Saran gets behind Turkey's electric car drive with Pure ETCR

Turkey’s Saran Media Group has made a further motorsport rights acquisition in agreeing a deal to televise the first season of Pure ETCR, the new international electric touring car series.

All events from the championship will be available on the S Sport and S Sport 2 pay-TV channels, complementing existing coverage of top series such as Formula 1 and motorcycling’s MotoGP.

Pure ETCR, the world’s first all-electric, multi-brand touring car championship, is being promoted by Discovery-owned Eurosport Events, the events arm of the pan-European sports broadcaster, which is already responsible for the established FIA World Touring Car Cup (WTCR).

The new series is already assured of broadcast coverage in more than 75 territories in Europe, Asia, Africa and the Middle East through Eurosport, and there are separate deals in place with Metro TV in Poland and Sport TV in Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic.

Saran’s latest acquisition comes on the back of the company last month extending its Formula 1 deal by three years to 2023.

The group has showing the top motor racing series since 2012, but this was the first multi-year agreement since 2017, as it has been signing one-year deals for the past three seasons.

Saran is said to be the world’s fourth-largest owner of sports content, and responsible for broadcasting over 60 per cent of Turkey’s sports programming.

It is hoped that the showcase of Pure ETCR will further drive the use of electric vehicles in Turkey, where there has been a 16-fold increase in sales in the past five years, and a doubling of purchases in 2020 alone. The country has set a target of more than 1 million electric vehicles on the road by 2030.

Selim Usta, head of sports at Saran Group, said: “Hand in hand with Discovery, Saran Group looks forward to broadcasting and helping elevate electric motorsports content locally in order to raise awareness and help heal the world one sports event at a time.”

Xavier Gavory, series director of Pure ETCR, added: “We are delighted to secure this broadcast deal with Saran Group, which is yet another major agreement for Pure ETCR beyond the Eurosport network. We have seen through its Formula 1, MotoGP and World Rally Championship events that the people in Turkey have a huge passion for motorsport and with the number of electric car sales in the country more than doubling in the past year, there is clearly huge enthusiasm to see such cars in action on the track.

“Saran Group is a huge player in sport and also share our philosophy of driving awareness of electric motorsport, so we’re very excited about the possibilities this agreement presents.”

The calendar for the inaugural Pure ETCR season has yet to be confirmed, but it is set to get under way in June, with the organisers promising events on multiple continents.