Dorna Sports, the prominent promoter and rightsholder of motorcycle racing’s elite MotoGP series, has published its financial results for 2024, headlined by a year-on-year (YoY) halving of its loss from the 2023 results.
The promotion posted a loss for the year of €12.31 million ($14.5 million) across 2024, less than half of the €26.98 million it posted in 2023, despite revenue shrinking from €486 million down to €462 million over the same time frame.
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That revenue reduction, stemmed at 5%, could be seen as a strong success given the multiple major impacts the 2024 season suffered.
MotoGP had to contend with four different cancelled Grand Prix events across 2024, including the Kazakhstan Motorcycle Grand Prix (which was cancelled twice) and the scheduled season-ending Valencian Grand Prix, which was reorganized due to disastrous flooding in the region.
Races in Argentina and India were also cancelled before or during the season, owing to a variety of logistical and financial issues.
As such Dorna Sports, which also manages the MotoE and WorldSBK series, naturally saw a decline in broadcast revenue over the period from €209 million down to €205 million (though it remained the single biggest revenue sector for the business), while race promotion turnover dropped from €157 million down to €135 million.
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By GlobalDataDespite that, commercial income grew across the period, albeit marginally, from €81 million up to €83 million, showing after four straight years of growth in that business category that new Dorna Sports owners Liberty Media have a strong commercial basis to work from.
Looking forward, Dorna Sports revealed that it is targeting revenue of €520 million in the 2025 fiscal year, owing to an expanded 22-race calendar, one that, halfway through, has not yet had any races cancelled.
Liberty Media completed its purchase of Dorna Sports on July 3, putting to rest over a year of acquisition hurdles and European Union red tape.
The motorcycle series joins the media heavyweight’s Formula One Group business unit, which also includes the titular F1 motor racing series, and generated $447 million across the first quarter of the 2025 calendar year alone.
Dorna Sports holds the rights to MotoGP through 2060 as part of a long-term extension agreed in 2024.
In late 2024, Dorna Sports chief commercial officer Dan Rossomondo spoke to Sportcal (GlobalData Sport) about the series’ commercial strategy.
At the time, Rossomondo commented on the Liberty Midea acquisition, stressing that it will be “business as usual."
He said: “[Dorna] is going to be run from Spain as an independent company. That's all the plan, that's what's going to happen. Which is just outstanding. I do know that they're very optimistic about the sport, very bullish on the growth of it.
“Some of the intellectual might that they can bring to our sport, some of the experiences they can bring, learnings that they can bring from Formula One, but also from a lot of other businesses, they have to be hugely helpful to us.
“They've seen the same thing that I've seen in terms of the potential, in terms of the unique intellectual property, the global fan base. They're going to really be a catalyst to help us take advantage of the real strengths of the sport.”
