Seeing Red Again

Let’s leave aside the obvious for a moment — Jorge Martin’s injury, Pecco Bagnaia’s defrocking, Marc Marquez reclaiming the best bike on the grid, KTM’s financial stay of execution, the whole Liberty Media court case, CryptoData’s now expectedly collapsed vendetta against RNF — and focus instead on one very specific type of person: the much coveted theoretical fan of MotoGP who lives in the world’s largest market for sports entertainment.

You might say to this, well, who’s that? One theoretical fan is hardly better than one real fan. But if nothing else, the past decade has proven that theoretical numbers are just about as useful as real ones if you have enough power, and Dorna, the company that runs MotoGP, currently has all of it with no incentive to go harder after a larger audience because there’s no rival series now that World Superbike is basically a demoted Euro-only show and because it managed to fleece MotoGP’s stats for investors by boosting actual attendance in the markets it already (comparatively) dominates with Saturday “sprints” that aren’t technically “races” but still count for points to the riders forced to deal with them. If you do the math, sprints won Jorge Martin the 2024 world championship. Unfortunately, they matter.

So, too, though, does any new potential investor in the sport — but I’m not talking here about hedge funds, I’m talking about actual investors. You know, fans — the people who show up on race day, the people putting down money on overpriced merch at the vendor stands and online in the offseason when the new officially licensed swag drops, the people buying scale models and posters and hats and T-shirts and paying for streaming cable or streaming services to tune in every week. Those investors. How’s that going for a potential one of those?

In most countries, the TV packages have long since been confirmed. In the U.S., we’re 18 hours away from the first free practice of the season and there’s still no official announcement on where to watch, no confirmation on how to see any of this stuff, no USA listed for its official broadcasters. TruTV were in the running for broadcasting rights, but the latest breaking news I literally just pulled up as I typed this sentence suggests Fox will take over duties for the season. In theory, that’s not a bad thing; I constantly confuse TruTV with MavTV and I’m still not sure which one of them runs the mindless stream of incongruous five-second home videos where guys wiping out on BMX bikes cuts into dogs making free-throws cuts into a family laughing at a baby falling over that you occasionally see at breweries and restaurants. No one’s confusing anything for Fox, which occasionally broadcasts real sports in between American Dad reruns, Kitchen Nightmare and the latest local news horrors. But with less than a literal day to go, there’s no news on either site about dates or times.

Okay, so what if you cut cable? Who will be the streaming provider? For 2024, that was HBO’s Max, and it felt like a godsend: Every session from FP1 right through to Sunday’s main event could readily be streamed and watched all season. To say it felt like a revelation to wake up at a normal hour on Sunday and go straight to cleanly streaming a race via TNT Sports’ class-leading commentary would be understating it. I could queue up all three races (Moto3 and Moto2, even!) and let it run through, then potentially catch a World Endurance Championship race wrapping up to cap off a Sunday. It felt like a new dawn. If Fox actually does get broadcast rights that include streaming, you know what it’s going to be on? Fox Nation because that’s the only live streaming app the company has. Whatever deal TNT-owned Warner Bros. inked to get on Max evidently only lasted one year.

If you’re a potential fan in the U.S., then, you have no current outlet and no way to find out about it when one finally (probably) gets announced. It’s a rank amateur, deeply unserious approach to a market Dorna has been talking about trying to make a bigger impact in for literal decades now — just think, 20 years this July since Nicky Hayden took his famous first victory under a cloud of Bush II-era myopia. It felt at the time like something might be changing, like this minuscule bridge-building step for sport was a gesture of both humble pride and eye-clearing unity, like we might all actually be better together.

It turns out that was just Nicky doing Nicky. We’re once again in a dark age of imperialistic, capitalistic hubris where only the most keen among us know where to stream the good stuff illegally. I don’t need more reasons to be tired, but like a lot of other things in 2025, Dorna has somehow found a way to give me one. If the resistance calls to you, a potential fan curious about MotoGP, let me know if you need a link. I’ll send it to you when I’m finished with work in about nine hours — nine hours from the start of the season.