When Liberty Media, the U.S. company that owns Formula One, bought a majority stake in Dorna Sports, the company that ran MotoGP and the Superbike World Championship, some fans looked forward to the possibility that Liberty could bring to MotoGP the levels of popularity it brought to Formula One in recent years. Based on the first changes we’ve seen so far, I’m reminded of an old saying: Be careful what you wish for.
MotoGP has now confirmed Australian media reports that the round traditionally held at the spectacular Phillip Island Grand Prix Circuit will instead be moved after this year to a street circuit in the city of Adelaide. The people who really care most about the sport are the ones crying the loudest about this change. And that perfectly explains why it’s happening. The way to grow the sport is not by making the die-hard fans happy or by coddling the insiders in the paddock. It’s by drawing in the masses who are marginally interested, or maybe weren’t interested at all until they saw a melodrama about two riders having a spat on Netflix.
Phillip Island has some major pluses. It’s the kind of fast and flowing circuit that rewards unnatural skill and bravery. It’s no surprise that the most innately talented riders have tended to do well there, from Valentino Rossi to Marc Márquez to, most famously, native son Casey Stoner who would intentionally slide the motorcycle through turn three at 265 kph (165 mph). Situated on bluffs above the Bass Strait, it provided spectacular views as a backdrop in between racing action. But that location near the southern tip of Australia meant it wasn’t the easiest place to get to and the weather could go from fickle to vicious in the time it takes a Panigale to warm up on pit lane. Plus, there’s a chance you could smash into a seagull while battling for the lead, as if you needed a further challenge. (Just ask Andrea Iannone about the 2015 race.)
There’s a reason seeing a race at Phillip Island is on many fans’ bucket lists. In short, Phillip Island is the kind of circuit custom-built for the serious fan, the purist. It creates great racing. The hardships it imposes only make the memories stronger and the stories more interesting on retelling, kind of like motorcycling itself. But it is not a place built for the casual fan, the one who wants convenience, comfort, and an entertainment event that happens to include a motorbike race or three.
Replace a classic venue like Phillip Island with a street race? Ask a current non-fan and they’ll probably say, “Sounds like a great idea!” Ask the people who live and breathe the racing and you’ll find most of them are fuming.
MotoGP at an F1 street circuit? Are they INSANE? Not exactly, they just want to make money. Make no mistake about it, MotoGP moving from Phillip Island to an Adelaide city park is the starting gun of the Liberty/MotoGP Sports Entertainment Group era www.motorsportmagazine.com/articles/mot…
— Mat Oxley (@matoxley.bsky.social) February 18, 2026 at 9:48 AM
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That’s even before you consider the huge obstacles to putting on a MotoGP race on city streets. Aside from the fact that a street course can’t possibly produce the exciting racing that Phillip Island did, there’s also the challenge of creating a street course that has enough run-off to create a reasonable chance of getting away without a serious injury or death from a crash. Fifty years ago, we had a grand prix racer or two dying annually, but in today’s world, that’s hardly good for the show.
And really that’s what it’s all about: The ever-present tension between motorcycle racing as a sport and as a show. A sport requires fair and consistent rules. The people who organize motorcycle racing and rely on revenue from ticket sales, subscriptions to streaming, and TV broadcast rights want a show. If the rules don’t make for a good show, perhaps because one team or rider is winning all the time, those rules get changed to improve the show. If a basketball team is winning too many games and taking the drama out of the season, the league doesn’t make those players wear five-pound ankle weights to give the opponents a better chance, make the games closer, and improve the show. But if one motorcycle is winning too many races, the organizers literally may put extra weight on that bike. Or limit how many maximum rpms it can run. Or how many engines a team can use per year. Etc. All in the name of the show.
You want MotoGP to be bigger? You have to draw in those casual or even potential fans. You have to have a good show more than you have to have fair sporting competition. Be careful what you wish for.
The orphan Superbike World Championship
There was one other development this week that drew a lot less complaining but is a sore point with me. For some time, Dorna didn’t just focus on MotoGP to the detriment of World Superbike, but actually seemed to suppress WSBK, as if it were competition that could cut into the success of the top series. In 2001, the year before grand prix racing switched to four-strokes and became MotoGP, the grand prix season consisted of 16 rounds on three continents and World Superbike ran 13 rounds on four continents. The Superbike series rivaled the grand prix championship in popularity. The switch to MotoGP and four-strokes changed the trajectory, but more recently Dorna cemented it. Today, MotoGP runs 22 rounds in Europe, Asia, North America, South America, and Australia. World Superbike runs 12 rounds, all of them in Europe except for this week’s opener at Phillip Island.
This week, that focus was made even more blatantly obvious when it was announced that Dorna Sports had changed its name to MotoGP Sports Entertainment Group. World Superbike? An afterthought not even worth mentioning.
Last call for your bucket-list trip to Phillip Island
My young colleague at Common Tread was already thinking about going to the MotoGP round at Phillip Island this year. Seeing a race at the track is one of his bucket-list items. Now, he’s thinking even harder about making it happen. Probably the last chance.
Meanwhile, the developments in Australia might be a first warning for U.S. fans who were expecting Liberty Media to expand MotoGP’s footprint in the United States. I’ve already gone on record as predicting that Liberty Media’s efforts to boost the popularity of MotoGP in the United States, the way they did with Formula One, will not be successful. That argument was based on cultural aspects. That the United States just isn’t a motorcycling culture and motorcycle racing is too foreign to people here to attract casual fans. But beyond that, there are other reasons I didn’t even get into in that earlier piece, such as the lack of suitable tracks in places where the weather would fit into MotoGP’s already overcrowded schedule. (Nobody wants to fly the entire MotoGP circus across the Atlantic more than once.) But who knows, maybe if the new MotoGP Sports Entertainment Group goes all in on show over sport and lowers the level of racing and safety enough, we’ll have street races in downtown Los Angeles or Miami.
And a lot of people might come to regret that they got what they wished for.
