[WRC] News & Rumours 2018

[mknight]

Eurosport showed what is possible with some immersive multi-stage coverage. And that was almost eight years ago. It just comes down to money and desire.

It also comes down to having an audience.

Quite many people both hear and on other sites refuse to pay anything at all for WRC+. (some saying it's not worth it). Some people even refuse to use the free codes for just about every rally cause "they would have to enter credit card"....

Sure you can turn the model around and say that everything will be free but the teams have to pay higher entry fees so fund the expenses.



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Rallye du Valais was October 2008, and the 2009 Monte was 3 months later; and the events that Eurosport covered live in the IRC are still the benchmark for live Rally coverage.
What Red Bull do with their live Super Stage on the Saturday is very nice; but only 1 live 'free' stage simply isn't good enough in 2017 if you're trying to grow an audience. Rallying is up against other motorsport series who provide free streaming of their events. In an ideal world, there would be free coverage on each day of an event; 1 stage in the morning, and possibly repeated in the afternoon.

Personally, the coverage we now get from Red Bull is what I thought we'd get when they took over - it's taken them 5 years to provide the absolute minimum in regards to coverage.

Not saying that the current coverage is all that good, but on all rallies there are at least 2 live stages, sometimes 3-4.

What I currently find quite stupid is that often they don't even give live coverage from all the Superspecials where you might need just a few cameras to cover everything and no helicopter.