PR: IMG Motorsports, a division of IMG Worldwide, the global sports, fashion and media company, has secured its first live broadcast deal for the 2013 FIA European Rallycross Championship.
Five rounds of the RX Championship will be broadcast exclusively live from the Nordic region following a new broadcast deal with Viasat, the satellite TV broadcaster. This is the first of a number of deals with broadcasters around the world and IMG is nearing completion of a full distribution schedule for the RX Championship to be released over the coming weeks.
Kristian Hysen, Senior Vice President of IMG Nordic, said: “Viasat is the leading motorsports broadcaster in the Nordic region offering a wide expanse of properties including Formula 1, MotoGP, NASCAR and SpeedwayGP. We are very pleased to be working with them and are sure they will provide a solid platform for RallycrossRX to build on.”
The Finnish, Norwegian and Swedish rounds of the RX Championship will be shown live, with the French round at Loheac and the German final round at Estering also confirmed as live events this week. In addition to the live coverage, all rounds of the RX Championship will be covered via a one hour highlights show to be distributed on the same day.
Martin Anayi, Managing Director of RallycrossRX for IMG Motorsports, said: “The inclusion of five live events on the 2013 RX Championship schedule clearly shows the potential of RallycrossRX as an exciting television product.”
Adam Kelly, Head of Business Development for IMG Media, said: “Premium sport demands to be shown live or as close as possible to the event. The RallycrossRX team will be delivering more live action than ever before with premium highlights also being made available on the day of the event. This is great news for fans of the sport.” He added: “Live TV has always been an integral part of our plans to develop the sport, but our expectation had been that we would showcase one or two live events in 2013. Therefore being able to deliver over half of this year’s RX Championship live puts us way ahead of our development curve. It also proves the potential appeal of RallycrossRX when it is presented in a friendly format with great production values.”
In addition to the TV broadcast coverage, IMG has secured deals with SNTV, the world’s largest sports news agency, to ensure that news content of the RX Championship is delivered to over 400 partners taking their sports news service and with a household reach of over 1 billion this is a perfect tool to deliver a broad exposure. The Championship will also feature in IMG’s global magazine series, Trans World Sport which has a household reach of over 150m homes worldwide.
As well as the extensive television coverage, IMG will provide fans with an exciting social media platform to follow the RX Championship. IMG recently launched the official RX Website – (www.rallycrossrx.com) has a Facebook page, a Twitter account and a YouTube channel (www.youtube.com/rallycrossrxtv). Fans from across the world will be given the chance to view and engage with a wealth of exclusive multimedia content. A three minute highlights clip will be made available online on each day of racing, while numerous motorsports/lifestyle clips will be shared to millions of fans worldwide throughout the course of the year.
Photo: The first TV deal secures live broadcast of five RallycrossRX rounds to the Nordic region. © JKR/ERC24