There has been a fair amount of talk on bike forums and the like about riders in televised forms of the motorsport as of late and the sums of money involved. I am the first to say that sponsoring me is a bit of a waste of money, but I’ll gratefully take any ;), but when you have people doing a world level championship, hell even the biggest national championship (BSB) who have to do it, like me, “for the love” there is something wrong. We aren’t talking F1 budgets here, we are talking national and worldwide covered sports, with dedicated magazines on every shops magazine rack, that require someone to peddle a bike around at speeds I can’t do on a straight let alone the corners like they can and lets not under estimate the danger involved either, being asked to pay £150,000 and their own expenses. That does seem a bit off. There are footballers being paid that a week!
I know it’s about demand, and markets forces blah, blah, blah and everything else. I just thought it was worth wasting a bit of your time over venting my spleen. You are reading this because you either you know me personally (hi there!), stumbled here because you are interested in racing and Google miss directed you, you are thinking about starting racing and want as much info as you can glen (Do it! It’s brilliant, if expensive) or are a spam bot. Most of you will be aware of this already the state of play.
Anyhow: Gino Rea, a Moto2 rider, and stood on the podium last year in his first season racing in the class, is the £150,000 requiring rider. Having had his personal sponsor pull out at the last minute. If some how your miss guided fingers brought you here and you have a couple of quid spare from your corporate giant company you could do a lot worse than give a bit to him.
You can, if you haven’t seen it read more about how much money is involved here
Gino’s story on the BBC: BBC News Story
And a bit more info on how much money is involved in British: Biscuit Tin Media’s: Racing for Free Who Profits