WRC 2023

BTCC weekends as a 15-minute highlights package from BHP, produced for BBC Grandstand but sold around the world, made our humble national racing series the second-biggest motorsport series in the world, which drew in huge money and manufacturer investment.

In Sweden, BTCC was screened at 7pm on a weekday like a soap opera, thanks to Rickard Rydell and Volvo.

When they started going live in 1998, that's when the audience started to tumble. The manufacturers left soon after and now I've probably got more people in a WhatsApp than are prepared to sit through a whole day from Snetterhatch on ITV99+

Same is true of the WRC. The 30-minute packages that BHP (again!) did for Grandstand were fabulous, but the new global broadcasts that came in under Dave Richards - as seen on Channel 4 at the time - were even better. But wildly expensive. These days it's only available live with a low-rent broadcast that relies on in-car cameras and the highlights are merely edits of the same footage.

Speaking to Gwyndaf Evans last year, he called it right. There are an infinite number of good stories around every rally, be it in the classes or among local competitors, to flesh out the story of even the dullest event. There's all the prep work and organisation, interesting people out on the stages... but no. Every rally is groundhog day as a broadcast, where there's the 10 WRC cars six times a day, two Media Zones and an end-of-day catch-up on WRC2 and WRC3. No colour or flavour.

It needs imaginative broadcasting to get the numbers. It's not a generational/attention span thing, it's not even enough for it to be 'free-to-view' anymore, as Formula E's miserable following will testify. So for example WEC has a great opportunity now because there are all the manufacturers there eager for their stories to be told. Pretty soon a lot of them will get bored of losing and look for something else to do, and WRC needs to rethink how it presents itself if it's to stand a chance of catching one or two more manufacturers.