2024 WRC News & Rumours

[typhoon]

As correctly PLuto said, there's a big question to answer before developing the format or other things: what do they want?

If the answer is Manufacturers: talk to the current ones, ask what do they want in the future and ask the interested ones to ask them the same question. Once you have this answer, you can develop the whole project.

If the answer is a true and fancy global championship, ask what do the following wants: Manufacturers, Event Promoters, Global Partners (past, current and interested), TV broadcasters and of course the FIA eventually if that's acceptable for their view of the sport. Once you did this, you can go forward and draw a project.

That said, I am gonna get a sh@@storm, but here we go:

In my opinion, I would go for a championship from 2027 onwards with current Rally 1 cars (just less carbon fiber and using some parts from the road cars) on only synth-fuels. No hybrid and less prototypes cars would keep Rally1 cars extremely spectacular and muscular/noisy on the stages, while lowering a bit the costs of building and running those cars.

At the same time, the FIA should make a real due diligence on the finances of the teams and understand where we can eventually cut on costs and, finally, set up a clear budget cup of, let's say, 60-70 Millions.

Once you have the cars, the Promoter's duty is to work on help current teams finding sponsors (i.e. find some and "introduce" them to the teams) and partners (i.e. proper support to the championship growth), so bringing a sponsorship like DHL with no actual cash, but in exchange just some freight available for the flyaway rallies, similar to the terms of agreement with WTCC promoters.

TV, a VERY big problem.
Furthermore, in order to add more value-for-money investments for the stakeholders, it's time for them to change their "Media Mix" distribution model! Asian broadcasters are completely disappeared, same in the Americas. They're talking about bringing the WRC to Chattanooga, but if they do, who is gonna watch it and where?
For this, I would go for a 2-stage TV rights package (Saturday afternoon and Power Stage) for free-to-air networks, then a "medium" package with the World Feed stages (5-6 per event) and a full one like on TNT or Cosmote with the whole content of Rally TV.
In order the "TV product" to be more catchy: new opening titles (F1 style, it must be a real "heroes anthem"), new graphics, new camera angles and use better the heli shots to be more impressive (it's just following the action, with no shots like: jumping over a mountain and going down to zoom to the start line in a more acrobatic way, etc). The first shots are extremely important to catch viewers... and yeah, sending pre-recorded action with music it's so 00's. Just get over it.
Also, I'm sad to say it, but we need fresh faces (I would keep all the way Colin Clark, extremely entertaining man)!
Finally, the "free" content on Social media: it's incredible that we have a very-bad-produced Shakedown live feed, diluted amongst magazines, drivers, event pages, rather than uniquely on the WRC official page. For this, I would raise the production level to a World Feed, broadcasted uniquely from the WRC official pages (Facebook, YouTube and adding Twitch, which can bring thousands of euros per live to be reinvested in promoting their contents on social media). I would also add the warm-up / daily-wrap up / post-rally LIVE broadcasts, plus the press conferences (with the same backdrop for every event to give more value to the global sponsorships).

Now, calendar and format.
As previously said, I would compact the event to 2.5 days:

FRIDAY: Shakedown-Quali in the morning, afternoon with Opening Ceremony in city centers (with ledwalls and pumping music), then a couple of stages before Prime-Time TV World Feed for a big Superspecial (like Acropolis or Japan in their respective stadiums or Cagliari for Sardinia in front of 40-50k people)

SATURDAY: a loop of stages in the morning, ending with a similar-to-WPS "Super Stage" (potentially giving another naming-rights to a big sponsor like Wolf) with hospitalities, maxiscreens, food courts, merchandise on small arenas to show tons of spectators (I am thinking about Loelle in Sardinia with the kart-cross circuit, in which building all this stuff around). Finally, wrapping-up the day with another Live TV Superspecial.

SUNDAY: keeping it like it is, with rally-ending Wolf Power Stage.

A more compact format would mean less costs for competitive mileage, less accomodation costs for the teams competing AND THUS, the chance to let them "digest" some more events around the globe, with some logistic support (see above about DHL).

There's tons of work to do to achieve this, but this would let the WRC being popular once again and gain some new fans willing to spend into TV-Merchandise-Tickets once the "80's" fans won't be attending anymore.