The transfer of control of Dorna Sports a Liberty Media represents, more than a corporate transaction, a change of industrial trajectory for the world’s most famous two-wheel championship…
In fact, this is not just a reorganization of the shareholding structure, but the entry of the MotoGP within a development perimeter in which the sports product is thought of as a platform, in which content, distribution, format, experience and commercial development become structural elements of the same project, and no longer accessory functions built around the event on the track. It is a shift that, over time, is bound to affect not only governance and decision-making processes, but also the configuration of the offering to partners and investors. It is no coincidence, in short, that what was Dorna is now called MotoGP Sports and Entertainment.
Liberty, F1, MotoGP
To understand the direction in which the championship is moving, the most useful reference remains Liberty’s experience in managing the Formula 1. In 2024, Formula 1 reported revenues of $3.41 billion with annual growth, and an increasing Adjusted OIBDA – thus improving operating profitability. The following year the circus even surpassed the previous year’s records, ending the year with total revenues of $3.87 billion, marking a 14 percent growth over 2024:adjusted OIBDA rose to $946 million, a 20 percent increase over the $791 million recorded in 2024.
In recent years, the championship has been progressively rethought as an integrated system of content, channels, and relationships, in which the centrality of the sporting event has remained intact, but has been joined by continuous editorial construction, increasingly widespread digital distribution, and a multiplication of moments of contact between audience, brand, and protagonists. The observed growth cannot be attributed to a single factor, but to the establishment of an industrial plant that has made the championship a global platform for entertainment and commercial activation. It is this facility, more than the economic results per se, that is perhaps the real element of discontinuity for MotoGP today-and one that two-wheelers will have to forcibly or virtuously borrow.
It is difficult today to say precisely what of the“Liberty cure” has led Formula 1 in a decade to become the media, commercial and cultural superpower it is in 2026. As is often the case, the exact answer is not just one but -on the contrary- a system of tools, strategies, values, and visions that start from pure marketing elements such as brand identity and end at tertiary marketing strategies such as the Las Vegas Grand Prix.
As for MotoGP, the transformation process, moreover, is not grafted onto a shrinking product. On the contrary. In the last two years, public participation in events has just hit an all-time high-over 3.6 million spectators at the circuits in 2025, with Le Mans’ 311,797-while the evolution of the sports format, accompanied by the introduction of Sprints, has contributed to changing the championship’s viewing habits, making consumption more spread out over the weekend and more frequent over the course of the season.
At the same time, on the editorial and digital level, the league has also significantly expanded its presence, strengthening its ability to intercept audiences other than those traditionally linked to television viewing. For a company that observes the market with a strategic approach, the relevant fact is not so much the intensity of the individual indicator, but the fact that the growth in demand precedes the entry of the new industrial shareholder.
Assets and profiles of sponsorship
A further signal comes from the profile of the people and structures that are beginning to gravitate to the category.The acquisition of Tech3 by a consortium led by IKON Capital with the entry of Bolt Ventures and Main Street Advisors is a clear market signal, as is the presence of former Haas F1 team principal Guenther Steiner as CEO of the team and the recent entry of driver Pierre Gasly as an investor. Also of long standing is Lewis Hamilton’s interest in the category, a lifelong lover of motorcycling.
It is not so much the notoriety of individual names that is the distinguishing element, but the industrial culture that these profiles bring with them, based on growth models, platform logic and a vision of the league as a complex system of content, relationships and business opportunities. Let’s call it, if you will, brand positioning.
The most profound change concerns, inevitably, the very nature of the partner offer. Sponsorship in MotoGP is gradually moving away from a predominantly display logic, in which the value was concentrated almost exclusively in on-track visibility, to take on a more articulated configuration, in which content rights that can be used directly by brands on their own channels, digital formats co-designed with teams and riders, ongoing editorial productions and hospitality projects increasingly oriented toward relational and commercial objectives come into play.
In this context, the value no longer lies in the individual asset, but in the ability to build coherent and ongoing programs that can generate content, relationships and materials that can be reused throughout the season, and nurture a constant dialogue with different audiences. For many companies, this implies a shift in the organizational center of gravity, because sponsorship tends to become a cross-cutting project involving marketing, communications and commercial functions, rather than remaining confined within a single area.
The most critical variable: inventory availability
In an industry transition phase such as the current one, competitive pressure does not initially manifest itself on price, but on the availability of the most relevant positions within the ecosystem. Teams, pilots, editorial projects, special formats, side events and content platforms constitute a necessarily limited set of assets, and when demand grows faster than the organizational ability to structure new offerings, the first effect is a gradual saturation of strategic opportunities.
It is a dynamic already observed in other major international leagues, in which, even before the rising cost of entry, the room for maneuver to build truly distinctive programs is reduced.
In short, it is no mystery that today, in addition to prices, one of the crucial issues of sponsorship in Formula 1 is precisely that of real estate, that is, the space available to enter the circus with more or less significant operations. McLaren, Ferrari, Mercedes, Red Bull count in 4 more than 200 total sponsors: a staggering figure especially when one considers the perennially present principle of commodity exclusivity. The ‘latter, in particular, is being challenged by increasingly blurred commercial boundaries in which people are trying to find room for industry categories for which the place-say the theory-simply isn’t there.
Whether it is possible to hypothesize-especially now that the properties have consolidated-a trickle down effect whereby what fails to be placed in Formula 1 is passed on to MotoGP is difficult to say. Cars and machines remain two deeply distant universes even if the common denominator theme here is to be found in the entertainment of the ultimate in motorsport, rather than the precise vertical of motorcycle/machine.
The year 2026 represents a natural point of discontinuity, as the first season fully included in the new industry perimeter. For an international brand, this means evaluating MotoGP no longer as a channel for visibility, but as a platform capable of supporting multi-year programs, ongoing storytelling, initiatives supporting commercial and relational objectives, and content projects with a lifecycle beyond a single race or season.
The risk-return profile thus tends to approximate that of the already mature global big leagues, while still maintaining, at the current stage, a still high level of flexibility in program configuration and partnership building.
A structural transformation
Years ago, when artificial intelligence was not even in its infancy, early AI investors saw something in the industry that others had missed (this is what happened to NVIDIA, for example, which grew 1,320% in 5 years). Those who had the courage and, above all, the ability to bet on the future of LLMs at the time are today collecting outstanding dividends. If the parallel seems forced, the recent history of sports marketing tells us that the commonalities are quite numerous.
MotoGP is going through a transition phase involving structure, governance, and value model. The entry of Liberty Media is not the sole cause of this change, but represents an accelerator of it, placing the championship in a global platform logic in which sport, content and experience are designed as parts of a single system. In this scenario, sponsorship tends to take shape more and more as a medium- to long-term strategic position within an evolving ecosystem, rather than as a communication activity linked exclusively to the sports calendar.
If the evolution is the similar to that followed by Formula 1 in recent years-and in this 2026 will be a key litmus test-the gap between the categories will rapidly close, bringing two-wheelers to an unprecedented status. For those willing and able to invest before the change, the returns from this structural transformation will be simply extraordinary.
