December Editorial
author: Leon Botha
Hells bells, rather than jingle bells, this year has also come to an end, and I just made it in time to write something to all the readers of RallyStar, before I kick off 2006 with the Dakar Rally that actually starts in 2005.
It may be tradition to ponder on what happened and what not, but after a year such as 2005 I really don’t think it will be wise for me to ponder too long on that subject, as I may spoil my own, and a few other people’s New Year's parties.
It may still be wise to say the Prosperous New Year goodies and let sleeping (and believe me they are fast asleep) dogs lie,.... but then again most readers by now expect me to say at least something about a few things that happened, and some that may still happen.
2005 will always stand out in my mind as the year of the Sasol/Total war and honestly marks one of the worse periods of my motor sport life (career seems to have gone by) and will probably be the reason why I almost called it a day and started my bowls career at an earlier age than originally planned.
Never before in my life did I have to check my tongue more than throughout the period where I did my best to keep the sponsorship of the PMC Tzaneen Rally alive and never before did I realise how little support you actually get when the chips are really down.
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Sunrise or sunset? You can decide.....
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I will rather not go into all the detail and definitely not yet into some of the lingering shit still hanging over us after this debacle, but what I can say is that in hindsight I will next time rather pull the plug and tell some people what to go and do, than waste my time trying to save such a seemingly unsolvable situation.
These problems prevented us from building the rally into an even better event for 2006 although according to those who really know and appreciate good organisation, the event was by far the best on the calendar of 2005, as it was in 2004.
Of course we are proud of the fact that we pulled it off, and pulled it off BIG TIME, but in the end we are once again without a sponsor for 2006!
This morning when I woke up at exactly 02h53 I experienced a stir in my stomach that reminded me of the few weeks before the 2005 event.
Jy word nie wakker nie, jy skrik wakker en die koue angsweet slaan op jou voorkop uit!
Suddenly it dawned on me that once again I will have to look for sponsors for the best possible event and this time make absolutely sure that we do not have any hidden rules, secret agreements, and other stomach stirring shit hanging over us with the plug half pulled.
Funny how it works out, and not so funny is the negative factors that hang over the sport – the TV coverage being the most prominent tool we have to market our sport with, is also the most significant problem we have where marketing is concerned.
After being directly involved in the sponsorship, running and organising of the final rally in the National Rally championship for two years, I can still not take a video of this rally’s coverage to any sponsor and say: “Look this is the type of coverage you will get as Event Sponsor!” without refusing to let him look at more than the video tape while still in my hand.
The reason is that the “TV broadcasting right holders” seemingly fail to understand that they are bound to produce and broadcast the event and not use the broadcasting as a platform to promote the so called “TV sponsor” and ignore, as was the case with the NPS and PMC Tzaneen Rally, the Event sponsor.
As it stands now, if you do not sponsor the event and fork out for the TV coverage, you are almost certainly dead – NPS got a few seconds incidental coverage on TV for their trouble and the program ended with the announcement that “this rally was brought to you by BP” or something to that effect. Needless to say – the sponsor was not very happy and showed it by a no show in 2005!
If you piss certain people off you seem to have serious problems, which of course makes the whole situation untenable from a rally marketing point.
What do you as organising club, or can you as promoterpromise your sponsor?
When will we get a situation where the event sponsors can be assured that they will get their fair share of coverage as MSA, all the competitors, and the Rally Commission surely would like to see?
What does this actually mean?
In its present form the lack of knowing what you may and what you may not promise an Event Sponsor as far as the TV broadcasting of the event is concerned, simply means that the strongest marketing arm of the sport is cut off or is at least worthless at the moment.
If we do not get a definite guide and undertaking as well as an undertaking from the TV side on this matter we can actually not promise a potential sponsor anything.
The question is - will we be able to get a working solution to the problem before it is too late? Is it not already too late?
The next problem is that the sport at the moment does not really cater for corporate entertainment. The PMC rally gets closest to that with a fantastic centrally situated service park where the sponsor can entertain its VIP customers to heart’s content!
The Cape and Free State rallies are spread too wide, the Sasol has become a logistical nightmare due to traffic flow problems, the Natal rally simply can not cater (we will have to see what happens when they run the SA pilot WRC event there in May) in this regard, and the Eastern Cape rally also seem to have its problems.
