[WRC] Rally Sweden 2024

[wyler]

You are talking about fans who go watch the event live for the weekend, which are a fraction of the fans who are following the event remotely - and the first contact that a fan has with rallysport is almost always from far away, especially in this day and age. You usually won't go from barely knowing rallying to spectating a WRC event in the blink of an eye, there's lots inbetween.
New fans or fans that are not so passionate (yet) to go to a WRC event will instead rely on highlights (almost non-existant, which is a problem), free coverage to follow some stages and have an idea how WRC works (non-existant, which is a problem) and All-Live. And I guarantee they'll ask way more often "Why only 8 cars in the top class?" than "Why are drivers going slower in the last stages of the rally?", if they can even notice drivers going slower, that is.
Hence my point: you "solve" this Sunday cruising problem and you'll see little effect on the fanbase. More people stay on the stages on Sunday morning? That's not much at all.

that's a bit mixed up. some things are true, others are totally unrelated.
true that most of casual fans occur from far away, but they are also fans with little to no interest in how points are collected. they are ok with a classification. regulation is on hard fans, that most likely follow roadside.
for new fans, official footage is getting ok, like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YxlpMvWndh4. The same goes for how it works, there was some special content on official media, that was ok as an introduction: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_XQeec-c9k4 shakedown is free, so non-existent is a bit too harsh. You seem to underestimate the effect of having fans in the tv coverage. The best way to convince a show is good is to see people there. proves that the most engaging content from monte was people and fireworks on the tourniquets, way more than results. as u said correctly, new fans/general fans get in love with the atmosphere, best way to boost the feeling is to have real participation shown on tv. also, i don't have data from rallytv obviously, but thinking that there are similar fans on a loop of stages than on rally tv could be not so ridiculous. generic tv is another thing.