What about the possible takeover of MotoGP by Liberty Media?

For some time, rumours have been circulating that the MotoGP mightcome into the hands of Liberty Media. Dorna Sports is stillcommercial rights holder of the MotoGP, or the premier class ofmotorcycle racing. The CEO of Dorna Sports, Carmelo Ezpeletareveals to the Italian Repubblica : "It is indeed true that thereare rumors about a possible takeover of Dorna. I can confirm that,but I always wonder who starts these rumors. I get two or threephone calls every day, mainly from banks. However, they don't wantto buy anything, but to take on a role as an intermediary." "I cansay that nothing has happened for now. Anything can always happen,at any time, but for now it hasn't. What is certain, however, isthat our product is valued," said Ezpeleta, who logically does notreveal much in his role. The Spaniard himself also owns shares inDorna Sports and will want to sell his business for the highestpossible price in the event of a potential sale. In 2023, LibertyMedia was mentioned several times as one of the parties that wouldbe interested in wanting to buy over Dorna Sports and thusautomatically MotoGP. Not an odd idea, given that Liberty Media hasbeen very successful financially in Formula 1 in recent years.After all, if you can be successful in the top class of motorsport,you could become so in the premier class of motorcycles? Yet therestill seems to be no talk of selling Dorna Sports. Rumors of thepotential takeover have subsided in recent months, so either theyare keeping their lips tightly sealed or no talks are currentlytaking place between the two parties. Normally in such negotiationsthere are always people or parties involved who let something beknown about the process. So that is not the case for now and so itdoes not yet appear that we will see a MotoGP race during a F1weekend in the near future. Formula 1 & MotoGP in action at thesame time? That provisionally unrealistic idea was once raised bythe owner of the COTA circuit, Bobby Epstein. When we asked theAmerican again about that idea in October 2023, he quickly quashedany possibilities. Indeed, Epstein now thinks it will be difficultto have MotoGP and F1 in action on the same weekend at the samecircuit. This is mainly because both classes face different safetymeasures, these cannot simply be switched around between thesessions of the two classes. The growth F1 has experienced sinceLiberty Media's arrival is, however, a big reason for the Americansto perform the same trick with MotoGP. The top class of motorcycleracing seems to be a sleeping giant at the moment. Despite havinggrown its ratings and spectator numbers in 2023 compared to 2022and seen a big increase in revenue, it is still facing a largedebt. As revenue has increased substantially over the past twoyears and Dorna communicates that the ratings and spectator numbersare growing, it also seems to be interesting for investors to selltheir shares if a party like Liberty Media will come forward with aconcrete and realistic offer. In recent months, for example, rumorscirculated that Dorna would like to talk about a €2 billion offerwith a takeover party. Definitely not a tip, especially consideringDorna's turnover in 2022 was "only" about 425 million euros. So anew owner will have to make quick changes that generate more salesand profits in order to quickly recoup the 2 billion investmentamount. By comparison, in the year Liberty Media took over F1, theturnover of the king class in motorsports was $1.8 billion. In2022, Liberty ensured that revenue rose to $2.6 billion in F1, anamount they likely surpassed in 2023. So the investment they havemade has been more than worth it. It is still unclear whether apossible investment of €2 billion in MotoGP will be easilyrecouped. Financially, MotoGP does not seem to be an interestingoption for Liberty Media at this time. This leaves only arelatively small indication that Liberty might take the step toMotoGP. Liberty Media bought QuintEvents last year. That companyoperated very successfully in both the F1 and MotoGP worlds inrecent years. For example, the company owns F1 Experiences series,offering F1 fans exclusive hospitality tickets since 2017, whereyou can even get into the pit box or paddock. That investment showsthat Liberty Media not only believes in opportunities in Formula 1,but also in opportunities in the MotoGP world. 