It's the third day of the Badminton Horse Trials for 2015. Wendy Schaeffer, Oliver Townend and Sam Griffiths are the final three riders in the show jumping, following hard-fought dressage and cross-country disciplines. Schaeffer has an 11 point lead over Townend who in turn has a 5 point lead over Griffiths. It's a 16 point spread after a gruelling event and unless Wendy pops an unusually large number of rails, she's on track to a well-deserved winning of the trophy.
But wait - Mitsubishi thinks that it's not exciting enough, so these last 3 riders, having given their all up to this point, lose their hard-earned points placings and the winner is simply the rider and horse who knock down the fewest rails on their jumping round.
You can probably imagine what that would do to to horse trialling.
Or Wimbledon 2015, which is won by the third-placed semifinalist because Slazenger thought it would get more viewers if the last 3 competitors had an aces shootout instead of a drawn out struggle by the top 2 qualifiers.
Or the Tour de France where the top 3 riders, despite their mighty efforts across the event, have their final positions decided by a wheelie competition over the last 100 metres of the event because Skoda believed it would be more exciting to the TV audience.
Sounds fanciful, but that's essentially what's been decided for the WRC by WRC Promoter. Co-MD Ciesla has announced that he hasn't accepted defeat over his rejected shootout scheme for 2015 and it's going back to the WMSC for further "consideration".
How did it get to this?
On 21 May 2013, WRC Promoter GmbH became the promoter of record for the WRC.
In a nutshell, this company licenses the rights to the World Rally Championship from the FIA and provides the framework and funding for the organisation, including media rights and marketing. Its joint heads are Oliver Ciesla of the sportsman media group and Jona Siebel of the Red Bull Media House. TSMG provides the sports management know-how while RBMH supplies the funding
In effect, these two organisations are guardians of the FIA's WRC brand, and their reasons for becoming involved together are nominally to promote the championship while financially benefiting from the championship's popularity.
WRC Promoter is thus responsible for
all commercial aspects of the WRC including
broadcasting, video production and media and
sponsorship rights. The company is theoretically also responsible for recruiting competitor teams to the championship.
RBMH's interest is logical as the WRC fits well within the company's sponsorship folio of exciting and risky sporting endeavours, but Red Bull is not a charity. The sponsorship it provides must generate a positive return to shareholders, in this case TV and other media exposure.
The sportsman media group, on the other hand is, in their own words - "a sports rights and sports
marketing agency whose core business is the acquisition and distribution
of media rights (e.g. television, internet and mobile rights) as well
as the marketing and handling of various sponsoring projects".
Nowhere in their announced respective responsibilities have they included mutating the WRC into something that the fanbase neither wants nor needs, and despite the dismissive soundbites from Ciesla, it's the current fanbase, the actual audience for the championship, that makes the championship worth anything at all. For without that audience, neither of the WRC Promoter's organisations has anything to sell.
So it's tempting to think that TSMG simply aren't up to the task of successfully marketing the championship and are under pressure to justify themselves to Red Bull, hence the knee-jerk attempt to fit each WRC round into a one-hour live TV special. Sounds like a total absence of vision.
So, what's the alternative?
Do we actually need one? The figures that show such a necessity are so far conspicuous by their absence. But let's play "what if" for a moment...
We already have the power stage as part of the current structure. While it's true that there was a great deal of resistance from both fans, teams and commentators when first integrated, it's become a widely accepted feature of the event.
So here's a thought... why not just alter the points allocation a bit to get more out of the concept? Maybe the fourth fastest gets 1 point, third quickest gets 3 points, second quickest 6 points and quickest 10 points? Unlike the essentially meaningless current 1-2-3 point spread, it's possible to meaningfully affect both the driver's and team's championship outcomes while still rewarding the driver/team with the best overall time.
And it's the least time taken over the whole event that's the real DNA of rallying as a sport. Without that, whatever it is it sure isn't rallying.
If WRC Promoter cannot make a financial success of its association with the championship as it currently is, perhaps instead of creating some grotesque frankenrally out of the WRC, it could consider ending or modifying its connection and leave the promotion to a partner who actually understands the sport. I know, radical idea, but well, you know...
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