Website Profile: WRC.com - June 2005  

Under the commercial stewardship of International Sportsworld Communicators (ISC) of which David Richards the motorsport entrepreneur is chairman - the FIA World Rally Championship (WRC) has developed from a niche sport into one of the fastest growing global sports. S&T looks at the role the motorsport’s official website has had in growing the sport’s appeal.

Widely regarded as the most demanding motorsport competition on the planet it is not hard to understand the WRC’s universal appeal. An 11-month calendar spread across four continents sees some of the sports bravest and skilled drivers compete in the most technically advanced road cars in the world. At speeds normally reserved for custom-built circuits, some of the biggest motorsport marques race across some of the harshest environments on the planet, up against the most unforgiving adversary of them all: the Clock.
 
The new media challenge

Having established WRC as a global sport with a centrally controlled TV broadcast strategy, that has seen global audiences increase by 55% to a staggering 772m in 2004 – ISC faced a commercial dilemma shared by the majority of sports federations across the world - ‘How do we market WRC content through emerging new media channels without damaging TV revenues and relationships with the all important host broadcasters?’
Having experimented with a number of partners ISC decided at the end of 2003 to consolidate its approach into a new business model in partnership with Premium TV (PTV).
In particular, ISC was determined to create a new media offering that added value to the main stakeholders of the championship. The car and tyre manufacturers, the WRC events, the host broadcasters, and the international fan base, as Simon Long, MD of ISC, explains: “For a sport like WRC, due to the remote environments we compete in, it is commercially and more often than not physically impossible to produce live content suitable for TV broadcast. And even if we could very few broadcasters could take the content for the course of a three-day rally. Because of this, new media is always going to play a vital part in our sports communication mix - in addition the lack of live media coverage meant that unlike many other sports, our new media strategy had a strong content based USP from which we felt marketing and commerial benefits could be driven.”
 
PTV accepts with a clear strategic vision

With this in mind and only eight weeks before the first rally of the 2005 season, PTV was appointed exclusive new media partner of WRC on a three-year contract. As a market leader in the exploitation of sports rights across new media channels, ISC was confident that PTV could be trusted to deliver a robust, cost efficient, cross platform new media strategy that had the potential to create additional marketing and commercial benefits.
At the heart of this new strategy was the re-development of www.wrc.com, the official website of the championship, from a functional information-based site to an interactive, multimedia site that enabled the championship’s worldwide audience to interact with the sport in a content rich, live environment. To facilitate this evolution, PTV, in consultation with ISC, created a integrated subscription broadband product called WRC+ in addition to its non subscription website.
By working with ISC and its TV production partner North One, PTV has been able to provide WRC+ subscribers with exclusive streamed content from every day of a rally. These include leg by leg highlights, exclusive interviews and Virtual Spectator technical features.
Wherever in the world the championship is being held, subscribers will always be able to see the latest action within a matter of hours.
 
Timing is everything

The highest trafficked parts of the WRC website are the results sections. It is absolutely critical to the success of the site that these are accurate, timely and 100% available. PTV implemented a real time feed of data directly from the timing system events meaning that split times on the website are just a matter of seconds behind the action wherever the viewer is in the world and wherever the Rally takes place - be it Wales or new Zealand. PTV now provides a data feed to the teams and tyre manufacturers and event organisers for their websites.
In the five months since launch, WRC+ has proved immensely popular with WRC fans. Providing a geo-targeted price and communications strategy across both pay-per-view and subscription access models, PTV has been able to implement a successful launch.
With subscriber numbers expected to break the 10,000 mark by the end of the year, it is clear to see that the commercial confidence ISC placed in new media and PTV was well-founded.
 
Technical reliability was key

However, whilst strong incremental revenue streams were important to this project, of even more importance, due to both historic technical failings and the lack of alternative up to date information sources, was coping with surges in visits. PTV had to ensure that wrc.com was capable of dealing with the intense traffic bursts, that had historically coincided with the championship’s calendar.
PTV’s strategic alliances with both NTL and Akamai guarantees its network of websites first class technical performance. And as a business PTV is vastly experienced at dealing with intermittent high traffic sites and used this knowledge to ensure that from day of launch wrc.com was ‘always on’.
This robustness was highlighted at the Uddeholm Swedish Rally in February, in which over 1m users visited the site in a 48 hour period, with traffic peaking at over 7,500 views per minute – both of which are records for the site.
Oliver Slipper, commercial director, PTV, says: “The traffic levels we have experienced have been a fantastic showcase for PTV’s technology and infrastructure. Our commercial relationship has blossomed with ISC on the back of our sound technical foundations and we look forward to working with them on developing WRC.com’s popularity over the up and coming months”.
 
Looking beyond broadband

Whilst WRC+ was central to PTV’s commercial strategy, the development of a revenue focused mobile strategy was not far behind.
As well as migrating the SMS results service, PTV also looked to take advantage of the media rich content provided by ISC, creating a series of subscription WAP services and handset ready video content to syndication partners around the globe.
With over 4,000 SMS and MMS subscribers and syndication deals, already in place across Asia and North America, the benefit of this new business model is clearly being illustrated.
 
The future

PTV is now determined to move forward its mobile strategy, especially when taking into consideration the lack of live information available to spectators. PTV is already planning to launch a WAP-based video service and a mobile ready version of its split time Java applet in time for the start of the 2006 championship.
By working closely with ISC and its stakeholders, PTV has enabled the WRC to take a substantial step forward in the package and marketing of the new media rights.
PTV is committed to developing these rights across all emerging technologies and looks forward to a long lasting and fruitful relationship with ISC.

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