Robin Miller: When F1 used to look at MotoGP with envy…

It was a mere five years ago that MotoGP was viewed enviously by the new owners of Formula One.

Of course we couldn’t believe it and it was only a chat which bikesportnews got with Chase Carey , the successor to Bernie Eccleston, which really convinced us that he really did admire what Dorna and Carmelo Ezpeleta had done to make MotoGP so exciting - and have a global star in Valentino Rossi.

The new owner was a giant US media business called Liberty and Carey, an Irish-born American, had spent most of his working life with News Corp, 21st Century Fox, etc. and therefore knew a lot about media and marketing.

But not a lot about F1 except that it had to change - a lot. Sporting events were hugely interrupted by the pandemic and Carey moved on but not before convincing his bosses and the teams that they were in the entertainment business and had to invest in getting new and bigger audiences.

It is ironic that it will now be MotoGP which is looking enviously at new audiences now being seduced by F1. But with an increase to 21 meetings for the coming year, including breaks into India and Kazakhstan, plus a new world champion there is every reason to be optimistic.

Except there is no Rossi which has had the effect that that the absence of Muhammad Ali had on boxing when he retired. And a lot of money is needed.

There is no doubt that Formula One has shown the rest of sport how to market their products via the deal with Netflix, the biggest live-streaming company in the world, in producing “Drive to Survive” and getting into huge new audiences of both sex and age.

But they also convinced themselves and the teams of the importance of media and a central hub of more than 20 people feed social media with anything of interest to