In Spain, a country where motorcycling was still strongly anchored in the genes not so long ago, the audience figures for the last Qatar Grand Prix at Losail suffered a major setback compared to last year.
On Sunday, Movistar MotoGP (pay channel 10 euros per month for MotoGP + F1) brought together a total of 653 spectators for the first three races of the season, divided between 000 for MotoGP, 333 for Moto000 and 181 for Moto000, according to audience figures published by formulatv reported by TodoCircuito.com.
If true, these figures represent a drop of 37% compared to the audience for the 2017 Qatar Grand Prix, which attracted 1 spectators, with MotoGP still the most watched race (037 spectators), followed by Moto000 (578) and Moto000 (2). Despite more than 265 hours of live broadcast from Thursday to Sunday, Movistar would have lost a total of 000 spectators.
The causes of this disaffection seem shared between the change in timetables (races two hours earlier than last year) and the fact that Vodafone no longer broadcasts the Movistar MotoGP channel on its television platform.
If we go back even further in time, the decline in audiences is even more marked. In 2016, the Qatar Grand Prix attracted a total of 2,1 million viewers, adding the audience figures of the live broadcast of Movistar (312 viewers) and the delayed broadcast of Telecinco (000 1), which broadcast the three races in the early morning hours from Sunday to Monday.
En 2013, the last year that Telecinco offered the Qatar Grand Prix live for free, more than nine million viewers were in front of their televisions on Sunday afternoon. 4,5 million did so to follow the MotoGP race, 2,4 million for Moto2 and 2,1 million for Moto3.
Or how to “ghetto-ize” a national sport? A hypothesis, however, categorically refuted by Carmelo Ezpeleta last Thursday during an interview with Movistar MotoGP: “I have said it several times, we have this sport, and the chance that channels like Movistar, SKY, British Telecom or others have decided to create thematic channels to broadcast this sport. I completely deny that this has harmed the popularity of motorcycling, and there are thousands of people who say so. I think that sport is more popular than it has ever been, but above all, the agreement that we have made, economic, technical and financial, takes into account the income that we have from pay television. Otherwise, we would not have completed the budget.
I know what they tell me in all the presentations and on all the sites. And I answer the same thing: if Movistar offers you four weekends of F1 and MotoGP for 10 euros, each event, if I'm not dividing it badly, costs 2 and a half euros. It's the price of a coffee. If a racing enthusiast can't spend $2 to get a full week of programming, they need to watch something else. And quality has nothing to do with it. »
In Italie, the passion is still very present, as evidenced by the figures for SKY (pay channel with numerous broadcasts and reports) and TV8 (SKY group, free channel which only broadcasts the races: respectively 1 and 357 fans for the MotoGP race, 738 times less for Moto1 and Moto957.
In France, Eurosport is pleased with its best audience for the Qatar Grand Prix, with 356 spectators for the MotoGP.
For our part, very modestly and with our absolutely ridiculous means in the face of all these giants, we brought together 120 unique visitors to this event, and we thank you very much!
