Today, another FIA sanctioned championship will make its way to Australia other than Formula 1 at the end of this year thanks to the World Rallycross Championship aka World RX. Although it remains to be seen which location will take place at a later date, but the good news is that the Australian event could make its way into free-to-air for the first time just for this occasion since it will be held at an appropriate time zone & Nine holds the exclusive rights there through Stan Sport. It will be great to see how this looks like with the world feed coverage & if one likes it, they can go try the full suite & subscribing it to Stan.
The last time Nine aired live Motorsport on free-to-air was November last year with SpeedSeries during the Bathurst International at Mount Panorama before the rights were returned to Seven this year under Motorsport Australia. It doesn’t mean that Motorsport will be completely away from Nine though where the following weekend race highlights of IndyCar, Formula E & World Endurance Championship will be shown on most Saturdays throughout this year. So that won’t go anywhere as long as Stan has the exclusive paid live & replay access. Plus, we could see a bit of the 24 Hours of Le Mans race over in France this June like it was last year where the first 1-2 hours were live on 9Go before the rest can be viewed on Stan.
Despite the loss of SpeedSeries, Stan will still have the paid live & on-demand Motorcycle Australia content alongside SBS such as the Australian Superbike Championship & Pro MX Motocross Championship this year. Other than that, there’s not much hope to of bringing back both the World Rally Championship and IndyCar coming back here like it used to be nor an Formula E race or World MX event here has been seriously considered at this stage. There’s one thing we can say for sure that whenever Nine airs live a bit of Motorsport next time with the 24 Hours of Le Mans & maybe the Australian World RX Round, I hope they can make the watermark look good with the WWOS logo & not a 9Gem/9Go one whose recent history with Motorsport isn’t that good unlike the other networks. For now, it’s great to see the World RX showcase itself in our shores soon when the TCR World Tour drivers won’t be able to come back again just for this year due to logistics/transport issues.