Great speed: New host broadcaster Aurora on getting the World RX 2025 season production together with NEP Finland and Cloudbass Graphics
Drivers get ready to perform at RX of Portugal, which took place from 31 May to 1 June in Lousada
As the FIA World Rallycross Championship (World RX) began its 2025 season in Lousada, Portugal, on May 31, Aurora, the new host broadcaster for the FIA’s motorsport series that combines elements of rallying and circuit racing, had only weeks to pull the production together.
Aurora has been working closely with the technical services provider for the series, NEP Finland, under the leadership of managing director, Marko Viitanen, during the run up to the start of the season to get the production underway. NEP Finland has an extremely long history of working with WRC Promotor on World Rally Cross as well as World RX and Euro RX.
Aurora’s Matt Beal, director of broadcast, who is heading up the World RX project, also has history with the FIA; as a freelance producer in 2014, Beal built the World Championship, now known as World RX, for the FIA. He then went to work at Aurora, and now has come full circle back to World RX. “That’s my journey,” he says. “I’m coming back into as a bit of a passion project because it’s amazing.”
Aurora is working closely with both NEP Finland and Cloudbass Graphics to ensure the 2025 season of World RX satisfies the fans at home
Long history
Beal continues on the relationship between NEP Finland and Aurora: “I’ve known Marco at NEP from way back in 2014 doing World Rally Championship; they are best on anything with races on dirt! NEP Finland are amazing.
“We are new partners to them essentially, but they really stepped up because the FIA comes with caveats, which are that we don’t have the budgets of some other established productions, for instance, so it took all the suppliers to come to the table and offer their very best. People like Marco at NEP Finland is doing this as much as a commercial business but as a sort of personal passion point, because he wants to see this work and because he sees the potential, and we see the potential and the FIA sees the potential.”
That pre-existing relationship has meant getting World RX underway in a matter of weeks has worked smoothly. Beal explains: “Having a personal relationship with NEP Finland gave us a shorthand to get everywhere really quickly and especially pre-event for organising who does what, who takes care of this, how do we handle the signals? They were a pleasure to work with.”
Aurora is also working with Cloudbass Graphics for graphics, and Eurovision in Geneva for distribution.
Aurora is the new host broadcaster for World RX, which is now under the care of governing body, the FIA
Great speed
Aurora has created the production over the last three months at great speed, and during that time the FIA has also changed the sporting regulations, going back to the traditional way of qualification to move forwards into semi finals and finals.
This, says Beal, meant, “in that timeframe all the graphics, including the coding behind the graphics, all had to change”.
He continues: “So we decided to partner with Cloudbass Graphics. The reason we’ve partnered with Cloudbass Graphics is we’ve got a great relationship with them. We’ve done other projects with them such as Nitro and World RX 10 years ago, and Goodwood. The reason we work with these graphics guys is the timing company is an excellent Hungarian company called Chronomoto. They run the TSL timing protocol, and they’ve also done other championships with us and with Cloudbass, so because we had to look graphics very quickly, having that integration between us, Chronomoto and Cloudbass for the coding of the graphics has allowed us to do the grunt work in the background quite quickly.
“And because we know the sport really well, and Cloudbass has been on the journey with us through Nitro and this Championship back in 2014, they know the sport really well. What we learned in the delta between us doing it before and doing it again now, we’ve poured back into the graphics pack.”
Aurora is working with the FIA on three championships: RX3, EuroRX1, and World RX. On top of those three, guest championships join occasionally, so graphics have been developed for all of these. Says Beal: “We basically built the base back out for the core three plus the guests, made sure they have an individual look and feel because that’s really important because the FIA’s mandate is that they want this to be a new chapter in an amazing sport; they wanted to reset.”
The season opener – RX of Portugal – took place from 31 May to 1 June in Lousada, with World RX, Euro RX1 and Euro RX3 competing. Next up for World RX, Euro RX1 and Euro RX3 is RX of Sweden which takes place from 5 to 6 July in Höljes Motorstadion.