The European Rally Championship will feature WRC-style live coverage from the start of next season, when WRC Promoter takes the reins of the series.
The calendar for 2022 will retain its current eight rallies, with Ypres Rally expected to make its return as a ninth round.
‘ERC Live’ will be included on all rallies as WRC Promoter takes its hugely popular All Live streaming format and implements it in Europe.
WRC Promoter managing director Jona Siebel said: “From 2018 onwards fans of the World Rally Championship, worldwide and offsite, have been able to follow [the WRC] from the first to the last stage on every rally. We want to transfer the same media live strategy from the WRC to the ERC.
“We will combine this with a strong event concept and format, for sure, in close alignment with the event organizers and the FIA and with a strong marketing and communications strategy. This will lead to higher relevance and more popularity and more return on investment.
“We want to close the gap between ERC and WRC and to create the next success story in the rally sport.”
WRC Promoter’s senior director sport Peter Thul added detail on how ERC Live would work. Thul said: “In a nutshell, our idea is to take the learnings from the WRC, successfully managed by WRC Promoter since 2013, with our team of around 80 people and they will travel from WRC to ERC and vice-versa. We will not have any collisions of events in the calendar, we try to adapt the calendar so it’s suitable for some back-to-back options.
“To implement the ERC All Live product, we already spoke to the event organizers that it needs a small adaptation to the time plan [for rallies]. We will have live TV from the service park, it’s a copy and paste [from the WRC All Live] – you will never miss anything from an event.
“Everybody who is keen to see ERC will always be up-to-date. We will make an investment for the onboards so we are delivering information like you are used to seeing in the WRC. We have a clear target to make everything bigger.”
The calendar will be conveyed to the FIA’s Rallies Commission as early as next week, but WRC Promoter event director Simon Larkin explained the thinking behind a potential nine-round schedule.
“We’re very grateful to the actions of Eurosport over the last 10 years or so,” said Larkin. “They have built it into a very strong platform and we can see from the entry numbers through 2021, there’s a strong championship here and we have the utmost respect for them and what they’ve been able to do and we want to grow on that.
“Our commitment with Eurosport, the FIA and the events is that we will maintain all the events with existing contracts with Eurosport – that’s basically the eight events [in 2021: Poland, Liepāja, Rome, Zlín, Azores, Fafe, Hungary, Canarias].
“We would like to add a ninth event and we are in discussions with Ypres – we feel the addition of Ypres is good for Ypres Rally, but also for the ERC as a whole. It has been a regular [ERC] event in the past.
“Their experience of WRC in 2021 is such that all major stakeholders in Belgium and Ypres want to continue and we see a good path for that.”
Ypres departed ERC in 2016, when it no longer saw value in being part of the Eurosport-run series.
There are also plans to implement a powerstage in place of bonus points at the end of each leg, but those plans – along with much of what was discussed by WRC Promoter on Thursday – remain part of ongoing discussions with the FIA.
An ERC manager is expected to be revealed next week.
