MotoGP now belongs to Liberty Media: the purchase has been made official

With less than five minutes of difference, Liberty Media and Dorna Sports today announced the agreement that will most likely change, once again, the dynamic of motorcycle racing. Even though it is April 1st, the day of pranks in most European countries, the operation is very serious.

The American company, already owner of the rights to Formula 1, will shell out around 4.2 billion euros to acquire Dorna, owner of the MotoGP World Championship since 1992, and which will also control the Superbike World Championship and MotoE. With this maneuver, Liberty acquires 100% of the shares of the Spanish company, 40% of Bridgepoint, the Canadian fund that acquired the stake in 2006 – bought it from CVC Capital Partners – and 38% of the Canadian pension fund (CPPIB). The remaining 22% was split between various Dorna executives, with Carmelo Ezpeleta (10%), the CEO, as the main figure.

The formalization took longer than the parties expected, given that they had been in agreement on the terms for some time. In fact, the initial idea was to communicate the maneuver even before the inaugural MotoGP race, at the beginning of March. However, the possible intervention of the European Commission's antitrust body has led the American company to put on the handbrake. In any case, we will have to see how Brussels will react in the near future, when it analyzes the case. It is important to underline that CVC had come to control both championships (F1 and MotoGP) until European antitrust forced the Luxembourg fund to cede one of the two championships (MotoGP).

In 2022, the last financial year with a trace in the Mercantile Register, Dorna Sports generated a turnover of 474.8 million euros, equal to 33% more than the previous year (2021), which left a loss of 7.8 million euros, a due to the echoes of the pandemic. Also in 2022, the Madrid company refinanced its debt for 975 million euros, a resource to increase its liquidity and which, at the same time, allowed it to distribute dividends of 390 million euros to its shareholders.

Liberty has always been the preferred route, but not the only one. Also in the running were Qatar Sports Investmens, Qatar's sovereign wealth fund, and TKO, the media and entertainment conglomerate that, among other things, holds the rights to the UFC fighting championship. Motorsport.com believes that the alternative offered by Liberty is the one that offers greater guarantees to ensure the most organic transition possible. It would not be surprising if the key positions running the MotoGP World Championship, with Ezpeleta and his son Carlos (sports director) at the helm, remained in place for a period of time likely stipulated in the contract. In any case, it is logical to expect that Liberty personnel will soon be in the MotoGP paddock, especially since the next Grand Prix is ​​the United States one, scheduled for April 14th on the Austin circuit.

With the arrival of Liberty, it is clear that the entertainment giant intends to replicate, with some nuances, the success achieved after taking over Formula 1 in 2016. The set of changes applied at all levels and exposure of a discipline through a mass platform like Netflix, with the docuseries Drive to Survive, which coincided with the pandemic, have led to levels of disclosure never seen before, and which do not appear to be slowing down. At the same time, the calendar has grown and its footprint is increasingly present in the United States, a territory that Dorna has had its eyes on for some time.