MotoAmerica is hoping to have its motorcycle road races broadcast on live television in 2016. That’s the word from CEO Richard Varner, who sat down with Roadracingworld.com at New Jersey Motorsports Park to discuss MotoAmerica’s debut season and its near future.
Asked what he thought of MotoAmerica’s first-ever season, Varner said, “I guess the first thought is we survived. The second thing is we’re already excited for next year.
“We’ve had quite a bit thrown at us this first year, not just in terms of organization and starting a new company, but in terms of conditions and the events, that sort of thing. Just from a purely technical standpoint, we’ve had events that were co-produced with Dorna, we’ve had events where we did deals with tracks, we’ve had events that we did the entire event ourselves. Then we’ve had a lot of rain, as you know, and had to go through that process. Then of course we had the tragedy at Laguna Seca. So if you look at that we’ve been put to the test.
“I think probably the single most influential decision we made was to go with International [FIM] rules and to make them consistent and enforce them in a consistent way. That one decision seems to have as far reaching impact as anything we’ve done.
“I think from a business standpoint, in general, the sponsors and the ones who are involved with this financially have seen a value being put into it. I very strongly feel that the money that we spent is sticking. It didn’t just go for nothing. I think we’ve built a value. The value is a stable, thoughtful series with good rules, with people actually wanting to come to our series to participate. We’re seeing teams already starting to look forward to next year. [At the start of] this first year they were, ‘Well, let’s see how this goes.’ Now we’re already seeing teams and people approaching us and asking us questions that makes us think they are preparing for next year, and that’s very encouraging.
“I think cautiously we can be happy with what happened, with what we went through this year.”
As for MotoAmerica’s plans for TV coverage in 2016, Varner said, “We don’t know exactly what we’re going to see, but we’ve already sat down and gone through what we think our strengths and weaknesses were this year, our opportunities and our threats, and kind of done the classic business evaluation. And we identified our weakness as the fact that our shows are not live, and that we’re probably not satisfying the endemic audience that we have.
“Our first goal the first year was just to get on TV, and it was a rush to get it done. It wasn’t necessarily the package that we wanted, but it was the package that we were able to get, and we got a lot of criticism from the paddock. If people knew how much that cost and the concessions we had to make and the compromises it’s remarkable it got on TV at all.
“This next year, though, we’ve already seen that we have a value. We are U.S.-driven content. There’s lots of international content out there going around the networks for car racing, British touring cars and even MotoGP, but there’s not U.S.-driven content, especially in this type of racing. We’ve already had enough discussions that we already know that people are thinking that has a value to it.
“So I think that our goal is that hopefully we will be live next year, that you’ll see that as one of the improvements.”