MotoGP saw a 20 per cent year-over-year (YoY) audience increase through the first 12 races of the season, the series’ commercial rights holder Dorna Sports revealed.
Confirmed:
- Sprint events have seen a 51 per cent YoY increase in Saturday audiences
- Weekend broadcast audience has increased for every race in 2023
- Attendance figures have recovered to above 2019 levels
- All but one of 11 Grands Prix saw a ‘significant increase’ in attendance
- 1.6 million spectators attended the first half of the season, a record for the series
Context:
Back in May, MotoGP reported YoY increases of 27 per cent so, for the most part, this overall rise compared to 2022 has been maintained. It should come as no surprise that overall weekend has increased with a 51 per cent boost on Saturdays thanks to the new sprint events. The true test will be if this viewership increase is sustainable in the coming years.
Attendance-wise, the series is in rude health. MotoGP broke its all-time weekend attendance record at the French Grand Prix, as nearly 280,000 fans flocked to the Bugatti Circuit in Le Mans for the 1,000th International Motorcycling Federation (FIM) Grand Prix. Just a few weeks later, the German Grand Prix was once again the highest-attended sporting event in Germany, but this year it made a little more history with an all-time record crowd for MotoGP at the Sachsenring.
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A sign of the sprint events causing a short-term boost in audiences will be if the figures continue to trail off towards the end of the season, especially considering there is such a close championship battle at the moment. Attendances at the Indian Grand Prix were poor, but this was expected for the debut event, with Dan Rossomondo telling BlackBook Motorsport that “the crowd was what we expected” and that more needs to be done on “promotion in the country” for next year.