MotoAmerica | 2024 | Silly Season

Next thing we know, you'll be telling JU how to run a MA team.

 

If you like watching people crash, well, we differ in that respect.

 

when I was 12 years old watching NASCAR crashes were definitely my favorite thing I think. The average person loves watching crashes. That’s why there’s many motorcycle crash video reels on Instagram with millions of views and likes vs a few thousand on the average MotoAmerica post.

if you can’t put on an entertaining show that draws people’s attention how will you get sponsors? Racing is an entertainment sport. If you remove the entertainment nobody cares.

furthermore, competition in entertainment in general is ever growing, sports, video games (which just keep getting bigger) limitless tv shows and movies, social media etc

the real question is how do you convert a bunch of 12-21 year olds doom scrolling tiktok for an hour to spend an hour watching MotoAmerica?

 

Monster trucks are always ending up flipped over or rolling on their sides and fans seem to eat it up.
Tractor pulls are neat, but seeing big motors pop seems to get a extra crowd response.
.

 

If it's not a bad ending I'm ok with it if it gets butts in the seats.

Pretty sure there was a crazy animated story about that crash when the rider got back to the pits. They should have included that

 

It's definitely a losing battle to get people into motorsports now. I watched since I was a kid cause I also rode. It started with supercross. Now it's getting too expensive for new riders.

I think supermoto racing would get young peoples attention. Jumps, berms, and wheelies, thats what they want to see.

Maybe getting younger people in to track riding would help draw them to watching racing. But as I said it's expensive compared to the hobbies they have now.

 

Skateboarding, BMX, snowboarding, and most other "extreme" sports have crash reels. I think it's mainly to drive home the actual consequences of getting something wrong. This builds respect/admiration for the participants in the viewership. Or just the "whoa gnarly dude!" aspect of it. Either way, it gets attention.

 

FWIW I have buddies who are HUGE motorsports fans, watching Indycar, IMSA, F1, feeder series races for all 3. The kind of people taking the family 3-4 times a year just to spectate. They will not watch bike racing because they don't want to see someone get hurt or die.

 

It has a ballistic missile for an engine and seems to do well at pretty much every American track now. You can buy a top-tier turn key bike from Alpha. ~$50k for a brand new STK1000 machine. They used to advertise a turn key superbike but don't anymore.

 

How many people can relate in any way to F1? Essentially none, yet it is popular worldwide. While participants of a sport at a lower level are a natural audience, nearly everyone deep down has an appeal for competing, taking risk, and winning. Most won’t actually experience this except through being a fan of sport. I think the old Wide World of Sports intro captured the core elements pretty well. “The thrill of victory, the agony of defeat, the human drama of athletic competition.” Convey these elements to the audience and people will watch. Turn it into too much of a show directed by non-participants removes that deep down appeal IMO.

 

I think a lot of people think they can relate to F1 as the cars still have two pedals and a steering wheel. The casual fan doesn't realize that they probably couldn't get the car started or make the first corner in one.

 

Almost none of the new fans into F1 the last few years actually care about the cars or racing at all.

It’s the “Selling Sunset” of Motorsports. They love the drama from Drive to Survive.

At least this is my experience from co-workers etc that try and talk to me about F1. If you text them during a race or even day of, they always seem to be busy that day and “will catch the next one”.

 

People are attracted to big / popular things. The herd mentality is strong. I suspect F1 has that going in its favor. If you figure out how to get motorcycle racing to that critical mass to start snowballing, you would make a billion dollars. Maybe not a billion, but at least $3.50.

 

I agree. I didn’t address that, but wanting to do what the herd is doing in a social media world is significant. That’s why the ‘famous’ people are shown walking the grid, or the NFL camera during a Chief’s game swings to what’s her face every time her boy toy does anything relevant. I find the connection to famous people a huge turnoff, but apparently it brings the sheep along.
Things like Drive to Survive do connect to the human drama of the sport though.

 

You must watch TMZ as well. Same demographic target.

 

FLO4LAW
Ben Smith
Bobby Davies

Not sure if it’s SBK or STK1000.

 

https://www.roadracingworld.com/news/motoamerica-flo4law-racing-signs-davies-smith/

 

that’s really not a bad price relative to the turn key Supersport bikes being 45k

 

I’ll take the target demographic that makes racing a billion dollars, please.

 

45k from who? Even for Graves that seems high, I thought it was more like low 30’s on their website.