02.12.2009

DTM continues its success story in the 2009 season

In 2009, DTM once again has underlined its position as most popular international touring-car series in impressive style. More than a billion people - 60 percent of them in Europe - watched more than 2.500 hours of DTM coverage broadcasted by more than 500 TV stations: live coverage, in magazines and in news formats.

In Germany, DTM’s TV partner ARD secured five market-share wins in the time slot of the race’s live coverage: on five of the ten race weekends, no other programme broadcasted in the early afternoon attracted an audience as big as the DTM audience. Both the manufacturers - Audi and Mercedes Benz - and the DTM series sponsors benefited from the extraordinary range of the live coverage and the contacts of the second-cycle exploitation TV stations. So, the series rights - from the perimeter advertising at the track and in the pit-lane to the advertising on the windscreens and rear windows - achieved outstanding TV-performance values. This means that DTM lies clearly below the average of most of the sports events in Germany, with its price of less than €1 per thousand contacts.

For Audi and Mercedes-Benz, the global TV presence alone generated an advertising-equivalence value of nearly €60 millions. At the same time, other brand derivates such as the Audi or Mercedes-Benz banks also could increase their brand awareness by dint of the separate messages on the vehicles. In addition, the extensive print and online coverage also added to the significance of the DTM involvement.

This applies in equal measure to the live communication. Audi, Mercedes-Benz and the DTM series partners used the events of the 2009 season for creating brand experiences - from the DTM launch at Düsseldorf’s Königsallee in April that was attended by 210,000 visitors to the more than 160,000 spectators who travelled to Hockenheim to witness the final race weekend of the season in October. With these figures, DTM underlines its qualities as top-class communication platform for manufacturers, teams and sponsors. To continue the DTM success story in the future, DTM rights holder and promoter ITR e.V. already works flat out on the preparations for the start of the 2010 season scheduled for April, 2010, at the Hockenheimring.

Source: IFM