Liberty Media has completed the acquisition of MotoGP, but the reality is that getting the same number of people to watch and engage with the category, as it happens with Formula 1, is a completely different thing and not easy to achieve and they will not achieve it unless… ‘there is a reason for it’, believes Roland Sands.
The high-performance custom motorcycle designer and also motorcycle rider in the United States spoke about the deal and how it will probably not have a big impact for the American audience, unless there is a reason for it to happen, which is not the case now, as explained in words to CNN: ‘Americans won’t care if Europeans are racing motorcycles, until there is a reason for it. We have to build characters and we want to have the feeling of knowing who is behind the helmet, and Liberty has done a fantastic job not only in doing this (with F1), but also in telling the story of the teams. Now we feel like we are up to date with everything,’ referring to the highly successful documentary, Drive to Survive.
He then tried to explain why this is not happening currently, as MotoGP needs to increase its popularity in the US but that is not easy to happen: ‘If we are going to do it for America, the program has to be in English, number one. Because here nobody wants to see subtitles. We need to develop the characters and we need to make it a party, we need to take it to a point where people watch it in a bar. I mean, now people watch soccer here. They get up early in the morning, go to the bars and drink beer’.
Sands also recalled the impact Valentino Rossi had and how “a single rider” grew the category, bringing people to watch, feeling a certain connection with the rider and the category: ‘What did Rossi bring to the sport? And why was he so fantastic and why did he help MotoGP grow the way it did? It’s like people liked him, he was friendly, he was funny, he celebrated, he gave people visual reasons to like him’.
