Why MotoGP’s foregone conclusion weekend is an opportunity for its new owners

As far as first events go as owners, Liberty Media haven’t picked one that is likely to produce anything other than total domination from MotoGP championship leader Marc Marquez.

The factory Ducati rider comes to this weekend’s German Grand Prix 68 points clear in the standings after taking victories in the sprint and grand prix in the Netherlands. It marked his third double in succession, with his championship advantage greatly boosted by nearest rival Alex Marquez crashing at Assen and breaking a finger.

And there are few predicting anything other than a repeat for Marc Marquez this weekend at the Sachsenring. Between 2013 and 2021, Marquez won every German Grand Prix at the quirky 13-turn anticlockwise venue near Chemnitz. The latter was particularly noteworthy as it was his first since returning from a serious arm injury the year before, at which time his right humerus was out of rotation by over 30 degrees.

Intriguingly, it’s not always been a kind venue to Marquez. In 2023, it marked the beginning of the end of his time with Honda. Five crashes across the weekend led to him withdrawing from the grand prix. A few months later, he would release himself from the remainder of his HRC factory contract and sign for the Gresini Ducati squad.

The rest, as the old cliche goes, is history.

He didn’t get back to his winning ways in Germany last year, but did get to second from 13th on the grid on a weekend in which he managed to injure himself in a crash.

Now returning to his stomping ground on a bike he is clearly at one with, there is little standing in the way of Marquez coming away from the Sachsenring with a fourth double victory in succession in 2025.

That doesn’t lend itself to there being much of an on-track spectacle. Nearest rival Alex Marquez is carrying injury, Marc Marquez’s Ducati team-mate Pecco Bagnaia has largely been a no-show this season, and the rest haven’t quite been able to legitimately prove they can overhaul Marc Marquez in combat.

As such, a lot of people on social media - both fans and media alike - are branding this weekend as one not to watch and one hard to get excited about.

Despite all of the above, we have seen Marquez make mistakes at points when he was the fastest, at COTA and Jerez. Even last weekend’s Dutch Grand Prix began with two major crashes that threatened to unravel Marquez’s weekend. Despite his dominance, the 2025 season still has found ways to throw the form book in the bin.

That said, should this weekend go as expected, MotoGP’s new owner Liberty Media - whose acquisition was finalised on 3 July following an EU probe - still has an opportunity to seize.

Liberty Media knows how to sell ‘boring’

The US Media company took over ownership of F1 from the 2017 season at a point when the championship really was at a low in terms of on-track spectacle. Mercedes remained a step ahead of its rivals as the turbo-hybrid era that began in 2014 carried on, with the final-round showdowns between Mercedes duo Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg in 2014 and 2016 doing little to inspire.

Ferrari’s limp attempts in 2017 and 2018 to challenge the all-conquering Hamilton/Mercedes juggernaut still resulted in the same, predictable outcome. And yet, Liberty had by now been able to get F1 to the mainstream through Netflix’s Drive to Survive - first released in early 2019. Interest in F1 began to boom and the dominance of one driver really wasn’t a drag for new fans. After all, people love winners.

The balance of power in F1 has since shifted, with Red Bull and Max Verstappen taking over the mantle as dominators after a tense 2021 title battle with Hamilton, with McLaren now the ones leading the way in 2025. Verstappen’s popularity soared as he tightened his grip, and McLaren’s current duo already have a pretty fervent cult following that will only heighten the longer its success continues.

Always in sport, things quickly change. But what has always been true is that fans flock to see the best do their thing. That was true of the Michael Schumacher/Ferrari heyday in the early 2000s in F1 and likewise Valentino Rossi in MotoGP.

Often people reflect on Rossi’s time as MotoGP’s conquerer fondly. But that is partly revisionist history because his domination wasn’t always all that interesting. In 2001 and 2002, he won 11 of 16 grands prix; won nine of 16 in 2003 and the same in 2004, while in 2005 he took 11 victories out of 17.

There were fun moments, like his battle with Max Biaggi in South Africa in 2004 and with Sete Gibernau at Jerez in 2005. But his title challenges became formalities. Arguably, Rossi was at his most enjoyable to watch from a combat perspective when he was being hounded by up-and-comers in the late 2000s.

Yet, with the passage of time, the feeling of dullness in those dominant Rossi and Schumacher years has long since faded and only the results matter now. Those same people who say Marquez is making MotoGP boring now do so with a great deal of hypocrisy. But, that’s not necessarily their fault: for everyone, you get to a certain point in life where everything was better back then than it is now.

For Liberty, this is the battle it faces as it steers MotoGP into a new commercial era. Marc Marquez will serve as its poster boy, but using his dominance to sell MotoGP to new fans is no bad thing.

The trend on social media recently has been for a younger audience to engage with MotoGP through Marc Marquez. These are the Rossi fans of yesteryear, who in a decade’s time will look back on now with a fondness that masks the lack of competition in the 2025 title battle. But they will be doing so for a rider who is nearing the completion of one of sport’s all-time greatest comebacks.

That story is endlessly sellable, and Liberty would be foolish not to cash in by telling a world currently blind to MotoGP ‘look just how good this guys is, and did you know what happened to him five years ago?’

For Dorna, Rossi came along at the right time. He was the young showman ripping up the history books and spitting in the face of the older regime of riders. This hooked countless fans and they would stand loyal through to the end of his career, with Rossi remaining a selling point even when the winning dried up: remember, he spent more years racing in MotoGP without winning a title than he did when he scored his seven championships between 2001 and 2009.

For Liberty, it has come along at the right time. Marquez, doing much of what Rossi did at the start of his career, is still dominating at 32 and five years on from a major injury that almost derailed his career. He is well-spoken, has an aspirational lifestyle and remains at the peak of his powers while also continuing to be polarising for the Rossi fandom following the pair's bitter fallout in 2015.

Why wouldn’t you want to engage with that?