Cycle News is a weekly magazine that covers all aspects of motorcycling including Supercross, Motocross and MotoGP as well as new motorcycles
Issue link: https://magazine.cyclenews.com/i/1039781
CN III ARCHIVES BY LARRY LAWRENCE B y comparison to the athletes in football, baseball or basketball, salaries paid to motorcycle racers is kept pretty hush, hush. There have been estimates of what MotoGP riders make (Marc Marquez and Valentino Rossi are reported to be in the $10 million per year category, with Jorge Lorenzo and Andrea Dovizioso not far behind), but trying to get a handle on what motocross, road race and flat track riders here in American make is a very well- guarded secret. Fortunately, some riders have talked to me about how much they made during their careers and what they know fellow riders made. And I have several other contacts in the industry who have given me ball- park figures, and when I get similar figures from different sources, it gives you at least an idea of what kind of salaries are available. Firstly, with the possible excep- tion of MotoGP, salaries in motor- cycle racing across the board are maybe only a half, perhaps even a quarter of what they were in the salad days of the late 1990s to the mid-2000s. The top MotoGP riders can demand such high salaries because they are the riders who P124 SHOW ME THE MONEY oil company), MoviStar (a major telecommunications brand owned by Telefónica), Pramac (an Italian maker of commercial lighting and generators), Tissot (a Swiss watch maker), Singha (a Thai beer maker), BMW, Michelin, DHL and so on. Even the lower-tier riders in MotoGP are making decent money, say in the $250,000 range, so if you are good enough to be in motorcycle racing's top series you will be paid. I was surprised to learn that even a few of the leading Moto2 riders have contracts ap- proaching a million per year! The top-tier world superbike riders can make well into the hun- dreds of thousands, but no one I talked to thought there were any riders in that series making north of a million. In America, it still pays to be one of the elite motocross or road rac- have the possibility of winning world championships. In addition to their factory salaries, the elite MotoGP riders can practically double their income with endorsement deals. Riders like Marquez, Rossi and Lorenzo can go beyond your typical industry endorsement deals, such as helmets, leathers, etc. On the very top end are the elite MotoGP riders who can cross over and earn big bucks for main- stream product endorsement deals. In America, those mainstream endorsements are few and far between, but they do happen on occasion. Remember in the mid- 1990s and Jeremy McGrath with 1-800-Collect, or more recently Travis Pastrana for Dodge? The money for MotoGP riders hasn't seen the precipitous drop that riders suffered here in America. Mainly because multiple factories are competing for the very best talent and they have to pay accord- ingly. But also, because outside-the- industry sponsorship is still around at that level, i.e. Repsol (a Spanish Tobacco money bolstered the money AMA Pro riders could make, but when those companies were forced to leave in the mid-1990s, purses fell drastically.