Almost all the brands that ask me what Liberty Media will do with MotoGP are waiting for an announcement. A press conference, a slide outlining the five-year strategy, a press release that spells out in black and white where the championship is headed. They’ll keep waiting, and when the announcement comes, it won’t say anything that isn’t already clear today. Because that roadmap isn’t found in announcements. It’s found on the ground.
Read the construction site, not the press release
When you walk past a construction site, you already know what kind of building is taking shape long before the ribbon-cutting ceremony. You can tell from the foundations being laid, the number of cranes, the posted permits, and—above all—the company doing the work. If that same company has just finished an identical tower two blocks away, you don’t need a rendering: you know what you’re looking at.
MotoGP is a construction site of this kind. The company is Liberty Media, and the tower it has just completed is called Formula 1. The detail that almost no one has focused on is that the architect is literally the same man: Chase Carey, the CEO of the Formula One Group during Liberty’s transformation (2017–2021), is now president of MotoGP Sports Entertainment, having taken over from William Nicholas Jackson following the acquisition. Carmelo Ezpeleta remains CEO, with thirty years of MotoGP experience behind him. The connection is clear: those who know the sport continue to manage it, while those who built the F1 business model are replicating it in MotoGP.
For a CEO or CMO considering entering the market, this is the starting point. The question isn’t whether the league will undergo a commercial transformation, but how quickly and in which direction—and that direction is already mapped out in a plan that exists and has worked before.
Four pieces already installed
The construction site has four visible foundations. These are facts, not predictions.
Leadership. Between February and May 2026, the sales team was overhauled. Borja de Altolaguirre —who joined from Paris Saint-Germain and the NBA—is the new Head of Sponsorship. Vince Russell, who spent fifteen years at Sky and then served as CFO of Channel 4, is the new Chief Financial Officer: a media professional, not a sports finance expert. Daniel Ruiz, formerly of Adidas, leads hospitality and licensing. The search for a Chief Commercial Officer is still ongoing. Anyone entering MotoGP today will be dealing with people coming from properties where sponsorship packages are sold at prices MotoGP has never asked for.
The intention, however, is clear. Carlos Ezpeleta, a key figure in the sport’s transition, put it this way: the owners are in no hurry to monetize; they are in a hurry to lay the groundwork for growth. Translated into business terms: today’s prices are starting prices, not steady-state prices. It’s a window that management itself admits it wants to keep open for just a little while longer.
Distribution in the United States. MotoGP has renewed its agreement with Fox Sports through 2026: the Austin Grand Prix will air on the free-to-air Fox channel, with other races on FS1 and FS2, and the MotoGP Channel—a free channel dedicated to the U.S. market—will launch in mid-2025. The financial terms have not been made public, but the move is clear: to stake a claim in the market that F1 conquered first. For a brand with American ambitions, this is the signal that matters more than any slide: the inventory window in the United States is opening now, before demand—and thus the price—catches up to it.
The numbers are in. In the first quarter of 2026—the first consolidated MotoGP financials released by Liberty— revenue grew by 25% to $94 million. The figure that really matters is primary revenue (TV rights, race hospitality fees, sponsorship): from $64 million to $83 million, a 30% increase in a single quarter. The championship still closed the period with an operating loss of $24 million, on operating costs that rose to $78 million due to freight and the calendar. But Adjusted OIBDA grew by 60% to $16 million on a pro-forma basis. This is precisely the trajectory of a company that spends today to reap rewards tomorrow.
The evolving calendar. For 2027, it has already been announced that the Australian Grand Prix will move from Phillip Island to Adelaide, where it will be held on a street circuit—the first street circuit in MotoGP history—and that the series will return to Argentina, specifically to Buenos Aires, at the renovated Autódromo Oscar y Juan Gálvez. Liberty has identified Miami as the “logical” destination for a second U.S. race. In other words, the calendar is shifting toward cities and markets with high commercial value.
The template is documented
None of this would matter much if it weren’t for the precedent. We have it, and it’s recent.
When Liberty took over Formula 1 in 2017, it did four things in its first three years. It opened up the American market with a content series —*Drive to Survive* on Netflix, which debuted in 2019—and the U.S. audience nearly tripled within a few seasons. It expanded the sponsor base: the number of American companies in the championship roughly doubled, and the series’ total sponsorship revenue rose from $273 million in 2017 to over $630 million in 2024. He renegotiated TV rights, starting with the U.S. contract, securing deals worth significantly more than the previous ones. It introduced the cost cap in 2021: before the cap, top teams were spending $400–500 million a year while operating at a significant loss; afterward, the financial picture improved dramatically—several teams moved toward breaking even or turning a profit, and valuations skyrocketed. To give you an idea, the Mercedes F1 Team reported an operating profit of £167 million in 2025, thus transforming from perpetual cost centers into valued assets… from an expense to an investment. Final result: a Formula 1 team acquired for approximately $4.4 billion in equity value (on an enterprise value of around $8 billion) that today, as a publicly traded group, is worth over $20 billion.
