Tuesday, August 30, 2016

Second Largest Exposure to Stage Rally in the US Was...the November Issue of DirtSports and Offroad Magazine?!?!

So a little while ago I posted that the RAV4 Virtual Reality display from Toyota featuring Ryan Millen and his stage rally SUV at Supercross events across the US was arguably the biggest exposure to this type of motorsport in the US this year.

On the heels of that comes what I would argue is the second largest exposure of stage rally to those of us in the US this year.  Written and shot by Cole Sprague for DirtSports magazine which is available both digitally and in print (see your local B&N), the article really doesn't cover anything ground breaking and only sounds like Cole attended and shot from the spectator locations (shocker that he didn't get any real proactive support from the series to put him in the thick of the action) but Team O'Neil gets a mention for their support of one of the racers as does the usual Higgins and Pastrana Subaru crew and, again, Millen's RAV4 showing and being mentioned prominently.

It would have been nice of Cole to have dug deeper into Bryan Bouffier's effort given his unique car but at least it gets a photo as does the classic Volvo of Derek Knight.

While print's circulation numbers aren't what they once were and DirtSports is not half the magazine it was a decade ago (its merger with "OffRoad Magazine" has resulted in far too much pandering to the mall crawler, bolt on accessory crowd) but stage rally coverage (three full pages with lots of photos!) in a magazine that has a reader count safely in the tens of thousands is a pretty good thing and positive exposure for the sport.

Sooooo...the two arguably largest exposures to stage rally in the US this year were...Supercross event displays and an article in a largely desert racing/offroading magazine.  Nice work Rally America...nice work...