Quote Originally Posted by wyler View Post
you sure?
ps: wrc is till aired on fta rai in italy.
Quote Originally Posted by rallyfiend View Post
I don't think the TV deals in the past were better than now.

There's no way in hell the audience on L-Equipe was bigger than what's now there on Canal+.

Same in the UK. ESPN was dire compared to ITV / BT Sport as it is now.
What I can tell for sure is that RAI in Italy had every Sunday a 90-mins free-to-air, live-tv coverage for each WRC event, reaching an average of 500k viewers, now it shows 20mins of highlights at 11pm with 100k viewers.

And then, at the end of the day, we can have a look at the actual broadcasters of the WRC worldwide, eventually: https://www.wrc.com/en/more/tv-guide/
Few years there were 4 deals in China only. Now except Japan and a bunch of countries, it disappeared. Something's wrong out there.

If I was in any relevant position at WRC Promoter, I would have fired the teams in charge of arranging TV deals and distribution. Their "Media Mix" plan failed. Full stop.