How MotoGP can grow its audience
You probably know someone who had no interest in Formula 1 but became a big fan after watching the Drive to Survive series on Netflix. American viewership of F1 races went up from 554,000 per race in 2018 when Drive to Survive Season 1 launched to 927,000 in 2021. In Product Manager terms, the Drive to Survive product reached a new market and revealed an underserved one. This was a revelation because it reminded people that not everyone that cares about sports, cares about sports.
The Formula 1 of motorcycling is called MotoGP. Multi-million dollar prototype motorcycles ridden at the limit around a track by superhumans with alien reflexes. The racing is exciting and I'm a big fan but viewership has been going down, and recent news suggests that MotoGP hasn't learned the lessons from Formula 1.
The big MotoGP news last weekend was the introduction of sprint races in 2023. Sprint races are shorter races on the Saturday of a race weekend intended to increase the surface area of competition (e.g. more time racing, more points to fight for, etc.). The splashy nature of this announcement and the fact that no other changes were announced, suggest that Dorna, the series promoters, see this as a panacea to their problems rather than part of a larger strategy. But adding more races only appeals to existing fans — it's preaching to the choir, or in product terms, over-serving a market.
To grow audience numbers, MotoGP needs to reach new markets who, by definition, aren't being served or are under-served. This is practically the job description of a Product Manager, so using standard product management techniques like defining audiences, researching them, building MVPs, and iterating until product-market fit will work.
Here I'll talk about defining audiences because it's the first step and seems to be a blind spot for MotoGP. There are the four main ones:
People who love racing
People who love engineering
People who love behind the scenes
People who love people
The overarching strategy MotoGP should adopt is "Something for everyone." They should create a product team per audience and give that team the resources and creative control to find product-market fit.
People who love racing
This is the current core audience. Sprint races and other efforts to increase competition, like technical restrictions help this group. In fact, almost everything Dorna does focuses on this group — i.e. they are well served. Focus needs to be on the next three groups.
People who love engineering
Every sport has its technical and stats nerds — the people who love digging into engineering and numbers. F1 has a cottage industry of engineer fans who dive into the details and create lots of content on social media and blogs. MotoGP, with its smaller market, has much less to offer this audience. At the moment they have their Tech Talk series which posts occasional videos on YouTube but it not deep/detailed enough.
Ideas: make historical race data more interactive so people can dig into the numbers; expand @simoncrafar's Tech Talk series into its own channel, with more producers and crew; give @spalders special access to teams and sponsor his MotoGP Technology books so they can be released every year.
People who love behind the scenes
If you've ever wondered who plays those sport "General Manager" video games where you don't play the matches, just manage rosters and budgets, it's this audience. The only thing MotoGP has for these people is a lame fantasy league.
Ideas: Create a GM game for MotoGP; grow and improve the fantasy league with richer features; encourage social media accounts to every one of the army of people that work behind the scenes (truck drivers, cooks, timing guys), find the characters, and promote them; start a YouTube channel talking about the fascinating minutiae required to run a world championship. All this is practically free.
People who love people
This is the biggest audience with the most growth potential — Drive to Survive proved it. This audience loves the personalities, drama, and lifestyles.
Ideas: Bring back the MotoGP Unlimited Amazon Prime series and invest to make it better (i.e. don't cancel after one season, iterate); cross-promote rider social media accounts with other marketing channels—attention on the riders is attention on the sport; stop scaring riders from speaking freely in public, it only limits attention.
Dorna has done a great job creating a race series that delivers exciting racing each weekend but they don't see the potential in what they've got. To break out of this they need to embrace a different approach: iterative, experimental, bottom-up. And they can do this using product management techniques. If they do, MotoGP can reach new heights. If they don't, this moment could be the beginning of a slide into obscurity... at least until the next Valentino Rossi appears.