[hnlmorg]

> I say this as someone who’s uncle was a rally driver: it’s niche.

Funny enough, mine too. That’s a hell of a coincidence for something that’s “niche” ;)

I don’t think you know half as much about this motorsport than you think you do. That or you have a really distorted opinion of what constitutes as “niche”

It’s multimillion dollar industry for starters.

Car manufacturers specifically make models for professional rally circuits.

There’s video games sponsorships and all sorts.

We aren’t talking about Redbull Soapbox racing here. It’s up there with other popular forms of motorsports like NASCAR.

Granted Rally isn’t as big as F1. But F1s success doesn’t automatically make another sport niche either.

Anything that is a multi-million dollar industry is clearly well beyond the realm of “niche”.

Skiing is another massive industry. It’s definitely well beyond what any normal person would define as “niche”.

You have more of an argument with bobsled but it still gets its spectators come the Winter Olympics. So even if it were niche, it’s still evidence to my point regarding spectators of timed events.

> If we wanted to talk within a sport: cycling has time trialling and road racing. I can tell you the difference in spectator numbers is stark. Like, time trialling has 0 spectators and road racing gets plenty. I love it but it’s really not that interesting to watch compared to road racing

I don’t know enough about cycling to comment on TT vs road racing but plenty of other sports have a mixture of TT and head to head racing and still see high numbers of spectators for the TTs. So I suspect there’s other variables at play in cycling to explain the lower turnout. Possibly because spectators are low to begin with and TT are such early stages that people would prefer to see the final stages instead, which are not TTs?

[scott_w]

Literally nothing you said stops it being niche. I love triathlon but my sport is niche. I love time trialling, bike manufacturers produce bikes worth up to £20,000 and amateur participants spend hundreds of pounds in a wind tunnel to eke out a few seconds to win their regional championship. It's still incredibly fucking niche.

> It’s multimillion dollar industry for starters.

Most niche hobbies are

> Car manufacturers specifically make models for professional rally circuits.

See above, most niche hobbies have this.

> There’s video games sponsorships and all sorts.

Yeah... so?

> It’s up there with other popular forms of motorsports like NASCAR.

NASCAR is a single country and still outstrips all of rally viewership globally.

> Anything that is a multi-million dollar industry is clearly well beyond the realm of “niche”.

Nope, it's still niche.

> Skiing is another massive industry. It’s definitely well beyond what any normal person would define as “niche”.

Almost nobody takes part in skiing, it's niche.

> it still gets its spectators come the Winter Olympics.

So does track & field but most of those sports are incredibly niche.

> Possibly because spectators are low to begin with and TT are such early stages that people would prefer to see the final stages instead, which are not TTs?

TdF gets high numbers for the TT because it affects the grand tour but TTs on their own get far fewer spectators. The Tour of Britain will have loads of people along the route cheering it. When our region hosted the National 10 Mile TT championship, the only spectators were the families of the competitors and those of us marshalling it.

To be clear: not all TT format sports are niche, I just point out that, in general, head-to-head races get far more viewership than time-trial format sports. In fact, the examples you gave pretty much proved that point. F1 annihilates WRC for viewership. As does NASCAR (even from the UK I know of its cultural impact!)

[hnlmorg]

For some reason, this part of my message didn't get sent

> Almost nobody takes part in skiing, it's niche.

You are aware that there are hundreds of ski resorts? Particularly in Europe. It's a massive pastime in the mountains around here.

In fact it's actually a rather mainstream hobby.

> So does track & field but most of those sports are incredibly niche.

It's on TV multiple times a year in the UK. And I'm talking about the main terrestrial TV channels (of which we only have 5). Not satellite nor cable.

Track and Field athletes are big name celebrities here too. Which does not happen with niche sports.

And that literally every school from infants to secondary school teaches T&F and even devotes an entire day each year for track and field events. They call it "Sports Day".

In fact almost all UK schools, even small village primary schools/kindergartens, also have facilities for T&F.

It's not niche.

---

If you want to talk about niche sports, then talk about handball, polo, croquet, shuffleboard, bar billiards, etc. Not stuff that is on TV regularly and taught at every school.

This might be a cultural thing and you just don't see much of these sports where you are. But you could at least research these sports before claiming they're niche.

[hnlmorg]

Not really.

WRC isn’t niche. Period. It might not be as big as F1 but that doesn’t make it niche. And your arguments about how it’s “niche” only demonstrate that you don’t know what a niche sport is.

I partake in plenty of niche sports. And compared to them, WRC is massive. Some might even say it’s mainstream in comparison to some of the sports I’ve competed in.

Anyway, to the point at hand:

Speedway racing is niche in comparison and that’s head to head. Thus by your logical fallacy, TT should be more popular than head to head. Clearly that’s not a correct deduction of the statistics though.

Ping n Ford races are head to head and they have extremely small view figures.

In fact I could list dozens of obscure sports that are head to head and get smaller viewing figures than other TT events.

All your arguments prove is that some sports are more popular than some other sports for a variety of reasons which are far too broad to distil down to a single variable.

And this is the point I’ve repeatedly made. To argue that one format exist because of one singular reason is overly simplistic to the point of being stupid.