BT Sport have joined ITV4 as rights holders for the World Rally Championship, AUTOSPORT are confirming this evening, whilst it also appears Motors TV are joining the fray. BT Sport, according to the website, are screening exclusive live coverage of the series.
The website notes that the deal will be officially confirmed tomorrow at the AUTOSPORT Show, and says that BT Sport will “begin its WRC coverage with a mid-week season preview next week before nightly coverage of the Monte Carlo Rally and then live coverage of both runs over the Sospel-Breil sur Roya stage next Saturday afternoon and evening.”. What the article does not make clear is whether ITV4 are staying on as rights holders. A look at the ITV4 schedule however still shows WRC in the schedule for Tuesday 21st January at 20:00 with highlights of the Monte Carlo rally, supporting information supplied to this blog last month.
The Motors TV schedule shows half an hour of highlights for each day of action. BT Sport will have live coverage at various points on each day, with highlights too. As the BT Sport live coverage is in addition to the ITV4 highlights, then this is brilliant news for all fans of rallying.
Great news! It appears BT Sport really are going for the Motorsport angle with their coverage.
BT Sport seem to have very deep pockets at the moment, but it is nice to see a sport given a full live showing over highlights and nice of them to complement current coverage and not go for exclusive rights as they did with MotoGP.
Would be nice if another broadcaster could be allowed some highlights coverage there too.
For last year at least, there was already English language coverage being produced for the first round, despite the lack of English live broadcasters, so I suspect BT Sport will just take the live English feed. It’s comprehensive enough IMO.