• Chronicle: Marc Márquez breaks his shoulder and puts his World Cup in danger

The MotoGP World Championship embarked on a labyrinthine path in 2014: the move to pay television. After a lifetime on TVE and a few years at Mediaset, the organizer Dorna sold the audiovisual rights in Spain to Movistar and later to DAZN. The decision made sense in the short term. Due to their increasing production costs, the open networks had stopped competing for the broadcast of many sports (soccer, basketball, Formula 1 and even the Olympic Games) and the platforms were pushing very hard. In fact, Movistar's deployment was always excellent, and DAZN's coverage is still excellent today. The problem was and is how your paywall will affect the championship in the long term.

The historic 2015 season (Sepang's kick, the confrontation between Valentino Rossi and Marc Márquez, the conclusion in Cheste ...) masked the first swings and Marc Márquez's dominance was considered salvation, but now the teams tremble because, without the reigning champion in the coming races and perhaps in the title fight, the relevance could plummet and many sponsors have yet to renew their contracts for next year. In the midst of the crisis caused by the coronavirus pandemic, the situation is tense. "Our audience is not as large as that of soccer nor is it as specialized as that of Formula 1. Closed we lose a lot of attention and it is much more difficult to reach the public with our actions," lamented the head of one of the main sponsors. MotoGP, with data in hand.

Since her move to payment, Dorna reserved the open broadcast of a couple of races and last year, with Argentina and Valencia as the chosen tests, the bump in the audiences was considerable. With the TV3 competition in Catalonia, Mediaset, which had once exceeded the average of three million viewers in MotoGP, only touched two million in Telecinco with the South American event and stayed at one million in Cuatro with the Cheste test. In the payment, Movistar recognized an average of about 300,000 viewers and now, although DAZN does not offer data, it is assumed that this is even lower. Some sources point to just 125,000 subscribers, a figure that the platform has never confirmed.

In any case, the loss of significance is a fact, as confirmed by other indicators. According to the survey carried out periodically by Personality Media, interest in the World Cup has fallen in Spain from 46% to 32%, remaining at a worrying 24% among those under 30 years of age. The farewell of two of the best-known characters, Dani Pedrosa and Jorge Lorenzo , has also affected a championship of which, as the same scale indicates, only three pilots are already known. Only Marc Márquez (95%), Valentino Rossi (89%) and Álex Márquez (74%) are identified by the public while other candidates for the title are unknown. With no data from Fabio Quartararo, the first leader after his victory on Sunday in Jerez, only 47% of those surveyed know who Maverick Viñales is and the number with Álex Rins plummets to 26%.

“It is a shame that in these good years, with four races in Spain and a dozen drivers here, attention has been lost. Perhaps it is only a generational change and it takes time, but the trend is not pointing in the right direction, ”added the manager of a sponsor with doubts. The news that this year's two open tests - Estiria and Alcañiz - will be broadcast by TVE was welcomed, but all or almost everything depends on the operation that Márquez will undergo this Tuesday at the Quirón Dexeus Hospital in Barcelona.

Beyond the fracture of the humerus, as Dr. Xavier Mir analyzed on Sunday , if the radial nerve is affected, the recovery will be complicated and his participation this season will be seriously disrupted. If Márquez, protagonist of all the relevant actions in MotoGP since his arrival in 2013, needs more than a month to return and, therefore, ceases to be a champion candidate, the loss of relevance of the championship may be definitive and the economic crisis , long for everyone.

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  • Marc Márquez
  • Spain
  • Valentino Rossi
  • Valencia
  • Jorge Lorenzo
  • Dani Pedrosa
  • Catalonia
  • Argentina
  • sports

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