after Channel Ten, whose slogan is (or at least was) 'The home of motorsport'.

It's a shame, the TV package is pretty good.

I think it also reflects the sport's decline locally as well...it's not totally a reflection on the WRC.

Cheers
Greg Johnson

Hehe that is one way of giving the impression that WRC is better than ever.. bla bla bla!!
Why dont they start agnowledge there is a problem within this sport istead of making a great fasade of tv rating numbers?

That's because they live in cloud cuckoo land, everything is rosy. Here in UK ITV have carried on with the coverage, by putting it on ITV4, which if you don't have satelitte or Freeview, you can't watch it. Yet people don't seem to be bothered, imagine that happened to F1........

Lies damn lies and statistics

It simply can't be possible with this ****ty frigging footage they have this year.

C'mon TV-folks, if you read these threads on this forum, look back a few years of the footage and do that.

This year has indeed been a rock bottom. :down:

BTW... related to this topic, I earlier mentioned I sent an angry e-mail to finnish MTV3 conserning their poor Rally Studio. However, they chose not to answer. How peculiar :rolleyes:

God for bid Eurosport :up:

Many people still believe those figures from ISC....I prefer to believe in Santa Claus

So the amount of hours coverage increased three times as much as the amount of viewers. So on average they only got worse the past 5 years. I wonder how they'll spin it next year now in some countries like the UK and Finland the broadcasting channels changed.

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Originally Posted by Sladden

Hehe that is one way of giving the impression that WRC is better than ever.. bla bla bla!!
Why dont they start agnowledge there is a problem within this sport istead of making a great fasade of tv rating numbers?

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maybe is some sort of "proof" that the current WRC is liked by a lot of people? so it technically doesn't need to be changed(although IMO it does need some changing)

Now at least for LatinAmerica coverage has improved, ESPN does a wonderful job and we get to see the daily recaps the same day the rally happened, way better than AXN showing the rally recap 2 weeks later :up:

But agree the quaility of what's shown is very poor :down: why do they think I actually want to see Hirvonen's face instead of some good in-car footage that shows the road?

Im happy with the WRC downloads Im finding. I can just burn it and watch on the big screen with no ads. woot

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Originally Posted by L5->R5/CR

Guess you haven't heard.

RaceCentralTV has acquired the rights to the WRC in the US.

They will begin their coverage with Mexico, but it will likely take more than the week of lead in time they have to get their full distribution network and content pacakge together, but they will have something for Mexico and all the rest of the events.

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Never heard of "RaceCentralTV"... I know it's not on my DirectTV package menu. Is it a mainly regional thing?? I'm in upstate N.Y. between Elmira & Binghamton
(One of the most economically, & culturally depressed areas of good ol' USA)

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Originally Posted by klm-607

Never heard of "RaceCentralTV"... I know it's not on my DirectTV package menu. Is it a mainly regional thing?? I'm in upstate N.Y. between Elmira & Binghamton
(One of the most economically, & culturally depressed areas of good ol' USA)

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Give it time. As far as I know the rights were just secured last week, possibly late last week. It should end up available on most if not all the regional sports channels.

I will never believe on those figures.

Last week, the Daily Telegraph (If I am not mistaken) revealed that the figures from TV Audience in F1 was overestimated. The real figures was really a 1/10 of the figures they were publishing as official ones.

I am wondering the same thing in WRC. If this can happen in F1, no wonder in WRC it is a pure lies then.

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Originally Posted by klm-607

.....in Asia (ESPN Star Sports), Latin America (ESPN), the Middle East (Al Jazeera), Africa (Supersport) and Europe (Eurosport). Most significantly most of these agreements are multi-year contracts which underpin the future success of the WRC TV programming and provide an excellent base from which to grow the sport and develop the WRC brand on a global basis........

E.A.
Source WRC

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In Africa it is on PAY TV. And it is really expensive to get the package with motorsport (WRC). Do you know how many people are really capable to buy this package? Very few.

The tv broadcast from Rally Norway made by NRK had about 500,000 during the weekend and 600,000 on the opening seremoni and was the most viewed sports programes that weekend and we are about 4-5milion people in Norway so thats pretty god and the broadcast from the norwegian championship has had around 300,000 this winter but not more than 50,000 in earlier years.
http://www.rallynorway.no/no/nyheter/nrk_seertall.html

F1 is on pay-tv and i don't think it has more than 100,000 but Iskald has some more info on that i think.

Indeed, hard to believe the audience has actually increased. In my part of the world, i'm capturing for free some ISC food through TF1, W9, M6 + pay Eurosport.

Better to have even poor WRC footage between the ads than nothing, though.

Am generally not nostalgic but on "Tour de Chauffe" from Monte Carlo TV, you could see back in late 90's Mäkinen, Auriol, Sainz, etc... on a TV show during one hour or so.

There was a WRC TV life before ISC acquired the rights !
Allowing competition between TVs would certainly increase quality and audience. At least it should be better than the current communist like monopoly. :bandit:

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Originally Posted by klm-607

I'm in upstate N.Y. between Elmira & Binghamton
(One of the most economically, & culturally depressed areas of good ol' USA)

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Off topic : I went to Binghamton NY (2 Chambers St, 13903) a few years ago for a Mc IntoshAudio labs tour. Extraordinary memories. It didn't look like it was a depressed area. Maybe they drove us on optimistic roads.

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Originally Posted by A.F.F.

BTW... related to this topic, I earlier mentioned I sent an angry e-mail to finnish MTV3 conserning their poor Rally Studio.

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What was your major disappointment in it? I found it interesting that mr Tuominen was so bad host. Given that he is experienced co-driver and should know a lot about the sport, he didn't really ask questions and leave room for his guests to talk. His questions were long and self-answering. In fact, I wonder why guests even bothered to arrive on the scene, they had only diminutive role in the show.

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Originally Posted by jonkka

What was your major disappointment in it? I found it interesting that mr Tuominen was so bad host. Given that he is experienced co-driver and should know a lot about the sport, he didn't really ask questions and leave room for his guests to talk. His questions were long and self-answering. In fact, I wonder why guests even bothered to arrive on the scene, they had only diminutive role in the show.

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Agree, Tuominen is a crap host, the guest idea is very good, especially when all the guest's has much knowledge of the sport.

My major disappontment is the idea of having a studio and guests in the first place. If they had a pre-show with guests, it would be ok, but the rally day shows should be all about rallying.

I have a huge respect on the guests they have had but like I said, in rallying day I'm more interested about what has happened on route than what Tuominen asks about his guests. And, his questions really aren't worldshakers. If commentator has just said Mikko Hirvonen ended up having a good day, Tuominen "asks" his guest something like;" So, Mikko Hirvonen seemed to have a good day?" :confused: Like jonkka said, the role of guest is pretty small and I've asked the same question myself, what's the use ???

The problem is that the amount of footage is so poor that they have to fill the shows up with this... crap which IMO really understimates the viewer, not just a rallyfan. Not to mention the quality of the footage. It's very poor too comparing to earlier years. I hope they still develop.

The consept YLE had with their rallying was pretty much perfect. The reporter made the show, visited service areas and locations and most of the time, KNEW about what he was talking about.

MTV3 decided to make this another F1 studio with Sasha and other losers who would prefer much more to commentate slalom and other uninteresting sports.

Pheww.... I'm done for now :)