For anyone who wants to watch motorcycle roadracing on television in the United States, recent years have been a steady, downhill slide. The future of MotoGP, in particular, is even more murky after today’s announcement that NBCSN will shut down at the end of 2021.
Not that long ago, I could, if I wanted, blow most of an entire Sunday watching motorcycle roadracing. MotoGP or World Superbike would be aired live. For races in Europe, that meant the races would be shown in the early morning in my Eastern time zone in the United States. Then MotoAmerica races were often shown live the same afternoon. All World Superbike races were aired, as were all MotoGP classes: Moto3, Moto2 and MotoGP. On MotoAmerica weekends, Superbike and Supersport were usually shown, at minimum.
Motorcycle racing has wandered from one cable network to another over the years (anyone else old enough to remember Speedvision?) but in recent years much of that coverage aired on NBCSN. But gradually it kept dwindling.
A few years ago, I could watch three major roadracing series on my cable TV package, including World Superbike. Now, WSBK is gone, Moto3 and Moto2 are gone, and I’m wondering about the future of MotoGP. Kawasaki Racing Team photo.
By last year, I couldn’t see World Superbike at all. MotoAmerica had shifted to Fox Sports, sometimes FS1 and sometimes FS2, with the occasional Liqui Moly Junior Cup race, while the Supersport class was shown on MAVTV, just to make things more confusing. NBCSN stopped showing Moto3 and Moto2, limiting coverage to the MotoGP race only. Sometimes those races were shown live. Other times, they were shown 12 hours or so after the race actually ended. So if I wanted to avoid spoilers, I had to spend the entire day off social media before I watched the race. Not easy because, let’s face it, motorcycle racing and industry news accounts for a substantial part of my Twitter feed.
Yes, I know I can just subscribe to streaming services and I do subscribe to MotoAmericaLive+, in part because I can justify it as a work expense, since I sometimes cover the series. But three streaming services starts to add up to money, and it irks more when just a few years ago I could watch it all via the cable TV package I was already paying for.
And it’s not about me. It’s about the potential new fans and the downward spiral of coverage. Nobody who knows nothing about MotoGP or World Superbike is likely to begin their journey of discovering the sport by putting down $250 for subscriptions to both MotoGP and World Superbike. The potential fan needs to be able to access the sport for no additional cost to begin the journey to becoming the kind of serious fan who will pay those subscription fees. Instead, potential new fans don’t see it, so the fan base shrinks, so networks cut back on coverage, so fewer new fans are exposed, and thus the downward spiral that has taken us to where we are today.
This was the typical view of Cameron Beaubier in 2020, at the front of the MotoAmerica HONOS Superbike field and pulling away to another win. It will be fascinating to see how he does in 2021 in the Moto2 world championship. But none of his U.S. fans will see that on U.S. cable television. Photo by Brian J. Nelson.
Bad time for this to happen
Two things make this worse. 2021 is a very interesting year at the world championship level for U.S. racers. In Moto2, U.S. rider Joe Roberts is moving to the ItalTrans team, which won the title last year, and five-time MotoAmerica Superbike champion Cameron Beaubier is taking Roberts’ old seat, so there will be two promising riders in Moto2. Beaubier’s former teammate, Garrett Gerloff, is starting his sophomore season with the GRT Yamaha World Superbike Junior Team, after finishing 2020 strong. All three riders are potentially poised to have a breakthrough year, but if the 2021 TV package ends up the same as the 2020 coverage, nobody will see them do it. At least not on cable TV. Not without buying another subscription.
You can’t even see them in person. World Superbike has no race planned for North America in 2021 and series organizer Dorna announced today that the Grand Prix of the Americas in MotoGP, previously scheduled for April at the Circuit of the Americas in Texas, has been postponed until late in the year, due to concerns about COVID-19 and intercontinental travel. And I won’t be completely surprised if it never happens at all this year.
Every year, I think the coverage of world championship roadracing can’t get much worse, and year after year it surprises me to the downside. With NBCSN set to disappear, it may actually reach the point where it can’t get any worse — simply because it won’t exist at all.
I usually just watch MotoGP but this year I’m really curious about how Beaubier will do in Moto2 and I’d like to see those races but I can’t pay almost 200 bucks for a streaming sub. Same thing with Gerloff but then I have to pay more money. I remember when I could see those races on TV.
World Superbike has become a second class series.
That’s true but I don’t think it’s because of anything to do with Superbike racing itself, but rather it has been a conscious effort by Dorna to raise the MotoGP series’ image and tamp down WSBK. I think that’s sad. Back in the two-stroke era, I actually preferred watching World Superbike because I could relate to four-stroke Superbikes a lot more than a two-stroke 500 that would high-side its pilot into the cheap seats periodically. The 2002 WSBK title battle between Colin Edwards and Troy Bayliss is one of the most memorable for me (and you can watch the final race at Imola on YouTube if you are too young to have caught that live).