Formula 1 Owners Reportedly Ready To Buy And Take Over MotoGP

Ilustri MotoGP (Photo: dock. Unsplash)

JAKARTA - The owner of the Formula 1 car racing championship, Liberty Media, is reportedly ready to finalize the purchase and take over the MotoGP motorcycle racing championship. The reason is, the purchase transaction is predicted to reach four billion US dollars.

Citing Antara, Liberty is said to want to take advantage of the popularity of MotoGP which is considered to have a fairly high profit value, which is still being run by Dorna Sports, which is based in Madrid.

Apart from MotoGP, Dorna itself is a promoter of a number of motorcycle racing championships such as World Superbike (WSBK) and MotoE.

Liberty is said to be in pole position to reach an agreement after beating its competitors, from the owner of Paris Saint-Germain from Qatar, as well as sports and entertainment group TKO, according to British media reports The Financial Times.

On the other hand, the media Motorsport.com reports that executive leaders from Liberty and Dorna Sports have been in discussions for a long time and the purchase agreement was approved by both of them a few weeks ago.

Both parties are said to actually want to officially announce it before the opening series for the 2024 MotoGP in Qatar. However, this approval may be announced ahead of the United States MotoGP on April 12-14.

When contacted by AFP, neither Dorna nor Liberty could be reached for further comment.

If that is true, then Liberty will not be the first conglomerate to have F1 and MotoGP, the two most successful racing championships in the world.

The CVC Capital Partners held the position until they were forced to sell MotoGP in 2006 to buy F1 after fears emerged from EU competition regulators.

Since Liberty paid CVC eight billion dollars for F1 in 2017, the sport has seen a surge in popularity and CEO Greg Maffei stated last year that although F1 was not for sale, now its value is "much higher" than US$20 billion.