Liberty paid €4.2 billion in enterprise value for an 84% stake in Dorna, with the deal finalized in July 2025. No investor spends that kind of money just to manage the status quo. They spend it to replicate, using the same model, what has already proven successful once before. The rebranding in February 2026—the name change from Dorna Sports to MotoGP Sports Entertainment Group and the“Wired Different” campaign, which are based on the new visual identity designed by Pentagram and unveiled as early as late 2024—is the first public unveiling of that project.
What Almost Everyone Gets Wrong
Two mistakes, opposite and mirror images of each other.
The first step is to wait for the official announcement. This is the mindset of a cautious decision-maker: “We’ll decide once we have the strategy in hand.” But in an organization undergoing transition, strategy never arrives in the form of a document; it arrives in the form of building blocks laid one by one, like the ones mentioned above. Those who wait for the final announcement will enter a market where prices have already been adjusted, alongside a Head of Sponsorship who comes from PSG and the NBA and knows exactly how much certain packages are worth.
The second mistake is the opposite: treating every move made in F1 as an automatic guarantee for MotoGP. It isn’t, and careful analysis is key. It’s best to distinguish between three levels. There is what has been confirmed —the appointments, the rebrand, the first-quarter financials, the Fox deal, and the 2027 calendar changes. There is what is analogous to F1 but not yet announced for MotoGP—most notably a “Drive to Survive”-style docuseries: plausible, consistent with the media profile of the new executives, but as of today with no confirmation of production. And there is what has been stated as an intention but not finalized —the second American race, where Liberty itself acknowledges that the Miami track poses safety issues that are far more pressing for motorcycles than for single-seaters. Treating the three plans as if they were the same plan is the quickest way to build a business case that doesn’t hold up.
The scale, however, will be different. MotoGP’s current U.S. partner base is minimal; the impact of a media product, when it arrives, will start from a much lower baseline than that of F1. The platform is the same, but the reach is not.
How to Read a Roadmap, in Practice
When a brand asks us this question—“Should we jump in now, or wait until the picture is clear?”—our job is to turn the work in progress into a decision, not a waiting game.
First, separate the three levels of certainty and build the business case solely on the confirmed data, using the analogous scenario as a baseline and the stated scenario as an option. Second, value the next 12–24-month window: every foundation that becomes a building—the CCO taking office, a docuseries launching, a second tender closing—is a point at which the inventory is revalued. To give a concrete order of magnitude: a title sponsorship for an established satellite team is currently worth 3–5 million euros per year; once the editorial product is launched and commercial agreements are finalized, the same package is estimated at 6–10 million. About double in two years, which is exactly the scale of the revaluation seen in F1 between 2017 and 2020. Those who sign first sign at construction site prices; those who sign later, at the prices of the finished building. It is the same temporal asymmetry we described regarding MotoGP versus F1 pricing and team valuations.
There is also a structural choice that the roadmap makes even more important, not less so. In a property whose value is rising, the enduring asset is not the driver of the moment but the relationship with the team and the championship: drivers change teams, but the property’s value trajectory remains. Those who build their sponsorship around a multi-year relationship with a factory team reap the benefits of appreciation year after year; those who build it around the face of a single season remain exposed to the driver market. It is a distinction that carries more weight precisely when the underlying value is rising.
Third—and here we return to the principle we always emphasize— product category exclusivity is secured immediately. In a property that is gaining value, the most undervalued asset isn’t the logo on the bodywork: it’s the right to be the sole representative in one’s sector when the championship is worth twice as much. And activation is written into the contract from day one, because a package without activation, here as elsewhere, remains an empty sticker. The B2B density of the paddock and the first-party data of a captive audience are precisely the levers that a property led by media professionals will learn to monetize first.
The window, and what to do with it
Liberty’s roadmap for MotoGP isn’t a mystery waiting to be revealed. It’s a building under construction, designed by someone who has already completed an identical one, with foundations visible to anyone who knows how to read them. The full picture will emerge with upcoming announcements. The shape of the building is already clear.
For a brand, this means only one thing: the question isn’t “what Liberty will do,” because that’s largely predictable. The decision is whether to join while the foundation is being laid or after the grand opening, knowing that the ticket price differs between the two times.
We’ve been analyzing those fundamentals professionally for over thirty years, first in F1 and now in MotoGP. Sit back, relax—we’ve got it covered.
