Liberty CEO Greg Maffei has revealed that seven-time Formula 1 champion Lewis Hamilton is interested in purchasing a MotoGP team.
It was announced in April that Liberty Media would purchase an 86% stake in Dorna Sports, the company that owns MotoGP, WorldSBK and other two-wheeled racing endeavours.
The value proposition was agreed at $4.2billion, but Dorna’s 14% stake will see the Spanish organisation continue running MotoGP.
Liberty Media’s acquisition of Formula 1 in 2016 has revolutionised the sport’s growth both on and off track, bringing together a new wave of fans and Hamilton has joined a long list of people wanting to buy into a similar two-wheeled revolution.
“When we announced [the acquisition on MotoGP], it’s a great example, we had immediately people call up and say, ‘I want to buy a team’, including people like Lewis Hamilton,” Maffei revealed to the Goldman Sachs Communacopia + Technology Conference.
“Why? Because they saw what had happened in Formula 1, and they want to follow.
“We had, major distributors call and say, ‘We want to be involved’. And unfortunately, I had to tell them we really can’t talk about [that] until we get EU approval, but we’d love to talk once we get it.
“I think there’s an opportunity when you’re at the league level to take advantage of those changes that you can make.
“When you’re at a team level, in general, teams don’t cash flow as well. Not absolutely true.
“NFL teams cash flow pretty well, but in general, it’s really big multiples of cash flow, and we’re still too traditional in wanting that cash flow.
“But in addition, your ability to change the dynamics, to set the stage and do the things that you want are far better, far easier, more manageable.
“Still takes time, but you can get it done at the league level. In a way, it’s very difficult at the team level.”
When Liberty Media acquired Formula 1, it bolstered its efforts to raise the fanbase in America and the series has grown to host three US-based Grands Prix.
The American company wants to do the same again for MotoGP, and while numerous MotoGP and 500cc legends have descended from the USA over the years, Maffei wants to strengthen the series’ reach Stateside.
Steps have already been made in a positive direction on that front.
American Joe Roberts is a Moto2 race winner and Justin Marks’ Trackhouse Racing made its debut in the premier class this year as a satellite Aprilia effort.
Maffei believes the “exciting product” that is MotoGP will benefit from Liberty’s approach which had great success with F1.
“MotoGP is, to start with, it’s an unbelievably exciting product,” he said. “I don’t know if many of you have seen the racing, but to see people driving motorcycles, 220 miles an hour, six inches from each other, it’s wild, and the overtaking there is incredibly impressive.
“It is, unfortunately, one that is too little known here in the United States and around the world. There’s interest in Asia and other places, but the real heart of it has been in Spain and Italy, to some degree, France.
“The opportunity to expand it… we saw what we were able to do with Formula 1 by telling the stories, making them humanised, making the story larger than just about the car, the technology, but also about what the drivers were doing, what was going on behind the scenes, telling those stories, making sure the world understood the breadth of what was going on.
“But also we did a lot to improve things like improving what you can see on the screen, making our fans understand the story better. All of those are things that can be helped here.”
