ITV4 extends World Rally Championship rights

ITV Sport have extended the rights to the World Rally Championship, this blog can confirm. The broadcaster will screen every round of the championship via highlights form on ITV4 in 2014.

An ITV spokeswoman informed The F1 Broadcasting Blog: “I can confirm that we will be showing the highlights in 2014.” After many barren years in the UK, this is more good news for the championship which is attempting to rebuild its profile in this country. ITV first secured the 2013 rights back in March after the first few rounds were left without a broadcaster, which shows just how far the series profile plummeted.

According to unofficial overnight viewing figures, television ratings have ranged from 70,000 viewers to 200,000 viewers. The final round of the season, the Wales Rally GB averaged 110,000 (0.6%). While obviously this is a land away from its peak – you have to start somewhere, and being on ITV4 means that the profile is automatically significantly higher than other multichannel’s of this world.

Furthermore, I have reached out to ITV asking if there are any plans to screen any of the championship live. I will post a response underneath if and when I receive confirmation. In the meantime, a list of non-exhaustive broadcasting contracts for 2014 can be found here.

Update on December 16th – ITV have further commented: “I can confirm we will only be showing the highlights of the World Rally Championships. There will unfortunately be no live coverage by ITV.”

Motor sport ratings (week ending 13th October, 2013)

The British Touring Car Championship was the highlight on BARB this weekend as the series came to a conclusion. The final race day of the season, from 10:45 averaged 364,000 viewers across nearly eight hours on ITV4, a fantastic figure. Last year, the broadcast averaged 318,000 viewers, although the show was 15 minutes longer (in an eight hour broadcast this would have made very little difference to the overall average).

Sadly, not all of the Sky Sports F1 data has been processed properly, meaning not everything is available, but here is what is on the site:

– 212,000 – Live Qualifying (Saturday, 05:00)
=> 117,000 – 05:00 to 06:00
=> 267,000 – 06:00 to 07:45
– 120,000 – First 30 minutes of Race Build-Up (Sunday, 05:30)
– 100,000 – Race Replay (Sunday, 11:30)
– 68,000 – Qualifying Replay (Saturday, 11:00)
– 46,000 – Race Notebook (Sunday, 19:00)
– 44,000 – Qualifying Notebook (Sunday, 19:00)

What is interesting there is that live coverage of Qualifying did better for Japan than Korea, despite the latter being a Sky exclusive weekend which is a bit strange.

No BBC data, with both MotoGP and Formula 1 on the fly-aways, it means that individual airings do not make either BBC One’s or BBC Two’s top 30. Last weeks Broadcast magazine however did overnight ratings of 550,000 (7.6%) for the MotoGP live airing, with 630,000 (5.7%) watching the repeat later on. F1’s Japan overnights can be found here.

Motor sport ratings (week ending 29th September, 2013)

MotoGP may have been the main motor sport event during the last weekend of September, but the coverage on BBC Two failed to make BARB‘s Top 30, official viewing figures show (or in MotoGP’s case, don’t). The race programme, from Aragón, averaged less than 1.09 million viewers on BBC Two.

Also failing to make the charts was coverage of the British Touring Car Championship, which averaged less than 218,000 viewers. The Goodwood Revival 2013 fared better on Thursday evening, also on ITV4, with 254,000 viewers or 283,000 viewers if you wish to include the +1 equivalent. Staying with the classic theme, and two archive programmes made BBC Four’s top ten. Grand Prix: The Killer Years averaged 535,000 viewers, whilst a repeat of Hunt vs Lauda: F1’s Greatest Racing Rivals averaged 409,000 viewers.

Over on Sky Sports F1, The F1 Show averaged 37,000 viewers or 74,000 viewers across three airings. Pretty disappointing, as it was one of their better efforts this year with Nigel Roebuck in the studio. For anyone wondering where the Korean Grand Prix ratings report is, as of writing no ratings have been reported. I am hopeful, that Broadcast’s top 100 in their magazine this week will include the relevant ratings, so hopefully a report is coming later in the week.

Motor sport ratings (week ending 22nd September, 2013)

The Singapore Grand Prix weekend is the focus this week as Sky Sports F1’s extended race coverage from 11:30 to 16:50 averaged 619,000 viewers excluding adverts as always. What this means is that the overnight rating of 630,000 viewers reported here is indeed for the original 11:30 to 16:15 slot. I believe those numbers are the lowest yet for a Sky exclusive race in the European time zone.

Elsewhere on Sky Sports F1:

– 406,000 – Live Qualifying (Saturday, 13:00)
– 122,000 – Live Practice 3 (Saturday, 10:45)
– 65,000 – Live Practice 2 (Friday, 14:15)
– 51,000 – Live GP2 Race 2 (Saturday, 09:05)
– 47,000 – Live Practice 1 (Friday, 10:45)

The F1 Show again fails to make the top ten for a race weekend based edition whilst, sadly, the F1 Legends edition with Eddie Irvine also did not enter. I do think scheduling is an issue here. By 16:45 on Sunday you would have what, maybe 50,000 viewers still watching the post-race? That is not a large base, and you would be better off putting the Legends show in between GP2 and the F1 instead of what feels like filler. I don’t think the GP2 sprint race has ever gone beyond 10:30 on a Sunday morning, so there would be enough time to put the Legends programme on.

BBC One’s highlights show failed to make BARB’s top 30, and therefore was under 3.61 million viewers unsurprisingly. Over on ITV4, cycling’s Tour of Britain dominated proceedings, taking seven of the top ten slots, with a high of 413,000 viewers on Wednesday evening.

Motor sport ratings (week ending 15th September, 2013)

The BTCC was the main motor sport highlight in this week’s BARB round-up. The championship, coming from Rockingham, averaged 301,000 viewers across seven and a half hours on ITV4.

Over on Sky Sports F1, the first live airing of The F1 Show averaged 82,000 viewers, across four airings this increases slightly to 116,000 viewers. The live figure is the highest for the show since multi-21 in March which averaged 110,000 viewers, which is unsurprising considering Kimi Raikkonen’s move to Ferrari was announced two days earlier. In terms of highest rated editions, this is the top five for the studio shows:

1) ~200k (March 9th, 2012 – channel launch)
2) 110k (March 28th, 2013 – multi-21)
3) 86k (June 1st, 2012 – post-Monaco)
4) 83k (May 4th, 2012 – Mugello test)
5) 82k (September 13th, 2013 – Raikkonen to Ferrari)
6) 80k (September 28th, 2012 – Hamilton to Mercedes)

Interestingly, the multi-21 edition is also the only studio based edition to air on a Thursday, which should probably tell Sky something, although it has not been acted upon yet. Elsewhere on the channel, the Midweek Report averaged 17,000 viewers, as did the 2008 Singapore Grand Prix.