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 11th August, 2013)

The reason this piece is up later than usual is because, there are not many motor sport ratings on BARB to actually report. Sky Sports F1’s top ten is a delayed, so unfortunately there is no rating to report for the fantastic Journalists special of The F1 Show.

An impressive rating that has been reported however are highlights of the World Rally Championship (WRC) round from Finland. Although the ITV4 airing did not make the top ten on Wednesday (9th August) at 20:00, the timeshifted airing made ITV4 +1’s top ten at 21:00, averaging 37,000 viewers. I suspect the ITV4 airing averaged over 100,000 viewers, which obviously would be the highest WRC has been in several years, thanks to ITV4 reaching many more people than ESPN previously did. I haven’t seen any detailed WRC figures, but if I do, I will post them.

I revealed back in March that the rights are for this season only. I really, really hope that ITV4 continue screening it in 2014, it would be disastrous if the series was thrown back into the abyss where viewing figures are concerned. Thankfully, if the figures above suggest, the World Rally Championship is again showing signs of life in the UK after a torrid few years.

Elsewhere, the viewing figures for Motors TV’s top ten ranged from 4,000 to 13,000 viewers, NASCAR and V8 Supercars their highlights.

ITV4 secure World Rally Championship rights

In what can only be described as fantastic news, ITV4 have secured the rights to screen the World Rally Championship. Round 3 highlights from Mexico will air on Tuesday 12th March at 17:50.

Considering the fact that WRC’s trajectory in this country has headed south in recent times, this should provide a much needed boost to the sport’s popularity in this country.

I have reached out to ITV for an official comment, and have also asked whether this is a one-off deal, or if this is for the remainder of the season.

Update on March 3rd – ITV have today responded to my request for comment: “We only have rights to the highlights programmes and I can see that there are only 3 episodes. The one on the 12th March which is Mexico and there are 2 others but there is no schedule or location information attached to them at this moment in time. That isn’t unusual though as our schedules only show confirmed information for up to 10 days in advance.”

The way I am reading that is that it is a short term deal, to cover Mexico, Portugal and Argentina up to the beginning of May on the basis that there are three episodes. Alternatively, the other two episodes may be Mexico repeats. The e-mail does not give much away at the moment, if there is a deal in place for the remainder of the year, I would expect something to be made official in the next week.

Update on March 11th – Following rumours this past weekend, ITV have today told me: “We have been advised that we are due to transmit highlights from the rest of the season, which will be shown on Tuesday’s following the weekend event.”

The plight of the World Rally Championship

Ten years ago, the World Rally Championship in the United Kingdom was a fairly popular form of motor sport. Boasting terrestrial television coverage and audiences of millions of viewers and beyond, the championship enjoyed a high profile status. Fast forward ten years, and currently, the rights are non-existent. But why has this great form of motor sport experienced such a sharp decline in this country?

From the 1980’s through to 2001, the World Rally Championship alongside other forms of rallying made part of BBC Sport’s Grandstand programme. It was not all plain sailing for rallying on the BBC though. Two series’ of Mobil 1 Rally Challenge were produced and shown for BBC Two in 1989 and 1990, but this was not enough to persuade those high up to commit to rallying full time. The next opportunity for rallying to break out came with British stars Colin McRae and Richard Burns later that decade. This succeeded, somewhat, thanks to the Top Gear production team, with interesting being reignited in the product. Despite this, BBC’s motor sport portfolio was spiralling downwards, leading to Channel 4 winning the rights from 2002 onwards for an estimated £20 million over three years. At the time, then Channel 4 chief executive Michael Jackson said “The World Rally Championship has always been a thrilling and hugely popular event. However, new technology means we can now transform the coverage of this classic sport and make it accessible to a wider audience.” That statement, is such a stark contrast to what the World Rally Championship faces in the UK ten years on.

