“It was never made for TV.” Niche sports in the age of digital plenitude. A case of the World Rally Championship (WRC).

Tickell, Samuel

Zusammenfassung

In this dissertation, a case study is formed about the sport of rallying, and in particular, the World Rally Championship (WRC) and its media strategy. Traditionally, media rights have been sold to free-to-air television or pay-television networks in individual markets across the world. The premise became to sell the media rights to a sporting contest to the highest bidder, who would recoup their money through advertising and subscriptions to audiences. It is a system that brought great financial rewards to many sports. However, not all could make this model work. The WRC was one such sport as it was run over several days and in non-centralised geographic locations. It ensured the sport was not television-friendly and therefore could not generate significant media-driven financialisation. After a change in ownership, the WRC Promoter GmbH was formed and in 2013 a new media strategy was created, and then reinforced in 2018. They launched an over-the-top streaming service called WRC+ All Live. To do this, the WRC Promoter GmbH abandoned the notion of selling its product exclusively and primarily to a television partner, rather it went with a direct-to-consumer streaming service. The product available across the world without geoblocking restrictions. Along with the stream, the media rights are sold on a non-exclusive basis meaning that multiple media companies in the same marketplace can air the sport at the same time. It resulted in another shift for the WRC Promoter GmbH as they transitioned from a sports management concern to a sports media company with total responsibility for the media. The shift affected the fans as it changed their relationship with the sport and its media product and for sports media researchers, as the generally accepted sports rights model was abandoned. The case study, therefore, focuses aspects pertaining to decisions made, with regards to the streaming media product. The case study seeks to understand the effect that the change had on the economic aspects of the sport. As the media product has become of vital importance to the financial models of many sports, understanding how the WRC+ All Live and the effect on media-driven financialisation is the first area to be explored. It is followed by understanding how the shift from selling media rights to external broadcasters to that of becoming a media broadcaster in their own right and how that has affected the way the sport is operated. Finally, the way the fans engage with the sport under the new media delivery methods is understood. The streaming product had several effects on fan engagement. The first was that fans across the world could watch the same show at the same time. Secondly, the sport was delivered live for the first time, in what was a dramatic increase in programming, going from just a couple of hours of highlights per round, to more than 25 hours of live coverage. As the sport launched the product, it was unclear how the fans would react, and therefore understanding that reaction is important. The case of the WRC is important to understand, as technology and fan behaviours are changing which results in different opportunities for many niche sports in their media rights and media delivery models. The change to the media service and the WRC+ All Live is understood through multiple theoretical lenses. The first is that of the media-sport triangle. The triangle was conceived to help explain the financial and cultural success of some sports, with the relationship between sport, the media, and business. With popular sports on linear television, a culturally popular sport could be sold to television stations as they wanted the content and the audiences. Those audiences could be financialised through subscriptions or advertising, for example. However, the model must change for niche sports undertaking a direct-to-consumer model, where targeted audiences, and their attention can be commodified. The notions of digital plenitude are explored as internet-enabled technologies allow sports to undertake streaming media and with it, many barriers to delivery no longer exist. However, to create and distribute a streaming service requires a sport to rapidly professionalise and create an organisational culture to allow such a change to occur and become normalised in the organisation. Though the history of sports on television, a broadcast company has, generally, been the intermediary between the sport and the fans, providing their own services to create a product that was acceptable to these audiences. While elite sport has utilised professionals to play the game and to manage the sport, they now needed professionalise in new areas of sport media. Here, the WRC Promoter GmbH culturally enabled sport-entrepreneurial characteristics to take place that allowed a revolutionary media model to be created and normalised within its structures. Finally, the relationship with the fans is explored as without the fan having a willingness to pay for the service, and enjoying the mediated sport, the streaming product cannot obtain sufficient financial success. To ensure that sufficient reliable information could be found for the exploratory case study, a three-sided methodological approach was formed. The first method utilised was expert interviews. In total 27 expert interviews were conducted with key stakeholders in the sport, like senior managers, on-air talent and key people involved in media sales for the sport. Through these interviews, a complex and deep understanding of the decision-making processes could be formed. Importantly, the impact of the change of the media product to the sporting product itself could be understood, enabling a clear picture regarding the pressures, successes and necessary changes that were made to the sport to emerge. However, it was important to consolidate the validity of these findings through other methods. Observational research at nine WRC events over four years provided insight into how WRC events operated in different regions and how the media influenced the operation and standardisation of each event. Finally, desk research provided historical perspectives on decisions that were made prior to the research taking place, and to inform the research on decisions and attitudes throughout the execution of the case study. These theoretical perspectives and research techniques provided many key outcomes. It became clear that the transition away from traditional media strategies altered the power relationship between the sport, broadcasters and fans. The sport now guaranteed its position in every market across the world and its direct relationship with the fans. However, the culture and history of the sport played an important role in what actions the WRC Promoter GmbH could undertake. It was not a case of having a new owner, and therefore they could impose their own culture on the sport. To ensure fan enjoyment, the historical element of the event, the media product and the way the sport was run needed to be maintained. As the streaming market continues to develop, more niche sports seek to control their own media futures, and as promotion rights to sports are being bought and sold, the outcomes from the WRC+ All Live product can contain important lessons for other sports, and researchers into the future.