A MotoGP paddock insider believes a Formula 1 ‘Drive to Survive’-style docuseries is inevitable after F1 owners Liberty Media took control of MotoGP last month – and the likely impending arrival of one of the Netflix series’ biggest stars could provide the impetus.
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Liberty, the American media company that has owned F1 for the past eight years, acquired 84 per cent of MotoGP from rights holder Dorna in July for 4.3 billion Euros (A$7.7 billion), heralding a new era for the world motorcycle championship.
Earlier this week, Autosport reported that Guenther Steiner, who earned a cult following in ‘Drive to Survive’ in his role as Haas F1 team principal before he was replaced ahead of the 2024 season, is close to finalising a 20 million Euro (A$35.7 million) purchase of the Tech3 KTM MotoGP team run by Herve Poncharal that has been a fixture on the MotoGP grid since 2001.
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Autosport’s report stated the majority of the funding for Steiner’s bid to buy Tech3 has come from the Apex company that manages investments for a number of professional athletes including McLaren F1 driver Lando Norris, and which also owns a stake in Alpine F1 team.
While Poncharal dismissed claims that the deal with Steiner was already done in an interview with GPOne.com earlier this week, he acknowledged: “we are talking but nothing was signed – I’ve never made a secret of the fact that discussions are taking place.”
Speaking to Fox Sports’ ‘Pit Talk’ podcast, MotoGP reporter Simon Patterson feels the likely arrival of Steiner into the MotoGP paddock only increases the probability of Liberty Media commissioning a two-wheel ‘Drive to Survive’ equivalent to bolster the visibility of the series, whose problematic ‘MotoGP Unlimited’ docuseries flopped badly three years ago.
PIT TALK PODCAST: The big questions from Liberty Media’s purchase of MotoGP with MotoGP reporter Simon Patterson. Listen to Pit Talk below.
“Guenther Steiner has been linked to taking over the Tech3 MotoGP team, because [team principal] Herve Poncharal is ready to retire and sell up … here’s your immediate way to hook these fans across, you don’t even pretend you’re trying to do something different,” Patterson said.
“You make a MotoGP documentary and you call it ‘Ride to Survive’, and you launch this spiky, outspoken character into the middle of the team bosses, and that’s going to create something.
“There’s people in MotoGP crying out for a platform for rivalries, not even the riders. Part of what made ‘Drive to Survive’ so interesting was the rivalry between the teams … Toto Wolff versus Christian Horner. That was something ‘Drive to Survive’ really magnified.
“There will have to be a documentary series, in some shape or form, simply because it’s the standard now in sports because of ‘Drive to Survive’. Six Nations rugby, Tour de France, America’s Cup … they have all got these documentary series built around the behind-the-scenes access because of what Liberty did. There’s an inevitability that MotoGP will have to do something similar. It has to be done.”
Herve Poncharal (right), pictured with 2024 star MotoGP rookie Pedro Acosta, is on the verge of selling his Tech3 team to former F1 team boss Guenther Steiner. (Getty Images/Gold and Goose/Red Bull Content Pool)Source: Getty Images
Patterson feels Liberty’s initial priorities with MotoGP will focus almost exclusively on the way the series markets itself to an audience wider than a core he feels is “diminishing”, and that MotoGP’s on-track offering won’t change under its new owners.
“What MotoGP has always done that I don’t think is necessarily the right approach is that, with the possible exception of golf, we’re the only other sport in the world that markets itself almost exclusively to the people who take part in that sport – we sell motorbike racing to bikers,” he said.
“That’s a diminishing audience as less people are riding bikes, especially less people are riding sports bikes, and the kind of previous captive audience of the guys who will buy on a Monday what you race [on a Sunday] aren’t there anymore. That means we have to look at opening the audience, and that is something that Liberty has done really well in F1. That’s something we can transfer over fairly easily, because we’ve got all the same elements.
“Liberty Media are smart enough to know they do not need to touch the sporting product, they just need to build it out. The benefit of that is that if you’re an existing MotoGP fan, no-one’s making you watch the documentary series, no-one’s making you watch social media. You don’t have to watch ‘Drive to Survive’ if you’re an F1 fan, you can just tune in on Sundays and watch the races. That remains the case with MotoGP and whatever Liberty do.
“The core product will always remain the core product, because the core product is not the problem. It’s all the stuff around the product that we need to change if we’re going to expand the fan base and bring in new people, and that can only be good.”
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Patterson feels the purchase of MotoGP by Liberty has been met with an optimistic curiosity by the sport’s insiders.
“We’ve seen what they’ve done with F1, but we know that the model is not necessarily just ‘copy and paste’. People are definitely expecting things that have been done in F1 to be done, but not all of them,” he said.
“People are still curious as to what actual shape it’s going to take [but] the general consensus seems to be that this can only be good.
“By and large we’ve got an excellent product, what you see when you’re watching is super entertaining, but Dorna have been really bad at the bit where they get new people to watch it. There’s been a not very good marketing strategy built around this sport. That is where Liberty really changed things in F1, and it’s the low-hanging fruit when they come into MotoGP.
“I was told that when they took over Formula 1, the marketing department of FOM [Formula One Management] was four people, and the first thing they did was hire another 160. That’s the kind of attitude the MotoGP paddock thinks MotoGP needs. It needs to be shown to more people. Everything is more visually spectacular [than F1] and it should be an easy sell, especially with the shorter races and the attention span of our current screen-addled generation of viewers.
“It should work, all the pieces are there. We just need Liberty to work their magic.”