Despite now having in hand the two main categories of world motor sport, the Formula 1 and the MotoGPThe Liberty Media denied that he will negotiate their contracts together.
Last Monday (01), Liberty announced the acquisition of 86% of shares in Dorna Sports in a 4.2 billion euro deal, which includes MotoGP and its support categories and the Superbike World Championship. The purchase, which should be completed by the end of the year, expands Liberty’s sporting empire, which now dominates both categories.
In a call with investors on Monday, Liberty Media CEO Greg Maffei dismissed suggestions that the company could negotiate joint TV deals for MotoGP and F1, mainly due to regulatory concerns.
But Maffei is confident that Liberty knows how to promote MotoGP to potential media partners due to its “insights into how the media environment is evolving.”
“One thing we’re not going to do is negotiate MotoGP and F1 together, both for regulatory reasons and because of the structure of our agreements with F1 partners. I like to say that Liberty has insights into how the media environment is evolving, and how to make the attractive product for media partners outside the traditional bases of Italy, Spain and France, helping growth in other markets. I think we have good insights on this.”
Joan Mir, Repsol Honda Team
Photo by: Honda Racing
At the same meeting, Maffei said he was “very confident” that the purchase of MotoGP will be completed without intervention from anti-trust bodies.
And even without saying what the plans are to grow the number of MotoGP fans, Maffei highlighted the various successes that Liberty has had in opening F1 to a wider audience since 2017.
“As far as growing fans, I point to a number of things. Obviously we’ve been successful with Netflix, but we’ve also been successful in opening up F1 in a number of other ways, be it social media, bringing drivers to race with fans on Twitch, experiences in fan zones, changing the perspective on how sport is done.”
“MotoGP is an incredible sport, and its passionate fan base knows how exciting that is. But our goal is to expose it to a wider world, as we did with F1.”
