‘WRC needs SUPERSTARS, not just winners’ – Ben Sulayem

[AnttiL]

I’m pretty sure CMR games had full rallies (6 stages or so), even a championship. Dirt games meanwhile have gymkhana.

[WRCStan]

And its funny cuz I see the same blablabla in gt foruns wtcc foruns, lemans foruns, indycar foruns... Everybody repeating the same "oh we need manufacturers, we need to do this, need a reality show, need to do that". New fans are NOT COMING

It's not just motorsport, it's not just sport. Did you hear about the European Super League last year? "40% of 16-24 year olds don't watch football" they said, ignorant of the 60% that do and totally arrogant in the belief it should be higher. "Young people just want stars", "It’s in all the statistics and the studies". Those were the words of the president of Real Madrid, the most successful club in the world who's finances were going down the toilet even before the pandemic. To fix that hole he tried to power grab the sport, blaming it instead of looking inward. My favourite excuse was "people can't watch a football game for 90mins" - because that's true! I can't sit out a game when a player from the winning team starts rolling around 'injured' at about 70mins. If they think the game is finished then so do I - but I digress.

[sti123]

Superstars????????????? Ogier and Loeb are literally the GOAT and they are BOTH alive and racing!! Whats more superstar than this? We have Craig Breen literally CRYING because he is amazed with these supercars. We have Esapekka who is naturally funny. We have Mads screaming about how sh*tty pirelli tires are hahah... we have a guy who won both WRC2 and ERC on the same year! We have Adamo, Latvala and Malcom, who are 3 of the most interesting guys on motorsport's paddock. We have weird-Ott (who was the first one to beat Ogier!!!), we have Neuville, Rovampera....
We have superstars!! The thing is... WRC superstars are only appealing and interesting FOR WRC FANS haha
Maybe some F1 fans will recognize some names and enjoy some clips with rally cars crashing.... the same way I know the name of some Formula 1 drivers and watched some highlights from last year's races.
Like STAN said. Its all about your bubble and thats it. Rally is not that relevant anymore, sorry!

Fully agree with you. For the rally to survive this coming new transition era we need: more manufacturers-teams, new drivers with top 10 finishing level skills from big countries like Germany, Italy, Portugal, USA, Russia, Australia etc. Then we'll have much broader fan base.

[AnttiL]

Those big countries...do we need rallies in USA, Russia, India and China?

[sti123]

Those big countries...do we need rallies in USA, Russia, India and China?

USA, yes. Other listed: no. Just my personal opinion.

[AndyRAC]

Those big countries...do we need rallies in USA, Russia, India and China?

I'm sure that was said about 10-15 years ago......actually, I'll correct myself; it was the BRIC countries (Brasil, Russia, India & China*) but USA is an obvious country to go. Are we any closer to going to any of those countries? Is there a market in those countries for rallying? No point going if it's not going to make much impression.

*Yes, we've been to China, and had an event pulled...

[Fast Eddie WRC]

On the contrary, the arcade style games from D3 onwards (Showdown, D4,D5) all flopped in sales and nearly bankrupt Codemasters in 2014-5. The more simulation based games (DR and DR2.0) have been a resounding success with over 10 mil units in combined sales. The problem is that it's 11 years since D3 and there have only been 2 commercially successful rally games. The official WRC ones barely break even (and go under the radar 9/10 times) and the few other games (SLRE, VR4) haven't made any impact.

But I think the difficult sim games have been mostly bought by existing gamers and older rally fans... they're not bringing in many new ones.

But back to the big problem - the sport isn't visible enough and it's long format doesnt grab kids attention. That's gonna be so hard to solve.

[Sulland]

My meaning is that all sports need publicity and lots of publicity to get more sponsors willing to put money in.
F1 has been on top of the autosport pyramide, then F2, F3 and then we can start talking non circuit types of carsport in Europe.
Rally has always been the oddball, since it is happening on normal roads, and as a fan it is not much you will see every day. TV and now streaming services are bliss.

But before rally can really grow, it needs drivers that say more than 3 words at stage ends, and make people understand that driving i rallycar with 4-500 hp on different griplevels on every stage are very much harder than going in circles on more or less the same level of grip.

People like heroes in sport. They love fights like Senna and Prost back then and Verstappen and Hamilton now. Most are not following motorsport to enjoy cars on the edge, (as us petrolheads do) but cars going over the edge.

Rally needs Hollywoods types and others that create driver fan clubs and a lot of engagement.

Solbergs have just released season 2 of their private version of "Drive to survive".
Oliver understands how important social media, and that you have to give a bit of yourself, when in the entertainment industri.

Rally need more show to grow.

A part of JWRC is giving the young ones media training. Maybe the promotor need to give a crashcourse also for the older part of the field.

[MentalParadox]

One day, we will realize how immensely privileged we were to live in a time where not one, but TWO gods of the sport (17 titles between them!) were competing in the same events. And in that golden era, some people had the gall to complain we "didn't have superstars".

[AndyRAC]

One day, we will realize how immensely privileged we were to live in a time where not one, but TWO gods of the sport (17 titles between them!) were competing in the same events. And in that golden era, some people had the gall to complain we "didn't have superstars".

I think you're missing the point; they're rallying superstars, no-one is denying that. However, they're not Global Superstars......Hamilton, Rossi, etc