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The owner of Formula 1 has made growing the US audience of MotoGP its top priority after the European Commission approved its €4.3bn acquisition of the motorcycling championship.
The commission approved Liberty Media’s acquisition of Dorna, MotoGP’s Madrid-based owner, on Monday after conducting an in-depth review of the takeover that found it did not raise competition concerns.
The deal creates a sports and entertainment group consisting of two of the top brands in motorsport.
Liberty Media, part of US billionaire John Malone’s empire, has almost doubled the annual revenues of Formula 1 to $3.4bn since acquiring it in 2017, driven by the huge success of the Netflix show Drive to Survive.
The docuseries, which was particularly popular in the US, brought the sport’s colourful personalities and big egos to a wider audience with exclusive interviews and other footage.
“Growing in America is our main goal [for MotoGP],” Dorna chief Carmelo Ezpeleta told the Financial Times. “We will do as much as we can to be increasing our popularity in the States.”
Ezpeleta said Liberty’s immediate priority was to enhance the profile of its race in Austin, Texas, currently the only one that takes place in the US. Liberty has added Formula 1 races in Miami and Las Vegas, as well as in Qatar and Saudi Arabia, since becoming the sport’s owner.
Liberty Media chief Derek Chang said MotoGP, whose riders include the Spaniard Jorge Martin, nicknamed the Martinator, can become more accessible to fans by hosting races closer to cities.
“There’s a big difference between having a racetrack three hours away from a major city than 15 minutes away,” Chang said, adding that MotoGP still has room to grow in Europe, where the majority of races are held.
Still, MotoGP cannot replicate F1’s success with so-called street circuits in cities because of greater safety concerns.
Dorna’s management team, which includes Ezpeleta’s son Carlos, chief sporting officer, holds a 16 per cent stake in the company.
Carlos Ezpeleta said there was more to Liberty’s arsenal than Drive to Survive. It launched F1TV, a streaming service where subscribers can watch F1 documentaries and analysis shows. Chang believes MotoGP’s own service, VideoPass, will benefit from Liberty’s underlying technology.
Carlos Ezpeleta said it was critical to tailor content to specific markets, with an emphasis on storytelling that brings to life MotoGP’s high-speed action and the sport’s characters.
He wants the season’s annual curtain-raiser, last held in Bangkok, to be held in new cities in the future.
“One of the biggest targets in these new markets . . . [is ensuring] we have year-round presence . . . and that will be done in the cities,” he said.
With additional reporting by Barbara Moens in Brussels.