THE British Touring Car Championship has announced a bold broadcast arrangement that could be telling for the future direction other categories and sports might head.
The 2024 BTCC season will be streamed live globally via social media platform TikTok in what it has described as a “ground-breaking agreement”.
BTCC’s communications claim it’s “thought that it is the first major sporting organisation to stream its entire competition all season across the giant social media platform” which reaches more than a billion active users worldwide.
The TikTok arrangement will complement an existing, more traditional contract with the ITV network.
“I’m incredibly proud of our ground-breaking move in ensuring that the BTCC will be the first major motorsport championship in the world to have its entire race season streamed live on TikTok around the globe, alongside our fantastic ongoing and absolutely vast UK coverage, which is live and free on ITV4 and ITVX,” said BTCC boss Alan Gow.
“This will introduce the BTCC to a massive new and completely different demographic – a younger and more diverse audience whose engagement is vital for the future of our sport.”
This is all pertinent to the Repco Supercars Championship, at a time when its next wave of broadcast negotiations are drawing nearer.
Supercars’ current deal with Fox Sports and the Seven Network expires at the end of 2025.
Nathan Prendergast, Supercars’ head of broadcast, last month hinted at the brave new era that is fast approaching.
“As we well know, the landscape is changing so fast,” Prendergast said at the time.
“So to ensure that not just our traditional, linear broadcast is strong, but our entire content and digital offering is extremely powerful so that when we roll into our next round of rights deals, we’ve got a full awareness of where we sit in the broadcast landscape.”
Arguably the biggest shift in the Australian motorsport broadcast landscape in recent times was a controversial move to align the SpeedSeries with Stan Sport and its subsequent return to Seven’s portfolio.
