The World Rally Championship’s new commercial rights holder has outlined plans to grow the series, attract manufacturers and broaden rallying’s audience.
Earlier this month, French automotive company Cosmobilis and private credit investor Park Square Capital acquired WRC Promoter GmbH, in a move that has been described as the “biggest deal in the history of these championships” by the FIA.
The new owners, led by former Lotus and McLaren Formula 1 team boss Eric Boullier have outlined ambitious plans to take the WRC and ERC to the next level, focused on improving fan access, media coverage and the championship’s commercial appeal.
At Rally Paraguay, FIA president Mohammed Ben Sulayem, WRC promoter CEO Boullier and Jean-Louis Mosca, chairman and CEO of Cosmobilis addressed the media about the plan moving forward.
Maintaining WRC’s DNA is critical to growth
While the WRC’s new owners have outlined plans to make changes to improve the WRC, Boullier was clear that rallying’s DNA will remain untouched.
“There is one thing I would like to emphasise first. We will never ever change the DNA of rally. That’s the statement. Never ever will we change the end to DNA,” said Boullier.
“One thing we’re going to obviously work on with the FIA is to try now, because rallying obviously is the most spectacular sport, but nobody talks about it anymore. And that’s the issue today: we want to bring back the WRC and ERC (European Rally Championship) to where they belong.”
Boullier did, however, outline plans to change event formats and overhaul the championship’s media platform in an effort to reach new audiences without alienating existing fans. The plans also include making rallies more accessible and fan-friendly with a reimagining of the service park into a “ WRC Arena”.
Boullier also emphasised that where possible the events must remain free to attend for spectators.
“We’re going to work, obviously, on the format of the event. We’re not going to change much. Some of the rallies [for example] Finland or Estonia, have been working on a single stage on the same day. That’s the kind of format we’re going to focus [on], which is going to allow us, thanks to the FIA, to work on a better product, which we can make it easier for the fans to attend, but also better to broadcast and show to the people who cannot come, what is WRC,” Boullier added.
“The second point will be, obviously, the media platform. We’re going to reshape completely the media platform because we want to get to the new century – that was the deal – obviously to bring more digital.
“We need to be more present on social media, we need to be able to catch a new audience in the future, which is not only a hardcore audience. By doing this, we will make them create the wish that they want to come and attend the rallies in the future
“And the last point is to make our sport a business platform and a sustainable platform for the teams, for the OEMs, for the car manufacturers, for everybody who wants to come and compete, to have a place where they can also operate with some accessibility some hospitality. We want to reshape a little bit to make sure we can welcome the fans, welcome the companies, welcome the CEOs.
“We’re going to rename it [the service park] WRC Arena because we want to make a place where people want to be, [and] to be seen. Maybe for influencers or whoever, but we want people to be there and to enjoy the place and enjoy the rally.
“And having one single stage on Sunday allows us as well to facilitate the access. One stage you can make some park and ride, make sure you can finally show the product and, if I may say this, you can get the people close to the cars in action.”
Manufacturer announcements on the horizon
WRC 2027 Rally car
Increasing the amount of manufacturer involvement in the WRC has long been a topic with only Toyota, Hyundai, and Ford — through M-Sport’s semi-works partnership — the mainstay of the championship since 2020.
From next year, the WRC will introduce new technical regulations that aim to reduce costs, with cost-capped €345,000 cars, built around space-frame chassis, set to deliver a similar performance, and share some components, with the current Rally2 cars.
Toyota is the only mainstream marque to commit alongside tuners Project Rally One and RMC Motorsport. Boullier is confident that more marques will soon commit.
“We have started already a few discussions with a lot of them [manufacturers,” Boullier told Autosport.com. “The first one we have obviously considered was the existing one in WRC. There is no fair world. We never make everybody happy, but we have addressed their concerns. They want a stable platform. We have a 10 year commitment with the FIA. They want the cost to be addressed. I believe, with the new formula. If you include everything.
“We have divided by at least two, the budget compared with now. They want to be able to show off their technology. We have addressed technically [from 2029], and that’s why if we can bring WRC back to where it belongs in terms of popularity.
“The platform will be super attractive. We are a global platform like Formula 1, so we go to 14, 15 rallies all over the world. We go in Africa, we go to Asia, we go everywhere, South America, and it’s important to keep this globality because it’s only Formula 1 and us in the end,
“So we have addressed all their concerns. But I’m very confident that we’re going to see soon a couple of them [manufacturers] announcing joining WRC.”
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– The Autosport.com Team
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