The City Council Jyväskylä approved the collaboration agreement between the City of Jyväskylä and AKK Sports Ltd. for organizing the World Rally Championship event in Jyväskylä from 2024 to 2026. The city’s current agreement for hosting the event expires at the end of this year.
Secto Rally Finland is an annual round of the FIA World Rally Championship held in Finland. It is one of the largest annual public events in the Nordic countries and one of the biggest in terms of the number of competitors in the World Rally Championship. The event has been organized in Jyväskylä since 1951 (with the exception of the year 2020 when the event couldn’t take place due to COVID-19 restrictions).
Secto Rally Finland is one of Finland’s most renowned events internationally. It receives praise for its organization from various stakeholders and has been awarded as the best World Rally Championship event multiple times. The significance of Secto Rally Finland for the recognition of Jyväskylä and the region is nationally and internationally vast. The economic impacts of the rally on Central Finland have been extensively studied. According to an analysis conducted in 2022 using the Salmi Eventlizer digital method, the direct tourism revenue to the Jyväskylä area and Central Finland was approximately 17.5 million euros.
In 2022, there were 400 accredited media representatives for the event, of which 65% were international journalists and photographers. The TV coverage of Secto Rally Finland reached over 155 market areas. In Finland, the event was watched for over 5.5 million hours through the Yle Areena streaming service, and Yle’s TV broadcasts reached 1.6 million Finnish viewers. The rally’s own digital channels reached nearly eight million users during the rally week. The rally also increased its reach on social media.
Source: City of Jyväskylä, jyvaskyla.fi
Photo: Toni Ollikainen/AKK
