LThe withdrawal of Valentino Rossi, the injuries of Marc Márquez or the pandemic affected MotoGP to detect a decrease in its expansion. To change course and grow the sport, Dorna signed from the NBA to Dan Rossomondo as a new commercial director. Arrive with new ideas and changes. He doesn’t like to compare himself with F1 and looks at more general aspects.
ASK. You have been hired to get more fans in general for MotoGP. Those?
ANSWER. My work has two branches: on the one hand, getting more fans, but also keeping the fans we have because it is always easier to sell something to someone you already have than to a new customer. We have to keep those we have happy and make them happy. And by the way, according to our data, 60 percent of our fans tell us that we should get more fans. So they themselves want this to be more popular. I’m also in charge of the commercial business: more sponsors, better TV coverage, more licenses, all of that. It’s a vicious circle: more fans give you more commercial business. That is my charge.
Some people don’t understand what MotoGP is about, you have to educate them
Q. The question is: how to get them?
R. What makes it easy is that the sport is fantastic. I think you have to go through an education process, especially in certain markets. The United States will be one of them. People don’t understand what this sport is about, so you have to educate them, let them see how exciting it is. How is a sport built today? Frictions, emotion, speed, adrenaline, surprises… these are things that MotoGP has and, also, a 45-minute race. Do you see the children or kids? Do you see his level of attention? I have a 17-year-old, another 13 and 6. They don’t want things that last two or three hours, they want short videos. Our sport is made for that. We are in a good position to do something big. The problem is communication, getting it to people through traditional media, working more with our channels, which have the same objectives: Canal +, DAZN, Sky Italia, BT Sports, Servus TV, the great collaborators. It is also that we are not only part of sports, how can we be part of the news, in general, of culture. You have to break the barrier of sports, not just go in one direction, but be part of the culture that people get hooked on. This is how we want to do it. It is not easy, but the sport is fantastic.
MotoGP is fantastic, the problem is communication
Q. What is the key market to attract people and grow MotoGP?
R. The United States is a very important market because, perhaps, it is the media center of the world. Things that happen in Los Angeles, New York, or Chicago are amplified by the people there or by the market itself. Great Britain, Germany, India, China, Brazil are also very important… We can be everywhere, but we believe that we must be in places where there is an opportunity for our sport. In the US we can connect with young people because of what MotoGP is like, the competition, its brilliance. We have a race there, but we want more. We need more circuits and we are talking to people to build more. One of the things that must be educated there is that we cannot run on the streets of Miami, we need escapes. It is something that must be said, but we are focused on the market.
P. That is not going to change, is it? Will they continue to prioritize safety?
A. No, safety comes first. Our boys are worth too much, like their motorcycles.
The future is bright: Marc Márquez and the new generation must be promoted
Q. I guess they need stars. Now, the greatest is Marc Márquez. You will see in the figures the difference that there is when he is there or not. Can Dorna do something to be closer to those above and that will grow the fans?
A. No. First of all, personally, I adore Marc. I think what he’s doing from a commercial point of view is brilliant. His managers do his job very well. I would love to see him in the lead, but I can’t. The NBA, where I worked, went through this. When Michael Jordan retired, popularity fell dramatically. He dropped 40-50 percent audiences. When I came back, they were up another 40-50 percent. With LeBron James it is the same. But that’s life, you have to get over this. With Marc Márquez it is different. He is a great rider, I think that Honda will do everything to have a good bike. We have to wait and see what happens with Marc this year. But we also have to build the new generation of stars: Jorge Martín, for example. We have to do a better job of letting people see what a great talent he has. You have to think about the stars we have and the ones that will come. Valentino (Rossi) recently retired and people still talk about him. The future is bright and you have to promote what Marc does and to the new generation.
Q. In Spain, for years there has been a debate about whether popularity dropped because the races are not seen in the open. But, when, now one occurs in the open, the figures are not very high. What can be done about it?
A. We have a great partner with DAZN, who have a common interest with us in growing the sport. That being said, we also need to place our content at key points, like on the news or pilots being on the radio in the mornings. This should make the sport more accessible to people. I think we are a premium product and people want to associate with us. Spain is one of the markets that he said: it already has a large number of fans and we cannot forget about them. You have to keep giving them content. For example, there is a big show in Madrid this weekend (the centenary of the RFME) and we will have people there. We must continue to bring the sport to the people. We have three races in Spain. It is where the heart of this sport beats. Also in France or Italy and you have to keep it.
I don’t see F1 as our competitor, it’s about finding who we are as a sport and amplifying it
Q. A comparison is always made with F1. They are growing a lot and MotoGP not so much. why?
A. It is a good question. I congratulate them. For five or six years, they have been working hard to do things differently. I would like to say that it is because they are competing with us, but they go the other way. We have to be very proud of our product, of what is seen in each circuit every weekend. It is a super product: there is emotion, to the limit, with many feelings. We don’t have a problem with sports, but we do have a commercial problem. It’s not a big problem, nothing’s broken, we just have to get it on the right track. I don’t see F1 as our competitor. We can be with everyone, with Amazon, Netflix, Disney+ or go to dinner, on excursions, with everything that people do in their free time. We have to make our sport so important to people that they spend time on it. We don’t ask for much. We do not pretend that they are attentive for 18 hours of a weekend. How long are our races? The sprint on Saturday is 30 minutes, on Sunday, 45; those of Moto2 and Moto3, another 30 each. We don’t ask for much. So you just have to make sure they need to see it: where to see it, how to see it, how to follow it when they’re not running. They are only the elements to give to the people. They are the messages that reach you. It’s like when you work and they come from everywhere, you have to discover them.
Q. Carmelo Ezpeleta, repeatedly, has said that he doesn’t mind copying things from F1, that he will. He doesn’t care. He likes that?
R. I want the time to come when they copy us. It is what we will achieve, with good ideas that they want to copy. I already said it from the first day: I don’t mind copying good ideas, but we have to do things that are unique to MotoGP, because we have things that are different from everyone else. It’s about finding who we are as a sport and amplifying it. Take a bit of F1 here, the NFL there, LaLiga there and that’s it. No one has a monopoly on good ideas. That is clear.
In Spain is where the heart of this sport beats and that must be maintained
Q. How long is it going to take to achieve this plan? years?
A. I am an impatient person and I want to be successful now. I have become a fan in no time. There is a short, a medium and a long term. For me, the long term is 2025, the medium term is 2024, and the short term is this year. There are things that are already being seen this year, the teams see it. We will continue working on the media. There are things that are hard to see. This year we have 20 races and it is difficult to look six months ahead because there is a race the following week. I am the person who has to say: ‘Yes, let’s work hard this weekend, but let’s look at six months from now.’ That is the difference: working looking at the long term, but also now.