Unfortunately for Channel 4 though, their first season did not provide an exciting championship race as Marcus Grönholm stormed to championship victory in 2002. 2003 provided better luck with the championship going down to the wire. With neither Burns and McRae in the 2004 championship however, interest dropped. This did not stop a bidding war though for the broadcast rights between ITV and Channel 4, with ITV unexpectedly winning the rights at the start of 2004. The channel broadcasted the championship as stand-alone programmes, and as part of their Speed Sunday strand. Like Channel 4 before them, the ITV press release boasted about trying to “bring a wider audience to the sport”. That didn’t happen. It was a case of ‘wrong place, wrong time’. 2004 marked the beginning of Sébastien Loeb’s domination and, as was the case with Formula 1 at the same time, audiences dropped along with the interest that went alongside it. Unlike with Formula 1 however, where Michael Schumacher was challenged and eventually succeeded by Fernando Alonso, followed by the emergence of Lewis Hamilton, over in rallying there was no one to challenge Loeb, no one to ignite the interest of the British audience. The picture was stagnant, and a stagnant picture means that casual fans, such as myself, become less interested in the product.

It was with that lack of interest that ITV’s interest in the World Rally Championship dwindled. Despite still attracting healthy audiences, such as the 1.57 million viewers that watched the culmination of the 2006 championship, ITV made the decision to move the championship over to ITV4. In terms of viewership, the decision was catastrophic. Audiences slashed, with only 297,000 viewers watching the conclusion of the 2007 season, and average audiences hovering in the mid 100,000. At the start of 2008, Dave bought the rights to screen the championship in a deal lasting three years. Not being on a terrestrial television station continued to hurt the championship with audiences failing to reach the highs it had many years earlier. In 2011, coverage moved to ESPN. The official World Rally Championship promoted the move as giving fans ‘more coverage than ever before’. Whilst, technically, that is a factual statement, the reality was that the coverage was now available to fewer people than ever before. Viewing figures were below 100,000 and the World Rally Championship in the UK had hit its lowest point. By now, it had gone from being a mainstream sport with millions of followers to one where you would have to dig deep into the TV guide to find out just when and where it was on. Alongside the aforementioned, British Eurosport would provide coverage of the events, but that too has come to a grinding halt.

Today, the World Rally Championship in the UK is currently without a rights holder for this season. The championship has been hit by its failure to evolve with the times to those who demand to be closer to the action and see everything live nowadays instead of in highlights form, and also by being dominated by one man for such a long period. Steve Rider discusses this point fantastically in his new book, noting how broadcasters’ still have not got a grip on rallying: “The challenge for television, then and now, is also to add that ingredient and portray rallying in a far more competitive tone, and not just as a series of disjointed ‘up and past’ shots linked together by prolonged ‘in-car’ sequences. [..] Then there is the biggest question of all: could all this be done live? Can live coverage of rallying ever make practical, economic or editorial sense?”

For the sport, it will be a long road to recovery. Has Loeb caused more damage to the championship than anyone could have imagined? I think so. When one man dominates for so long, it is inevitable that interest drops worldwide. Formula 1 was lucky. Alonso, Hamilton and Sebastian Vettel emerged at the right time and thankfully for that form of motor sport, Schumacher retired. Rallying has not been so lucky. Loeb has not retired, and no one has emerged to sufficiently challenge Loeb to create a ‘great battle’ to bring back the lost fans. As a result, rallying finds itself in a sad state. Let’s not take anything away from Loeb, he will probably be remembered as one of the greats with nine championships. But the damage caused will not be rectified soon. With Loeb announcing his retirement at the end of 2012, 2013 needs to be the start of the recovery process for the championship in this country. No British drivers’, no future McRae or Burns, means that the recovery process starting this season is highly unlikely.

It will be a long road to recovery for the World Rally Championship. And I, for one, hope to see it standing tall again soon.

The quote from Steve Rider’s book ‘My Chequered Career’ comes from page 94.