In the early days of the internet, those sports that could see the changes on the horizon shielded some of the more disruptive changes that digital adoption brought into their industry. For niche sports like MotoGP, it resulted in a rapidly changing industry, providing positives and negatives for industry bosses to contend with.
As with so many other sports, MotoGP has had to deal with every element of the sport becoming both digital and global. Now, it’s fair to say that MotoGP was a global sport before the advent of the internet, but the digital age brought in a raft of new changes, many of them unforeseen, and they have unwound the fabric of the traditional mould of the motorsport.
Burgeoning Betting Markets
Sports betting has grown into a colossus sector over the last 20 years. It’s one of many companies that embraced the upcoming digital age and leveraged the technology to expand their reach. In fact, you could probably make a case that no other industry has adapted to the digital age like the gambling industry, moving from localized sports betting shops to multi-billion-dollar international corporations.
While MotoGP is already an exhilarating sport that operates at a lightning-fast pace, sports betting is one of the factors that has made MotoGP more engaging. By expanding into betting markets and offering a way for MotoGP fans to supplement their viewing with a wager or two, it’s on board with a popular approach that’s been taken by other sports.
Soccer, American Football, and combat sports have all used the internet to promote their respective betting markets. While legislation has helped to accelerate this uptake in the number of bettors seeking out these markets, having a range of MotoGP betting markets has allowed the market to enter the digital age.
Better Tracking & Leveraging GPS Data
Thanks to incredible technological developments, sports analytics have entered a golden age. They’ve transformed how experts, fans, and industry professionals analyze data. They’ve also revolutionized the world of GPS tracking, especially for motorbike owners who fall victim to theft.
However, from the perspective of the professionals, it has helped professional riders use some of the latest GPS technology to track their speed and technique and improve their overall riding by processing every element of their race, from their acceleration to their angles and speed when they take a turn and how to navigate long stretches of the race track effectively.
It’s also helped motorsports vloggers to perform more detailed breakdowns of drivers and their techniques. MotoGP fans need to be careful with the videos they post online from the races, however, given that MotoGP does not mess around when it comes to striking down channels and social media influencers for copyright infringement.
Overall, it’s helped increase the sport’s visibility and make motorbikes safer for MotoGP fans, thus attracting more people.
The Power of YouTube
Since the early days of the 21st century, it has become clear that MotoGP needed to establish an online presence. Their social media channels are among some of the most followed in the world of professional motorsports, thanks to the dedication and hard work of social media marketers who have helped the sport adapt to the digital age.
Following Valentino Rossi’s retirement in 2021, which created a vacuum in terms of truly global and marketable crossover stars in the sport, social media marketers were left to thrust motorsports fans’ attention towards MotoGP. If you look at the engagement the YouTube channel has generated over the last 10 years, you can see how well MotoGP has adapted to the digital age.
Not only does a well-run YouTube channel help keep the sport’s visibility high, but it also helps cultivate communities of MotoGP fans worldwide. Instead of old forms of media, such as MotoGP magazines, it was a lot more challenging for fans who had a passion for the sport to find a like-minded, ardent MotoGP fanbase.
Social media channels, especially ones like YouTube, have an enormous reach and are among the most effective methods the sport has used to expand into the digital age and adapt to the current consumer appetite.
Conclusion
MotoGP benefited because it was an established sport long before the internet started to impact global sports. Granted, it had to adjust, and those sports that haven’t adjusted well have noticed a sharp decline in their activity.
Look at boxing, a sport that was one of the most popular in the US in the 1990s. It stuck to a PPV cable model, became extremely expensive to access, and multiple promoters fought over TV contracts, fracturing the market and shutting it off to their consumer base. MotoGP, on the other hand, has leveraged YouTube, which has helped to keep it in the global sporting shop window, so to speak.
By adapting to this market and positioning accessible social media channels as one of their main points of coverage, MotoGP has adapted to the digital age with great aplomb. Additional factors we touched on today, include the betting markets and leveraging GPS tech, are more generic. Still, in terms of adapting and keeping the sport relevant in the modern market, the approach to social media has helped the sport continue its relevance in what is now an interconnected global sporting marketplace.
