What WRC’s new promoter wants from its events

Rallying’s top tier is under new ownership with French automotive company Cosmobilis and private credit investor Park Square Capital acquiring WRC Promoter GmbH, in a move that has been described as the “biggest deal in the history of these championships” by the FIA.

At Rally Paraguay, the WRC Promoter’s new CEO Eric Boullier offered an insight into the championship’s future, revealing plans to take the WRC and ERC to the next level by improving fan access, media coverage and the championship’s commercial appeal.

Boullier teased plans regarding the format of events moving forward, but when speaking to Autosport he confirmed that there are no plans to drastically shorten rallies in the near future.

The former McLaren Formula 1 boss has, however, highlighted that a one stage Super Sunday, featuring two passes, which was run in Estonia and Finland, is a concept that it wishes to pursue in the future as a way to endear the WRC to a new audience. There is also a plan for free access to events for fans where possible.

Currently, the majority of WRC events predominately run across four days while Rally Estonia trialled a 48-hour concept this year.

“I am a motorsport fan, but not used to rally. One of the concepts of rallying is we have many stages every day. If you do that, it's impossible to broadcast properly or get the emotions out of the racing,” Boullier told Autosport.

The WRC trialled a condensed weekend format in Estonia

Photo by: Hyundai

“Finland and Estonia are doing one stage on Sunday [repeated], which is much easier to manage. If I want to use buses to bring the non-hardcore fans to see the cars, it's much easier as well. So then, suddenly, you can interact with your fans in a different manner."

When specifically asked if there were plans to shorten rallies, he added: “No [rallies won’t be shorter]. But we have to consider the calendar. We have to consider the costs. We have to consider sustainability.

"As we all know, we have worked on this, and this year we did it [48-hour format] with Estonia on a three-day rally. It worked very well and actually, the teams were happy because they saved time and money. I'm not sure we can apply this to every rally because every rally is unique. This is the uniqueness of WRC.

“We go to Kenya, we go to Sweden on snow. We have gravel, we have tarmac, we have high speed in Finland and we have slow speed in Japan. We want to keep this uniqueness. But some rallies will be four days, some rallies three days.”

It is hoped that WRC will finalise its 2027 calendar within the next two months. The schedule is likely to feature three new events, with Scotland, USA and Rome completing candidate events this year.

The future of Safari Rally Kenya is yet to be determined although reports in Kenya have stated that there is a deadline of 15 September for the event to secure the necessary funding to retain its spot on the calendar.