TV ratings rise for WRC

[klm-607]

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

[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.

[RS]

Hehe, you can do anything with figures

[Jaanus]

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.

[pitlanenews]

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

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

[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?

[AndyRAC]

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........

[sal]

Lies damn lies and statistics

[A.F.F.]

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.

[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. However, they chose not to answer. How peculiar

God for bid Eurosport