Liberty Media takes over MotoGP: An influx of investors ready to seize the opportunity

Last April, Liberty Media announced that it would acquire 86% of Dorna Sports’ shares, the Spanish company that has owned the MotoGP since 1992. The deal was estimated at $4.2 billion and in August, Liberty confirmed it was selling a $825 million stake in Formula 1 to finance the purchase.

The seven-time Formula 1 world champion Lewis Hamilton would have shown interest in buying a team in MotoGP, according to the CEO of Liberty Media, Greg Maffei: “When we announced the acquisition of MotoGP, […] people immediately called us and said, ‘I want to buy a team,’ including people like Lewis Hamilton.”

Many interested parties

By becoming the owner of MotoGP, Liberty Media will have the opportunity to revolutionize the discipline, as it did with Formula 1 since its acquisition in 2016. As the holder of the F1 rights, the American media managed to initiate change and open the sport up to a new fan base, particularly in the United States.

For Maffei, this is also the main reason why so many personalities want to invest in the two-wheeled championship: They have seen what happened in Formula 1 and they want to follow. We have had calls from major distributors saying, “We want to be involved.” Unfortunately, I had to tell them that we couldn’t really talk about it until we had obtained approval from the EU, but that we would like to discuss it once we have obtained it.

A development similar to that of Formula 1

The CEO of Liberty Media showed particular enthusiasm about the acquisition of MotoGP, a discipline that he describes as rich in spectacle: “I think that MotoGP is, to begin with, an incredibly exciting product. I don’t know if many of you have seen the races, but watching people riding motorcycles at 350 km/h, fifteen centimeters apart from each other, is crazy, and the overtakes are incredibly impressive.”

The American media now wishes to achieve the same evolution as in Formula 1, but this time with MotoGP, with Maffei ready to implement similar plans.

« Unfortunately, this is a subject that is not well known here in the United States and around the world. People are interested in Asia and other places, but the true heart of the phenomenon is in Spain and Italy, and to some extent in France. I think there is an opportunity to improve this. Perhaps the possibility of organizing a second race in the United States. All these options […] are interesting in areas that seem familiar to us from Formula 1, and we hope to be able to reproduce them here. », said Greg Maffei during the Goldman Sachs Communacopia + Technology conference.