There are answers but as things stand now, it will take a long time to sort it out. Funny how everybody ignores the success formulas and people who make them work? Offers to help are blatantly ignored or even worse – declined! You have to apply for instance to assist the organisers of the WRC pilot event and reply to an email address which is incidentally mine (although not in use at the moment). That is if you are one of the chosen who do receive any email from the so-called promoters of the event.
Anyway, we will see what comes from Rally South Africa – and who applies for the honour to assist them. Richard Leeke the holder of a lower grade COC licence has been lucky and apparently received a licence to organise the event. I am not sure how they will be able to run the SA Championship event in this FIA event, while he is not the holder of a legit A grade licence that has been obtained through the right procedure and after satisfying all the standing requirements.
On the home front, RallyStar did not really grow during 2006, which means that we probably have reached the saturation point rendering a service to people who know about the sport. This includes the other two “service rendering” sites.
RallyStar has always tried to draw new readers to the site, and we started to steer clear from duplicating services such as getting your entry forms, regs etc from the site. We do not see why we should publish what can be found on the two other sites that the same people frequent all the time.
We are still in two minds whether we should carry on with our popular RallyStar SMS service, and will make a decision soon. It is so hard to stop something that you have build up over a period of three years and especially where the users, albeit a too small number, are so loyal and supporting. After we sent out the announcement that we will not carry on with the Sms service next year, we got so many requests, thank you notes, and promises of support that we decided to do a test to see how many people will register for the service in 2006, see how many sponsors we will get, and only then make a decision.
It will be a relief to some competitors to hear that I will probably also not be doing the competitor’s route check next year, especially two people will be so glad that they will inherit a possible free ride to all the events. Anyway, nothing has been definitely decided yet and we will have to see what happens and how things turn out. Most of the danger points of the existing routes have now been pointed out, and they are also included into the route schedules. So you will probably not have to worry too much that you will have to rely on the information supplied by a new “checking” crew.
Most readers enjoyed the times where and when I got involved in a few “fights” to try and improve the sport, and I have been so deeply involved that a number of readers paid me the (probably unintended) compliment of calling me Mr Rally in their letters!
Boy, was that a great feeling that lasted for all of about five seconds before I opened the next email, or read another article, or thought about something in the sport where things were not right.
The question always remained – are we making any progress or are we actually just going around in circles, drawing the borderline thicker and thicker as we circulate?
Like Topol (for those younger than 45 – that was the poor Jew in ‘Fiddler on the roof’) I felt like asking on a number of occasions: “Why me Lord?”
Just as I really felt like giving up –I got more letters, phone calls, sms’s and so on of encouragement, thanks and even some criticism because I dared publish some nice pictures of nice looking and very sexy girls! Something we will again do in 2006 – so for the one complainant – get your pen – and get ready!
So, all in all, 2005 was very good to us on the one hand - we made new friends, we made a bit of money outside of motorsport and were able to support the RallyStar efforts, we had good events, the Pretoria Motor Club grew out of its old baby shoes, the S2000 cars pulled off a few surprises - in general we all had a good motor sport year. So did we in 2004, 2003, 2002 …….
Will we be able to grow the sport in 2006 or are we going to land in so many dogfights that we will once again forget why we are actually here?
May 2006 hold everything you wish for, and may you use your God given talents so well that you find everything you search for, but may you also realise that if you do not at least search for, or support the search party, you will not find or receive anything.
Have a great year and I hope that we at RallyStar will be able to serve you even better in 2006.
Many thanks to Patrick Vermaak, Erik de Jager, Flip Wilken, Charmaine Fortune, Danie van Jaarsveld (Motorpics), Elza Thiart, Dave Ledbitter, Greg Godrich, the PMC Exco and club members, Total SA and Andries van der Walt, Peter Wise and SASOL, Volkswagen Motor Sport, Toyota South Africa – Roger Houghton and Sharon, Meg Houghton and Castrol, Louis le Grange, Anton Wannenburg, Muis Joubert, Aggie Stroh, Thorsten Pey, Willie du Plessis, Henri du Plessis, Visser du Plessis and everybody else who did anything to assist Rallystar and it’s efforts.
Thank you also to all our advertisers and a special thanks to those who made contributions in cash, product, and kind, which enabled us to keep going and to bring all our readers the latest news and skindernuus!
All the best for 2006
Leon Botha
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