Rally Ireland welcomes television viewing figures

Rally Ireland has welcomed a report today which shows that television viewing figures for the World Rally Championship (WRC) have shown an increase for the fifth year in a row to an annual total of 807 million viewers.

“This is superb news for WRC and for Rally Ireland in our inaugural year in the World Championship,” said co promoter Seán O’Connor. “The cumulative global television audience for WRC has increased by 46% in the last five years and with over 4,500 dedicated hours of coverage for the championship worldwide, I am excited at the opportunity this presents us to promote the island of Ireland to a massive global audience.”

International Sportsworld Communications (ISC) is the London-based global media and commercial rights holders for the FIA World Rally Championships. It commissioned the report by TNSSport, one of the world’s leading research companies, which showed that new broadcast agreements, including that with RTÉ and ITV/UTV, contributed significantly to ensuring that WRC is now broadcast in almost every country in the world.

Also impacting on the viewing figures were the number of live TV broadcasts from selected events which were shown in the country of origin, on Eurosport and live streaming on WRC.com. Rally Ireland, which takes place from 15th-18th November, is set to be part of this year’s live transmission schedule. Rally Ireland Management, which is chaired by Eddie Jordan, commissioned an earlier report which showed that the value to the economy of hosting a WRC would be €46 million.