- One in ten people around the world ride motorbikes giving MotoGP a ‘large addressable market’
- Ex-Haas F1 boss Steiner has already led a consortium to purchase a MotoGP team for around US$50m
- Jones is also bullish on the future prospects of Nascar and Supercars
MotoGP is on the verge of a “huge amount of growth” following its acquisition by Liberty Media, according to industry analyst Elis Jones.
Liberty completed its US$4.2 billion acquisition of the two-wheeled series from Dorna Sports last year and former Goldman Sachs executive Jones is bullish on the championship’s future prospects.
“I get very excited because currently there is a low buying price [in MotoGP]”, Jones said at the BlackBook Motorsport Forum. “The structure of distributions are different [to Formula One] and they may evolve to see more capital appreciation at team level, but I think as a sport there’s a huge amount of growth.”
MotoGP has made significant efforts to enlarge and engage its Asian audience with annual visits to Thailand, Japan, Indonesia and Malaysia on the current race schedule. However Jones believes the potential global addressable market as a key reason for Liberty’s investment.
He said: “The reality is one in ten people still ride a motorbike [around the world], so [Liberty’s] ability to recognise the value of the sport for themselves and actually see what that brings is tremendous. The addressable market is large … and we’re going to see more people looking at [MotoGP] and saying ‘okay, I want to be part of that story as well’.”
Indeed, ex-Haas Formula One team principal Günther Steiner has become chief executive of the Tech3 outfit with financial backing from David Blitzer’s Bolt Ventures, Main Street Advisors and Ikon Capital in a deal worth in the region of US$50 million.
There were also reports last year that Formula One drivers Lewis Hamilton and Max Verstappen had shown interest in purchasing MotoGP teams.
Jones suggested that growth prospects weren’t just limited to motorcycle racing and that motorsport as a whole was on the verge of a period of expansion,
“I remain very bullish on both Nascar and even V8 Supercars – I say even because people forget about it,” said Jones.
“If you look at V8 Supercars at Bathurst, they’re trending at 250,000 people over the course of the weekend. They have a huge fan base and actually a number of the teams make a profit, which is unusual in sport.
“In Nascar, they have a very authentic American following … so how can they grow? How can they grow internationally? And that brings you back to something like WEC [the World Endurance Championship] where we’ve seen a huge amount of growth … so I feel very bullish in relative terms.”
Jones’ optimism was tempered by a word of warning for potential buyers that they should not get carried away and overpay.
He added: “[The key is] making sure that people don’t get too excited and therefore overpay, and then ask why it didn’t work out as well.
“It comes back to the most fundamental point in all of how we think about sports investing, which is cost management.
“If you can get cost management right and be really thoughtful about where you are spending the money, what you can do around the storytelling, the marketing, and your revenues … there is a place to make a return.
“Depending on size and scale, each has its place in that ecosystem to be an investment, then a sale and an exit, and then an investment for someone else.”
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