The Sponsorship Issue - and doing our bit

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Originally Posted by ChrisS

Though it may sound like a good idea I honestly cant see how its possible for us fans to help get sponsorship for MotoGP teams. I mean this isnt sponsoring a KART team, a company wont spent the money required for MotoGP on a suggestion of an employee

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First of all, I think this is a fantastic initiative. It's easy to feel helpless about the entire sponsorship situation, but the truth is, most of us work for companies, and most of those companies are very keen to put their brand and product in front of potential customers.

At both the last two companies I have worked for, I have tried to raise interest in sponsoring motorcycle racing. It has not yet provided actual funds for racers, but it has raised awareness of motorcycle racing within the marketing department and made them aware of the possibilities. I have plenty of confidence that something might actually come of this by next year.

Now, you are right to say that a company won't just invest $25 million just because an employee asks them to. But once they've been made aware of the sport, its popularity, and its importance in certain key markets, they could well start to look into it properly. They will at least be aware of its existence, and could start to take motorcycle racing seriously as a useful marketing tool. They may first try their hand in World Superbikes, or BSB, or AMA, before moving up. They may decide that motocross or Dakar is a more interesting avenue for their investment, and a more affordable starting point.

I think that there is little chance that anything we do here on this board will save Ilmor for the rest of the season. However, what we can do is raise awareness in the marketing department and in the company board about the popularity of motorcycle racing, and though that is unlikely to pay off this year, there is a fair chance that a couple of years down the road, it could well start to generate real results.

As for amounts required for sponsorship, it's hard to give a definitive answer as Chris mentioned.

But I do have an article from now-defunct magazine MCN Sport which gives some rough numbers for WSB and BSB. The article dates from Summer 2003 and was written with the aid of Neil Hodgson and James Toseland's manager Roger Burnett. So the numbers will be referring to top-end of the grid teams.

The numbers given were:

Main title sponsor: WSB £1.5M, BSB £0.5M
Principal sponsor: WSB £0.5M, BSB £250k
Personal sponsors: WSB £20-50k, BSB £5-15k
Associate sponsor: WSB £100k, BSB £50k
Minor sponsor: WSB £50k, BSB £20k

Which give a total for WSB of £2.2M (UK pounds) (= $4.4m USD = $5.5m AusD)
Or £835k for BSB (=$1.7m USD = $2m Aus D).

As I say, I reckon that's for top of the grid teams, and the article is accompanied by a pic for Neil's Fila Ducati. MotoGP will be more but certainly nowhere near F1 standards.

Edit: there's a possibility the WSB number may have decreased since the control tyre rule came in in 2004...

More info, from there sources I have been collecting, all on Speed:

http://www.speedtv.com/commentary/20718/
http://www.speedtv.com/commentary/20067/
http://www.speedtv.com/commentary/19974/

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Originally Posted by &quot

As a result of information released recently regarding the collapse of the KTM-Team Roberts alliance in MotoGP, we have learned that KTM paid Michelin something like $55,000 per race to supply tires to the one-rider Roberts team, meaning, with testing included, a million dollar tire bill that would double with a two-rider team.

By comparison the cost of a full season of tires in World Superbike is reported by team owners to be around $50,000.

But the lease price of a factory MotoGP bike for a season is between 1.5 and 2 million dollars depending on the brand and the spec.

According to all team owners I have spoken to in World Superbike a competitive Japanese four cylinder machine can be built for well under $100,000 dollars. (The Yamada R1 that Ivan Silva rode to ninth and tenth in Valencia, for example, is estimated by his team to be worth a mere 40,000 Euros.)

Carlo Fioranni, ex-director of the Repsol Honda MotoGP team and now responsible for coordinating Honda Europe’s efforts in World Superbike told me recently that running a top World Superbike team for a season, including bikes, riders and mechanics salaries, travel etc. would cost between 2 and 2.5 million dollars. Private teams capable of running top ten are able to cover the entire season for under a third of that.

By comparison the yearly costs of MotoGP are somewhere between 30 and 40 times greater. According to a report published on MotoGP by the British magazine Business F1 “the works teams appear to be spending around US$65-US$70 million on their teams. The independent privateers who lease works technology spend between US$17-US$25 million.

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these are also good "The Idiots’ Guide to MotoGP" (parts I-IV) by Dennis Noyes

http://www.speedtv.com/articles/moto/motogp/21383/
http://www.speedtv.com/articles/moto/motogp/21389/
http://www.speedtv.com/articles/moto/motogp/21410/
http://www.speedtv.com/articles/moto/motogp/21461/

They talk about sponsorship issues in MotoGP, interestingly though some of the $ amounts seem to differ in the articles I posted and in the articles Kropotkin posted even though they are written by the same guy.

ie.

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Originally Posted by Dennis Noyes from the article posted by Kropotkin

But the lease price of a factory MotoGP bike for a season is between 1.5 and 2 million dollars depending on the brand and the spec.

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Originally Posted by Dennis Noyes from the article posted by me

the days of the $800,000 to 1.2 million dollar lease have given way to a price tag of somewhere between 3 and 3.5 million (depending upon the level of machine and the amount of spares and maintenance included) for a couple of RC211V for a single rider.

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This has turned into a very interested thread Pat, onya buddy. :up:
The guesstimate costs as posted by Pat and Kropotkin are certainly interesting. I remember during the late 90's reading about the value of a superbike versus a 500 GP machine and the top superbikes were worth around $100,000 against the GP bikes at around $1-1.5 mil. This didn't include total running costs however.
I see that the quote of Dennis Noyes mentions what team KR spend on tires, but do the factory teams have to spend like that or are their tire suppliers sponsors of them?
As for helping the sponsorship issue, I'll pass the hat around at work and see if I can't drum up some support for Ilmor. :)

FG Group's website has a video about world superbike that is aimed to potential sponsors

http://www.gruppofg.com/eng/main.html then go to FGSport and then Superbike

also Team Foggy Racing website has 3 pdf's for download (one for MotoGP one for WSBK and one for BSB) with info about Foggy, the team and the series and the benefits of sponsoring the team

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Originally Posted by ChrisS

They talk about sponsorship issues in MotoGP, interestingly though some of the $ amounts seem to differ in the articles I posted and in the articles Kropotkin posted even though they are written by the same guy.

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That's mostly because they were written at different times. If I recall correctly, leasing an old 500 used to cost in the region of $1 million a year, and leasing an old 990 cost in the region of $3-5 million a year, but don't quote me on exactly where I got those figures.

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Originally Posted by Kropotkin

That's mostly because they were written at different times. If I recall correctly, leasing an old 500 used to cost in the region of $1 million a year, and leasing an old 990 cost in the region of $3-5 million a year, but don't quote me on exactly where I got those figures.

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They were written less than 3 months apart, its probably a mistake by the writer.

The quote I posted above says just that. $800,000 to 1.2 million dollar in the 500cc 3 to 3.5 million for MotoGP

Great work of collecting all this info. Very useful background.

on the official site, they interview kr, sr. about the new sponsorship package they are running this weekend. he states that they worked on the deal for a year and a half beore securing a 3 to 4 race package and that the value of motogp to sponsors is at is peak right now, which is why he finds it odd that it is so dificult to find soponsors.