On 23 June 2026 MotoGP appointed CAA Sports as its exclusive global agency for the championship’s sponsorships. Many read it as a door closing. The opposite is true: it is the clearest signal in years that MotoGP’s commercial value is rising — and it changes the way a brand has to sit down at the table, not the chance to sit there at all.

My reading, after thirty years spent negotiating sponsorships in motorsport, is that this announcement needs to be understood properly before it is commented on. Because the exclusivity concerns one precise part of the market — the championship’s commercial programme — and leaves the other part intact, the one where most contracts are signed: the teams. Confusing the two is the mistake I already see circulating in conversations with brands.

There is an image I often use with clients, and it fits perfectly here: when you buy a house, the developer has its own sales office. It is competent, it knows the property better than anyone else, and it works — legitimately — for the seller. No experienced buyer walks into that office without their own adviser. The MotoGP sponsorship market, from June 2026, works exactly like this.

What the agreement between MotoGP and CAA Sports involves

The agreement, officially announced on 23 June 2026, appoints CAA Sports — the sports division of Creative Artists Agency — as the MotoGP Group’s exclusive global agency for developing its commercial programme. The mandate, according to the official statement, covers four areas: identifying and securing valuable new partnerships for the championship, expanding into new product categories, increasing the global visibility of the MotoGP brand and building integrated packages of sponsorship rights.

Carmelo Ezpeleta, CEO of MotoGP Group, described it as “a key step in delivering our commercial strategy – building on the strength of what we have already created”. Paul Danforth, President of CAA Sports, spoke of MotoGP as “a premium global sports platform with a loyal and highly engaged fanbase” — a fanbase that MotoGP Group claims to be more than 650 million people worldwide.

Translated into commercial language: anyone who wants to become an official partner of the championship — trackside, Grand Prix naming, official categories — now goes through a structured channel overseen by one of the largest representation agencies in the world.

Does CAA’s exclusivity also cover MotoGP team sponsorships?

No. CAA Sports’ mandate concerns the MotoGP Group’s commercial programme, that is, the championship’s partnerships. Team sponsorships — Ducati, Aprilia, Yamaha, Honda, and independent teams such as Gresini, LCR, Trackhouse or Pramac — remain negotiated directly by the teams and their advisers, as they always have been. In the official statement of 23 June 2026, tellingly, the teams are not mentioned.

This is anything but an academic distinction, because the two markets have different logics, prices and interlocutors. Sponsoring a MotoGP team operates on an estimated range — based on the contracts we see going through — of between 150,000 and 5 million dollars a season depending on spaces, team and rights included, with title projects going higher. Official championship partnerships operate on different orders of magnitude and contractual structures. A brand with regional marketing objectives, B2B goals or product activation almost always finds the team to be the most efficient door. Those seeking multi-year global platforms think at championship level.

Why MotoGP chose CAA Sports specifically

The choice follows a precise industrial logic. Liberty Media completed the acquisition of control of MotoGP in July 2025, an operation that — according to what Liberty itself communicated — valued the championship at around 4.2 billion euro of enterprise value. Anyone who buys an asset at that figure has an implicit mandate: to grow its commercial revenues. CAA Sports already works with Formula 1 on brand consulting and has brought several leading sponsors to four-wheel motorsport. Liberty is applying to MotoGP a model it knows.

For the market this is good news, and I say so without reservation: when the rights holder invests this much in its own commercialisation, the value of the entire ecosystem — championship, teams, riders — tends to rise. Those who signed before this phase bought at building-site prices; those who sign in the coming years will pay, progressively, the prices of the finished building.

What it means for a brand wanting to enter MotoGP now

It means there are two doors, and that they must be chosen by objective, not by inertia. The first door is the championship: official partnerships, managed by the MotoGP Group with CAA Sports as exclusive agency. The second door is the teams: contracts negotiated directly with the squads, outside the perimeter of the exclusivity.

And here the developer’s sales office returns. CAA Sports represents the seller — that is its mandate, and it is right that it should exercise it to the full. But the seller has its own objectives: to place its inventory. The buyer’s objectives are different: to pay the right price for the right spaces relative to their own marketing plan, which sometimes coincide with the championship’s inventory and many other times do not. In my experience, the question to start from is never “what is for sale?” but “what does my business need?” — and the answer, in more than half the cases I have handled, has led to a team, to a combination of team and hospitality, or to a series different from the one imagined at the start.

The mistakes to avoid in this phase

Four classic mistakes, in my view, that this transition will make more frequent.

First — reading “exclusive” as “only door”. The exclusivity covers the championship, not the paddock. Anyone who gives up exploring MotoGP because “there is now an exclusive agency” excludes themselves from a market that, for the teams, remains open and direct.

Second — confusing the two product levels. Championship partnerships and team sponsorships answer different objectives. Buying global visibility when what was needed was commercial activation across three markets is the most expensive mistake in the sector, and neither of the two doors protects you from it on its own.

Third — waiting “for the market to settle”. Repricing cycles reward those who enter early. It has already happened in Formula 1 after 2017 with the arrival of Liberty Media: those who signed in the first years locked in conditions that no longer exist today.

Fourth — sitting down at the table without an independent valuation. Whichever door you choose, on the other side there is a professional who negotiates sponsorships every day. Arriving with a benchmark of real prices, an expected measurement of the return and an activation strategy already written is not a luxury: it is the difference between buying a project and buying an empty sticker on a bike.

How to proceed, in practice

The method we have applied at RTR Sports Marketing for thirty years does not change with this announcement; if anything it becomes more necessary. First: you start from the brand’s business objectives — markets, target, KPIs — not from the available inventory. Second: you map both doors, championship and teams, with the real numbers for audience, media value and comparative costs. Third: you negotiate from the buyer’s side, with the advantage of knowing the prices and structures of dozens of real contracts. Fourth: you build the activation, because — I have written it many times — integration precedes the logo.

We have worked in motorsport since 1995, on the brand side. With the championship, with the teams and now with CAA Sports the relationships are and will remain professional and collaborative: our job is not to compete with the seller, it is to represent the buyer.

The championship has just chosen its agent, and it is an excellent agent. The question that matters is another: who represents you. Always.