World Rally Championship Appoints WePlay For Ott Drive
The FIA World Rally Championship (WRC) has appointed performance marketing agency WePlay in a bid to drive subscriptions to its OTT streaming platform, WRC+.
The agency will work with WRC across its interrupted season, which has now resumed with rallies in Estonia and Turkey, and will continue over two more live events in Italy and Belgium before the end of 2020.
Commenting on the latest appointment, Jon Abraham, Head of Business Development at WePlay, said: “We’re incredibly proud of WePlay’s success in driving OTT subscriptions during lockdown, but we couldn’t be happier to see live sport back on our agenda.
“The WRC partnership is a chance to demonstrate our capabilities in growing revenues for sports clients through the streaming of live events. We’ve really established ourselves in this space over the last three years and believe it now represents an even more fundamental area of growth in sport’s new era.”
The relationship builds on WePlay’s strong track record in driving OTT and SVOD growth – one of five pillars of the agency’s Direct-to-Consumer marketing model.
Jona Siebel, Managing Director, WRC Promoter – the entity which owns the commercial rights to the FIA World Rally Championship – added: “We’re delighted to be working with WePlay – the go-to agency for performance marketing in the sport sector. We see our OTT product as a significant factor in WRC’s commercial growth over coming years.”
“Over the last few months, WRC has worked tirelessly with the FIA, our competitors, teams and rallies, in exceptional circumstances, to revise the calendar. It’s fantastic to be able to provide live rally content to our fans around the world, and WePlay will be fundamental to achieving this via WRC+.”
The news follows the announcement of former Sky Sports Managing Director Barney Francis’ appointment as an advisor to the WePlay Board. The agency also delivers OTT marketing services for the likes of UFC, LaLiga and ESPN.
