On November 17, the elite tier of motorcycle road racing rebranded itself.
The previous branding, though well known, had remained almost unchanged since the FIM Road Racing World Championship was renamed MotoGP prior to the 2002 season. Now, in collaboration with the design studio Pentagram, MotoGP has launched a new logo, typeface, artwork theme, and overall visual and verbal identity meant to push the series into the future directly following its 75th anniversary season.
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To introduce a new identity now after 22 years of the previous branding, and three-quarters of a century into the championship’s history, is indicative of the new horizons that the series, and long-term promoters Dorna Sports, face going forward.
After all, the promoter is currently in the midst of a takeover by Liberty Media, the US media giant that owns motor racing’s Formula 1 series. That purchase is expected to close in the coming months and although Dorna Sports will remain an independently run company (attributed to Liberty Media’s Formula One Group tracking stock), this is certainly an opportunity to elevate MotoGP to the same level of popularity as its four-wheeled counterpart.
With that in mind, the rebrand is key, according to Dorna Sports chief commercial officer Dan Rossomondo, to bringing in new fans while maintaining the support of those who already love the competition.
Speaking to Sportcal (GlobalData Sport) Rossomondo explained: “We think we are the most exciting sport on earth, but in today's day and age, in order to be discovered by people, you also have to be attractive in other worlds.
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By GlobalData“Thinking about not just the logo, [but the] the motion graphics, the typography, the verbal and audio identity, it just allows us to get [people] out of the mindset of thinking ‘we're just a good motorsport’, and instead [thinking] ‘we're a good sport.”
Rossomondo joined Dorna in April 2023 from North American basketball’s elite NBA, and while the differences are stark between the basketball league (which has maintained broadly the same logo since 1969), one cornerstone that the pair share is a long-time fervent support.
More than anything, Rossomondo stresses, this is an opportunity to capitalize on the foundations of motorcycle racing’s age-old success.
“We had six [attendance] records at six different circuits this year and we had our highest attendance ever [at the 2024 French GP], we have markets like Spain where our viewership was up 30% this year, we need to keep building on that.
“The sport is really healthy, and we hope that this brand identity launch will let us talk to a different audience and get more people to love the sport as much as our existing fans do.”
Future-proofing
While many things are changing for the series, on both the visual side but also on the commercial side (most notably the recent addition of new head of global marketing Kelly Brittain), MotoGP’s new identity is not, however, coming at the expense of broadcast continuity.
Dorna Sports has already secured a number of rights deals through the end of the decade with the likes of TNT Sport in the UK and Ireland, and Ziggo in the Netherlands.
These deals, although crucial for financially anchoring the sport’s media rights outlook for the foreseeable, come second to the service they provide in terms of bringing the sport to the fans and collaborating with the series on its growth.
“For me, it's not only that we have continuity, I think we [have to] actually have the right partners, and partners who want to invest with us to really build the sport – that's the most important thing,” Rossomondo stresses, an especially important point giving the unstable nature of the media landscape globally, particularly in the US.
“If there's one thing that continues to keep me up at night, it's the media landscape. You're just seeing hemorrhaging in a lot of places [in terms of cord cutting], especially if you look at the US, it's happening massively there, but the rest of the world [also]. Piracy is a huge issue. It's not that much for our sport, but other sports are really struggling with it, and we have to do our best to really combat that, and we're working on that.
“Our biggest commercial revenue is the selling of our rights to broadcast partners. And with that, we have great partners right now, healthy partnerships, and that needs to continue. We have to also be ready so that if in certain markets there's some sort of drop in coverage, or we don't do well in a certain right cycle, we have to be ready to step in with a direct-to-consumer (DTC) offering as well.”
The growing fragmentation of media rights contracts and negotiations globally, Rossomondo states, causes problems in terms of securing long-term media rights revenues, although it also opens doors in terms of touching its target international markets.
MotoGP VideoPass for example, the series’ DTC offering, is available globally, and although its biggest market is the US, it is a key tool in reaching worldwide audiences, particularly those that the series doesn’t visit across its 22 annual races, which span 19 (soon to be 20) countries.
