Public-service broadcaster consortium the European Broadcasting Union is set to confirm an agreement to produce and distribute the television coverage of the remaining rallies in the 2012 World Rally Championship, motorsport news website Autosport reports.
The deal was discussed in a meeting in Paris yesterday between WRC manufacturers and event organisers, Jean Todt, president of the Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile, motorsport’s world governing body, and WRC Commission president Jarmo Mahonen. The deal is expected to initially cover the remainder of the 2012 season, with a view to a longer-term deal between the parties being agreed at a later date.
A source from within the meeting said: “The WRC needs the television to breathe, so we need to make this happen. The (EBU) will, we believe, take some of their own people to rallies and rely on some of them on the ground locally. Once they have made the pictures, EBU can then talk to its members in all countries in Europe about running them.”
The WRC’s rally organisers have signed an agreement with the FIA confirming they will not seek their own individual broadcast deals, as they have been doing so far this season, paving the way for the EBU agreement. The North One Sport agency was in January dropped as the production, broadcast and distribution partner of the WRC – part of a wider contract to be the championship’s global promoter – after the FIA accused the agency of breaching its contract.