January 5th marks the beginning of what the organizers promise will be “the toughest edition since the race came to the Middle East,” an exciting and chaotic edition of Dakar. The route itself, which consists of 12 difficult stages full of potential hazards and navigational difficulties, will be among the largest obstacles. Dakar 2024 is undoubtedly not to be missed, especially with the addition of the new “48-hour Chrono Stage” to the schedule, which will essentially leave competitors on their own for more than two days.
A rally raid competition, the 2024 Dakar Rally takes place in Saudi Arabia. The Amaury Sport Organization (ASO) is organizing the 46th edition of the Dakar Rally, which is being held in Saudi Arabia for the fifth time.
The event happens in 2024 from January 5–January 19. The event serves as the opening round of the 2024 World Rally-Raid Championship for the third consecutive year.
On June 3, 2023, the race course’s general layout was revealed. This year, the itinerary will begin in Al-‘Ula, travel through the Empty Quarter, and end in Yanbu. The race’s 12-stage format includes a prologue and a 48-hour marathon stage known as a “48h chrono stage” that ends at midnight and covers more than 600 km. The new format marathon stage will have a 4 p.m. cutoff time and a 7 a.m. start the next day. There will be 5,000 kilometers of special stages on the route, with 60% more tracks than in the previous edition.
The organizers of Dakar say to have invested a lot of money in filming the action to share the adventure with TV viewers:
On November 20, 2023, the 7,891 km (4,903 mi) long Dakar route for 2024 was unveiled. It is made up of 4,727 km (2,937 mi) of special stages. There will be a new two-day marathon stage in the race, and every competitor must stop by the closest bivouac by 4 p.m. Eight bivouacs will be set up, allowing drivers to work on other vehicles while remaining cut off from their teams.
| Stage | Date | Start | Finish | Total/Special | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Prologue | Friday | January 5, 2024 | Al-‘Ula | Al-‘Ula | 158 km / 28 km |
| 1 | Saturday | January 6, 2024 | Al-‘Ula | Al Henakiyah | 532 km / 405 km |
| 2 | Sunday | January 7, 2024 | Al Henakiyah | Ad Dawadimi | 662 km / 470 km |
| 3 | Monday | January 8, 2024 | Ad Dawadimi | Al Salamiya | 733 km / 440 km |
| 4 | Tuesday | January 9, 2024 | Al Salamiya | Al-Hofuf | 631 km / 299 km |
| 5 | Wednesday | January 10, 2024 | Al-Hofuf | Shaybah | 727 km / 118 km |
| 6 (Marathon) | Thursday-Friday | January 11-12, 2024 | Shaybah | Shaybah | 766 km / 532 km |
| – | Saturday | January 13, 2024 | Riyadh | Rest day | |
| 7 | Sunday | January 14, 2024 | Riyadh | Ad Dawadimi | 873 km / 483 km |
| 8 | Monday | January 15, 2024 | Ad Dawadimi | Ha’il | 678 km / 458 km |
| 9 | Tuesday | January 16, 2024 | Ha’il | Al-‘Ula | 639 km / 417 km |
| 10 | Wednesday | January 17, 2024 | Al-‘Ula | Al-‘Ula | 609 km / 371 km |
| 11 | Thursday | January 18, 2024 | Al-‘Ula | Yanbu | 587 km / 480 km |
| 12 | Friday | January 19, 2024 | Yanbu | Yanbu | 328 km / 175 km |
Through 2026, MAVTV will have same-day broadcast rights in the US thanks to a new agreement. The network will air one-hour daily highlight shows for this upcoming Dakar edition from January 5 to January 19, starting at noon ET/PT and ending at 7 p.m. ET/PT. Along with other national providers like Spectrum and DirectTV, you can watch MAVTV on streaming services like Hulu+Live TV and YouTube TV.
Furthermore, NBC Sports will air highlights on Peacock as well as other online channels, such as NBC’s Motosports YouTube channel.
Outside our borders, the L’Equipe channel has the exclusive right to televise the race in France, where they will spend almost four hours a day covering it. It is collaborating with the veteran broadcaster, France Télévisions, for the season’s opening event. Tout le Sport, a daily show that airs on France 3 and has an average viewership of 1.1 million, is being transformed into the Journal du Dakar. Every day, Eurosport will reserve three hours to broadcast content to the sixty-three territories that fall under its broadcasting region.
For a second year, Fox Sports will once again broadcast the Dakar in Mexico, and Teledeporte and RTVE Play will provide coverage from Spain.
With an even larger role for Dakar on its SSC News and SSC2 channels, Saudi Sport Company is continuing to expand its coverage in the Middle East. Additionally, the widely watched MBC Action channel, which is free to watch in 24 countries, and the Shahid digital platform, which has nearly 5 million paying subscribers, will maximize the exposure of the Dakar footage.
The entry of TV3 Group into the Baltic states will allow TV3 and TV6 to highlight the competitive performances of competitors from Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania even more. The 52-minute daily coverage will once again be televised by RTVS in Slovakia.
FloRacing, a well-known sports broadcaster and streaming service, will cover the entire 2024 Dakar Rally. If you subscribe to their streaming service, you can watch the race online. Alternatively, you can use Roku, Fire TV, Chromecast, or Apple TV to watch the channel on your TV. You can also choose to download the FloSports app on iOS or Android if you’re always on the go. For the period of FloRacing subscribers’ subscription, video footage from the event will be preserved and kept in a video library.
Red Bull TV is a choice that highlights Red Bull racers by offering daily highlights, news from the bivouac, and exclusive features. Starting on January 5, 2024, you can watch their weekly Dakar Rally studio program, Into the Dust, which features interviews with competitors and coverage from every stage of the competition. Red Bull TV provides an app so you can easily watch the action on multiple devices, and their YouTube channel features highlights as well.
The primary source of all the information needed to follow the race in real-time is the official rally website, Dakar.com, along with its mobile app. These resources include live commentary, real-time tracking and cartography, daily stage videos, rider spotlight videos, interviews, and provisional results by category and kilometer point. The official Dakar YouTube channel offers many of the videos, which are available in four languages: Arabic, French, English, and Spanish.
In addition to releasing its first-ever prediction game, the race live coverage module now offers stage replay as a new feature. By following the trajectories that the competitors left during the stage on the map, users can choose multiple vehicles and virtually witness a head-to-head match between their favorite rivals, just as if they had started at the same time.
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