'Growing popularityof MotoGP' This fact, however, is still too small to estimatewhether Liberty Media also wants to take the next step and buy outDorna. In F1, Liberty Media also put the sport on the map inAmerica with the Netflix series Drive to Survive. MotoGP has alsoreleased some series on different platforms, but with much lesssuccess than F1. Therefore, it will not be easy to make MotoGP"just like that" big in financially interesting countries likeAmerica. The question is how Liberty Media would like to really putMotoGP back on the map. It was made great over the past 20 yearsprimarily by Valentino Rossi, but since the nine-time worldchampion bid farewell to the sport, no-one has emerged to thoseheights in that regard. As an eight-time world champion, forexample, Marc Marquez does not enjoy nearly the same level ofinterest that Rossi enjoyed. So Liberty Media or another investorwill not be able to set its sights on one or more riders in thecurrent field who have already built up world renown. For a partylooking to buy out Dorna, it is necessary to come up with a bigidea, because you cannot piggyback on the success of one or morebig names. By 2023, according to MotoGP, attendance at the GPswould increase by 20%. Especially on Saturdays, there is a cleargrowth in the number of spectators. This is probably due to thefixed sprint race that was introduced on Saturdays in 2023. EveryGP weekend, a sprint race is scheduled in the MotoGP class. Also,the number of people watching MotoGP on TV would have increased bya good 20% in 2023 compared to 2022. That sounds like a nicenumber, but in Spain "only" 209,000 people would have watched theCatalunya GP on DAZN (they own the TV rights) . On the open channelthe race was watched by more than a million people in Spain and therace at Mugello, which was also broadcast on the open channel, waswatched by 780,000 people. This shows that there is great interestin the country that produces many champions in motorsports, butrelatively speaking, not many people take out subscriptions. Inaddition, only a few races a year can be watched live on the opennet. Even in another motorsports country like Italy, we see onlyokay numbers during the last race of the year in 2023 whereFrancesco Bagnaia became world champion. On average, 826,000 peoplewatched the race in which their compatriot became world champion.By comparison, the same day the Abu Dhabi GP was run which anaverage of 777,000 people watched on Sky Italia . A number thatwould be many times higher in any good year for Ferrari, as Bagnaiahad in MotoGP. Another comparison, Rossi's farewell race at the2021 Valencia GP was watched by an average of 860,000 people inItaly. There, however, he did not compete at the front for a longtime. He did in 2015 during the last race of the year, when awhopping 2.45 million Italians tuned in to Sky Italia to watch thelast race of the year. Those numbers show that in the relativelylargest motorsports countries, MotoGP is watched much less thanyears ago for a variety of reasons. There was an increase in 2023,but the question is whether that increase will continue into 2024.After all, there won't be any more sprint races in MotoGP. MarcMarquez defining factor for potential takeover parties? With thenumber of viewers not extremely high in Spain and Italy, thequestion is therefore whether channels such as DAZN and Sky Italiawill continue to pay top dollar in the future to bring in therights. It is an important revenue source for Dorna or a party thatwill buy Dorna and so it is important that this revenue sourceabsolutely does not collapse. Fact is that at the beginning of thisnew year, there were quite a few rumors circulating about apossible takeover, which were especially revived by Ezpeleta'sstatements. These statements were quickly taken to mean that Dornais about to sell the company. However, if you read the Spaniard'swords carefully, he does not give a millimeter away. He admits thatit is true that there are rumors about a possible sale, but notthat they are actually in talks with a party. So it will have towait and see until there are clear indications about Dorna'spossible interlocutors. Whether it will be Liberty Media, at least,remains to be seen. The circumstances described show that it willnot be easy to make MotoGP as successful as Formula 1 has becomecommercially in recent years under the leadership of Liberty Media.No doubt Dorna will hope that Marc Marquez will compete for theworld title this year as a challenger on a customer Ducati. If theeight-time world champion can pull this off, worldwide interest issure to increase. Perhaps Marquez can then also give a potentialinvestor just the final push to buy out Dorna.