MotoGP 2024 season review: What is Liberty Media acquiring?

After their introduction last season, sprint races were the determining factor in a year-long championship battle between Ducati’s Pecco Bagnaia and Pramac’s Jorge Martin.

It was the latter’s Saturday form that proved decisive in winning the 2024 title despite the Italian taking 11 Grands Prix victories across the season – the first rider in MotoGP history to win that many races without being crowned champion.

The last rider to take at least ten victories in a season was Marc Marquez, who will be Bagnaia’s teammate next season after this year’s shock announcement that Ducati had overlooked Martin for the six-time champion.

It perhaps says it all that this unprecedented rider transfer wasn’t the biggest off-track talking point from 2024. By the end of this year, Liberty Media will be the majority shareholder of the global motorcycling championship, adding to its ownership of Formula One.

Controlling the two biggest global motorsport championships is an unprecedented position for one company – CVC Capital Partners was forced to sell MotoGP when in a similar position in 2006 – so it will be interesting to see whether MotoGP can follow Formula One’s lead in making a meaningful impact in the US market.

The hope is that this transaction will bring some much-needed stability to a series that has seen numerous calendar inconsistencies this season, as well as various unresolved issues with representation and the overall marketing of the championship.

BlackBook Motorsport looks back over the major storylines from a 2024 season that shows Liberty exactly which areas should be focused on first when it takes control of MotoGP.

Capitalising on crowds

Looking at the number of spectators turning out at circuits, MotoGP is in rude health – or at least for the most part.

The French Grand Prix broke the weekend attendance record it set last season as 297,741 fans descended on Le Mans Circuit. Overall, ten races saw attendances of more than 150,000 fans, which is a strong result for the series.

Before the final figures are confirmed, MotoGP looks set to break its annual attendance record of 2.88 million set in 2018. It emphasises how the series has moved past the Covid pandemic, although it may struggle to match the average attendance per race of 151,800 fans set six years ago.

While these figures are promising on the surface, there are certainly areas where MotoGP can still improve. For instance, it wasn’t a good look for the series to misreport the attendance at Jerez earlier this year, overestimating the final number by 100,000.

In the end, this overshadowed the fact that the 181,289 in attendance made that race the best-attended Grand Prix at Jerez for nearly a decade.

Elsewhere, the series needs to do more to attract attendees at circuits like Silverstone, which has consistently struggled in recent years. This season’s attendance of 117,867 was fractionally up on last year, but the race day crowd actually fell from 48,564 to 42,529. This is noticeably jarring in the context of Formula One’s weekend crowd of 480,000 at the track for 2024.

The hope is that Liberty will refine MotoGP’s marketing to ensure messaging is consistent. The new brand identity launched at the end of the season should be the first step towards this, combined with the appointment of Kelly Brittain in the newly created role of managing director of global marketing from 2025.

Scheduling headaches

While Liberty faces challenges around MotoGP’s marketing, it also needs to ensure the schedule becomes a lot more consistent and reliable.

Many of these issues were external to the series, but the image of MotoGP has been detrimentally affected nonetheless.

First, the Argentina Grand Prix was cancelled before the start of the season due to the economic woes in the country at the time. The race at Termas de Río Hondo is heavily subsidised by the government, so the cuts ruled out any possibility of the event going ahead.

Organisers then had to postpone the Kazakhstan Grand Prix due to flooding, with this delayed race eventually finding a spot on the 2024 calendar in place of the postponed Indian Grand Prix, which was initially pushed back to next season.

Two delays in the same season exacerbated the scheduling issues, but it became a much worse situation when neither postponement came to fruition this year. The Kazakhstan Grand Prix was eventually cancelled and the Indian Grand Prix was shifted to 2026.

Then there was the relocated season finale after Valencia was hit with devastating floods, but this provided an opportunity for MotoGP to show its logistical prowess by swiftly moving the final race of the season to Barcelona.

After a season beset with scheduling issues, organisers will hope the 2025 calendar doesn’t require as much surgery. However, with Argentina as the second race of the campaign, the series may be faced with an early cancellation if the political situation in the country fails to stabilise.

Still, it’s positive to see the number of new contracts being signed for 2025 and beyond, with additions like Czechia and Hungary to the schedule and extensions for Aragon, Jerez, Austria, India, and Thailand.

Balaton Park will host Hungary's first MotoGP race for 33 years, with the Hungaroring having previously hosted two races (1990 and 1992)

Sponsorship and broadcast strategy needs refinement

Perhaps one area of MotoGP that will benefit most from Liberty’s involvement is the series’ commercial arm.

There were no new major sponsorship deals announced in 2024, which is a poor look for the championship. Comparatively, Formula One is going from strength to strength when it comes to securing partnerships, even going as far as signing its first ever official chocolate bar.

For MotoGP, extensions agreed with long-term partners like DHL and Brembo highlights where it is currently operating. The series has strong existing relationships, but there is little reach outside of that.

One avenue that can help this footprint grow is through broadcast rights, and MotoGP has been a lot more active in this space this year.

The series signed a new media rights deal with Warner Bros Discovery (WBD) at the start of 2024, a precursor to what is likely to be a US-focused expansion plan under Liberty. WBD and MotoGP also agreed to a contract extension in the UK which includes free-to-air (FTA) coverage of select sessions – a much-needed move to increase visibility with waning viewership in the country.

Elsewhere, the newly launched DF1 platform now holds FTA media rights to 12 races per season in Germany thanks to a sublicensing arrangement with Sky Deutschland, and Ziggo Sport committed to a five-year extension in the Netherlands.

In line with MotoGP’s expansion goals in India, it has also signed a three-year deal with Eurosport India for the exclusive linear media rights to the series, which will sit alongside the existing streaming rights deal with Viacom18.

What will change under Liberty?

In the background of all of this is the series’ impending acquisition by Liberty.

Expected to be completed by the end of this year, MotoGP will fall into Formula One’s house – and hopefully enjoy the same benefits.

The first piece of long-term stability was actually secured in September when Dorna agreed an extension with the International Motorcycling Federation (FIM) to continue promoting MotoGP until 2060.

Dorna has promoted the series since 1992, but this extension was vital to ensuring that Liberty’s investment wasn’t wasted. After all, the media company is buying approximately 86 per cent of Dorna, not MotoGP.

Liberty is also acquiring the rights to Superbike World Championship (WorldSBK), MotoE, JuniorGP World Championship and the Women’s Circuit Racing World Championship (WorldWCR). Given all the good work that Liberty has done with Formula One on reducing barriers to entry, including through the launch of F1 Academy, it will be particularly intriguing to see how it develops the all-female WorldWCR series that debuted this year.

The decision from Liberty’s chief executive Greg Maffei to step down, though, throws some uncertainty into the mix. The 64-year-old has driven the evolution of the media company’s portfolio and was a big part of the move for MotoGP.

Maffei will assume the role of senior advisor to ease the transition once he steps away from full-time involvement at Liberty at the end of the year, but the company has given no timeline for appointing his successor.

One thing is clear: what MotoGP doesn’t need is more behind-the-scenes instability as it begins a new era.

Related posts

• Liberty’s €4.2bn MotoGP takeover: Answering the key questions and what it means for F1
• MotoGP on the market: Does the series’ commercial performance justify a US$4bn valuation?
• How WorldWCR plans to solve MotoGP’s lack of female representation