MotoGP | Liberty confirms Hamilton’s interest in having a team

Seven-time Formula One world champion Lewis Hamilton has expressed interest in buying a MotoGP team, Liberty Media CEO Greg Maffei said, confirming reports that circulated a few months ago.

In April, it was announced that Liberty Media would acquire 86% of the shares of Dorna Sports, the Spanish company that has owned MotoGP since 1992.

The deal was valued at $4.2 billion, with the remaining stake remaining with the current MotoGP management. In August, Liberty Media confirmed it would sell an $825 million stake in Formula 1 to fund the purchase.

The acquisition of MotoGP will give Liberty Media the opportunity to revolutionise a two-wheeled sport as it has done with four wheels since taking over Formula 1 in 2016.

Liberty Media has overseen a boom period for the series, with appeal at an all-time high, increasing value and revenue streams and driving huge interest in the MotoGP venture.

“When we announced the acquisition of MotoGP, to give a great example, they called us immediately to say, ‘I want to buy a team,’ even people like Lewis Hamilton,” Maffei said at the Goldman Sachs Communacopia + Technology Conference.

“Because they’ve seen what’s happened in Formula 1 and they want to follow that. We’ve had big distributors calling us and saying, ‘We want to be involved.’ Unfortunately I’ve had to tell them that we can’t talk about it until we have EU approval, but we’d love to talk about it once we have it.”

“I think there’s an opportunity at the league level to take advantage of the changes that can be made. If you talk about teams, in general, teams don’t have good cash flow. That’s absolutely not true. NFL teams have good cash flow, but in general they’re very large multiples of cash flow, and we’re still too traditional in wanting that cash flow.”

“Also, the ability to change the dynamics, to set the stage and do what you want is much better, easier and more manageable. It still takes time, but it can be done at the league level. In a way, it’s very difficult at the team level.”

Owning Formula 1 at championship level has certainly given Liberty Media the opportunity to instigate change and open up to a new fan base, particularly in the United States.

Now they hope to work the same magic with MotoGP, with Maffei ready to put similar plans into action.

“I think MotoGP is, for starters, an incredibly exciting product. I don’t know if many of you have seen the races, but to see people riding bikes at 300 kilometres an hour, six inches apart, is crazy, and the overtaking is incredibly impressive,” he said.

“Unfortunately, it’s an activity that’s too little known in the United States and the rest of the world. There’s interest in Asia and other places, but the real heart of this sport has been Spain and Italy and, to some extent, France.”

“I think there’s an opportunity to expand… We’ve seen what we’ve been able to do with Formula 1 in telling the stories, humanizing them, making the story broader than just the car, the technology, but also what the drivers were doing, what was going on behind the scenes, telling those stories, making sure the world understood the breadth of what was happening.”

“But we’ve also done a lot to improve things, like improving what you see on television, making the story better understood by our fans. Those are all things that can be helped here.”

Under Liberty Media’s leadership, the number of Formula 1 races in the United States has grown from just the United States Grand Prix in Austin to also featuring the Miami Grand Prix and the Las Vegas Grand Prix, and Maffei expects similar growth for MotoGP.

“I think, frankly, we need to grow in the United States – they have a race in Austin for which they receive relatively modest revenue from TV and things like that,” he added.

“I think there is an opportunity to improve the situation. Maybe there is the possibility of having a second race in the United States. All these aspects, in my opinion, are interesting because they are familiar to us in Formula 1 and I hope they can be replicated here.”