What Happens When Your Superstar Loses
For the last seven years Dorna has been living off the image of superstar Valentino Rossi. Rather than seek to promote Rossi's rivals, the television programming (pre-race, post-race and between-race features) has largely been dedicated to Valentino. When Rossi was flirting with F1, Dorna was threatened with the loss of their Italian meal ticket, but when he decided to sign on with Yamaha for another two years there was a collective sign of relief in Madrid and Barcelona.
Meanwhile, Dorna has been grooming their own superstar for the vibrant Spanish market. Dani Pedrosa is Spain's most popular rider and when Spain's TVE paid a reported $24 million a year for a five-year deal, the Spanish national TV company was counting on Pedrosa racing with Rossi for race wins and the title.
In Italy the Mediaset group hold the TV rights and pay big bucks to show Rossi primetime on Tele5.
But suddenly it was the little Ducati factory that was blasting past Rossi's Yamaha and Pedrosa's Honda on the fast straights of Qatar, Mugello, and Catalunya, and that kid smiling from the top of the podium was Ducati's third choice, Australian Casey Stoner. Stoner was the last-minute pick after Nicky Hayden (who opted to renew with Honda even before he won the title in 2006) and Marco Melandri (who signed a letter of intent with Ducati but was unable to make the move when his current HANNspree team took up their option).
Dude, Where Did the TV Audience Go?
Suddenly TV audience figures took a nosedive in the two most important European markets. In Italy, where MotoGP regularly claimed a huge 40% share, often beating even F1's numbers, the audiences fell to 25%. Now 25% is a huge share in any European market, but not when you are accustomed to 40%. And in Spain where Dorna had seen shares as high as 35% at the beginning of the season, boring races with neither Pedrosa or Rossi at the sharp end of the field meant that
during a couple of primetime races the share fell as low as 20%.
It was especially galling that Tele5 of Spain, owned by the same Mediaset giant that owns Tele5 of Italy, was now getting audiences in the 14% to 20% range for World Superbike, and on a couple of occasions when the opening race of the World Superbike Sunday program ran just before the F1 broadcast on Tele5, SBK managed to hold a 26% share. Of course this was only because a lot of viewers were standing by, enjoying the bikes while they waited for the F1 pre-race show... but that kind of viewer numbers produce new fans.
Dorna's embattled CEO, Carmelo Ezpeleta, had to do something and it should have been clear that he was preparing to act. When he said several weeks ago that he believed the new tires rules were "a serious error," it was just a matter of time.
The critical moment was probably Laguna Seca where an exceedingly boring race turned off millions of viewers in Europe. The fact that Rossi and Pedrosa were finishing a half minute back of Stoner seemed to most to be clear proof that the Bridgestone dominance was bad for business.
After that race Rossi said that the tire rules were ruining the racing and, in private, both Rossi and Pedrosa demanded that their factories switch to Bridgestone in 2007.
Ezpeleta went to the tire companies and demanded change. It appears that what he ordered them to do was supply any team or rider that requested their services.
When Yamaha and Honda requested Bridgestone tires for 2007, Michelin said that if the factory Yamaha and Honda teams switched to Bridgestone, Michelin would withdraw.
There were some attempts to get Michelin to accept a switch from Dunlop to Michelin for the Tech 3 Yamaha 'second team,' and even for Michelin to accept the Repsol Honda garage being split with Pedrosa on Bridgestone and Hayden on Michelin, but Honda said no to this second proposal -- possibly a proposal from Dorna who were looking after Pedrosa's interests.