For motorsports in general, although it may be better placed to operate DTC offerings than other major sports properties rooted in single nations, Rossomondo doesn’t think an industry-wide jump from linear TV distribution to DTC is primed to happen, at least not yet.
“I think for a little while there's going to be some sort of hybrid middle ground [between linear and DTC]. I don't think that's going to be such a stark decision, I think if there's going to be some sort of hybrid that's also going to go market-by-market.
"I think the most important thing for us to be able to do is create a good product that people want to see and market that in the right way. And that's what we're spending a lot of time on. Hopefully once we do that everything else will take care of itself."
Showing faith in MotoGP
The most prominent long-term tie-up for MotoGP as of late remains with Dorna itself, which in September agreed an unprecedented renewal of its promotion rights for the series through to 2060, a 19-year extension on a contract that was already set to run through 2041.
That number, Rossomondo says, is both a show of faith in Dorna as well as an investment into the future of MotoGP as a whole, explaining “it’s certainty for us.”
“You can't decouple our company from the sport, they're one and the same. And, all of our employees are huge fans of the sport, they want to invest their time in it, they want to invest their hard work in it, and we want to invest financially in it.
“Knowing that we have such a long runway, just allows us to have a long-term view of things. it allows us to know that we're going to be in this business and to really think about, with a long-term view, what the sport should look like going forward.”
This is also something that he sees rebounding into increased confidence from MotoGP’s partner.
“They know we have a steady hand on the tiller. I do believe that they think that we have the long-term interests of the sport in mind when we do things.
In the short term, the Liberty Media purchase looms. While it is an indicator of the financial strength of MotoGP’s four-wheeled rivals, the reported $4.5 billion sale price also speaks to the value of MotoGP inherently, and equally what Dorna has made of it.
The media giant will take 86% of Dorna, but Rossomondo stresses it will be “business as usual."
“[Dorna]is going to be run in from Spain as an independent company. That's all the plan, that's, that's what's going to happen. Which is just outstanding. I do know that they're very optimistic about the sport, very bullish on the growth of it.
“I think just some of the intellectual might that they can bring to our sport, some of the experiences they can bring, learnings that they can bring from Formula One, but also from a lot of other businesses, they have to be hugely helpful to us.
“And I think they've seen the same thing that I've seen in terms of the potential, in terms of the unique intellectual property, the global fan base. I think they're going to really be a catalyst to help us take advantage of the real strengths of the sport.”
Galvanizing the fanbase
Liberty Media’s purchase of Formula 1 in 2017 shook up the sport, and not long after the series’ popularity exploded thanks, in part, to the Formula 1: Drive to Survive Netflix documentary series, one which in turn spurred a wave of sports documentary imitators in its wake.
Anything that the series does, however, has to be right for MotoGP, documentary series or otherwise. Much like F1, many MotoGP fans are not just fans of particular teams or drivers, but also just fans of the sport in general, a factor that sets it apart from leagues like the NBA, and something that Dorna must leverage to build its future.
“I am not afraid to steal good ideas, but all those good ideas that we might borrow have to be unique to what our sport is, and that's key. One size does not fit all, because our sport is different in a lot of ways. Our longest race is like 45 minutes, perfect for that next generation of fans, but we have 22 weekends of the year where we're racing, what do we do in the other 30 weeks?
“[A docu-series] is something that we've always explored. We're looking for the right recipe for that in terms of both platform and story. We'd love to do one, but we aren't just settling on that. We're really looking to innovate on the technology side in terms of how we talk to fans at the circuits and outside of the circuit, and who we partner with in terms of digital rights, and who we partner with in terms of content production.”
“We really have to tell the stories of these riders in a better way, because they are the heroes. They are the gladiatorial figures. Our riders are out there. You see them. They're not in a cockpit. When they fall, you see them in all their glory. We have to do a better job telling their stories, because I think their stories will resonate with a lot of people."
Rossomondo highlights one statistic in particular. “82% of our fans will watch 75% of the races.” That fervor among what he calls a “500 million” strong fanbase gives MotoGP’s new era a strong foundation, and if that can be translated into new fans coming into the sport, he hopes it can become “sticky.”
Even though certain broadcast issues seem to keep Rossomondo up at night, he maintains that the rude health of the sport means that anything that comes their way over the coming years can be dealt with.
