Thegreatestshow
Dorna’s Dan Rossomondo on social media and growing MotoGP
The popularity and reach of MotoGP continues to be a hot topic. What is being done to push the sport and ensure it can grow? What’s working? What isn’t? MCN sat down with MotoGP’s Chief Commercial Officer Dan Rossomondo to find out.
Things appear to be going the right way digitally and socially online…
“We do a good job of making our content accessible on our channels, but we need to do a better job of making it accessible on partner channels. We want a wider funnel of people to see our content.
“The video of the Espargaro and Morbidelli incident in Qatar had over 30m views on Instagram alone, organically without promotion. Was that incident the type of thing we want to see? I don’t know, but a little bit of feistiness never hurts.
“Social media is best utilised when we’re not the ones pushing it, when others are retweeting it, posting it, the algorithm gets to work. We need to make that happen. A huge part of it for me is partnering with breakthrough media companies who want to reach that younger demographic outside of the motorsport business. We need to get there… fast.”
How are you going to gain a younger audience?
“It is a challenge, but I don’t know where the disconnect is because I walk around circuits and I see a lot of young kids. We have a young generation of riders coming up who are very good and positive, and kids are attracted to stars. We have a ready-made product that is good for kids’ attention-deficit disorder… A GP is 45 minutes, a sprint is 25. We have it, we just need to communicate in the right way.”
There are some difficulties with the sport in the UK…
“It’s a priority market. It has a good riding heritage and BSB does pretty well. We’re looking to do something with them around Silverstone.
“The British GP is in August, where there’s plenty of holidays and the weather is a little fickle - we need to do a better job promoting it.
“We have a great partner in Monster Energy, who helped us a lot this past year. For me, we just have to focus on that market. We have a good partner in TNT who want to help us with the product [on television], so we really work all facets of the business.”
How key is it to get a Brit and American in MotoGP?
“For me, selfishly sure. Local heroes in the right markets… But this isn’t a sport where you can fake putting someone good on the grid, it’ll show really quickly.
“You have to put the best 22 riders on the grid, and right now they’re Spanish, Italian, Australian and South African.
“We’re missing an American and a Brit, but we have to work on that. In the MiniGP, an American came fourth and sixth. We’ve seen Joe Roberts on the podium in Moto2. It has to happen naturally.”
There’s a fine line between racing and entertainment…
“For us, when we look at it in terms of show vs sport, our sport is the show. What I must do, is make refinements around it to accentuate the good parts. Our show on the track is so good, and if we started to do some of the F1 stuff, it would look really forced. We need to be organic and unique to MotoGP with what we do.”
F1’s Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri were at Silverstone. Do you need to do more with these crossovers?
“They were amazed by MotoGP. We also put a cool video out for Pecco vs Martin which included famous footballers like Roberto Carlos. It was really a really good push and pull, so we’re trying in that regard.
“Honestly, I wish the opinion of famous people didn’t matter as much as it does but we’re dealing in an influencer economy right now and it does matter, so we need to push that more. We think our sport can stand on its own, but we need a little push if we go as wide and deep as we think we can.”
What’s the biggest positive commercially right now?
“My biggest red flag is that I always think about the negatives. However, when a partner comes to MotoGP, they tend to stay, especially the big ones like BMW, Red Bull, Tissot… They identify with the sport, they understand the sport and they love it. The question becomes, can we create enough value for others to jump in and stay in?”
What needs to change?
“It’s sounds simple, but it’s not. Just in terms of our approach, we need to pick our heads up and be the aggressive hunters. It means a lot of rejection, time where people aren’t returning your calls or emails… You need to be strategic about it, and it will be worth it all.”