[kropotkin thinks...] - Livio Suppo Interview: "We Need To Be More Innovative About S

[Ninjette Newsbot]

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MotoGP's huge popular success cannot disguise its Achilles' heel, the ability to raise sponsorship. With just 17 bikes on the grid, many of the existing teams straining to keep ticking over and the Grand Prix Commission continuously looking for ways to cut costs, money remains a problem for the sport. One of the key figures inside MotoGP who has been most successful at raising sponsorship is Livio Suppo, formerly of Marlboro Ducati, now of HRC. Suppo was brought in to Honda to find ways of raising more sponsorship, and repeating the trick that the Italian pulled off at Ducati, securing enough funds to cover the factory's racing expenses.

Here at MotoMatters.com, we have made no secret of our fascination with the process of funding MotoGP, and especially of trying to find out why that should be so difficult. So we grabbed Livio Suppo at Qatar, to ask his opinion on the challenges facing him and MotoGP as a sport in trying to raise money. He talked about the opportunities he sees for business-to-business sponsorship, the need for more nationalities in MotoGP, and how hard it is to compete with TV advertising. It was a fascinating half hour:

MotoMatters.com: I wanted to talk to you about the process of raising money and why it is so difficult for MotoGP. People say in the paddock that you were responsible for just about every sticker on the bike at Ducati.

Livio Suppo: I started at Ducati as a marketing guy, for Ducati Corse, so, we loved the structure of Ducati Corse in marketing, and everything was related to all the people who work in that department. Anyway, let's say that first of all, it's not just a difficult time for MotoGP, it's a difficult time for every sport. It's not easy to get sponsorship money for anyone. If you see also Formula One at the moment, there's a lot of cars with no stickers. So of course, the economic situation, as we all know, it's not finished, the problem. And therefore everybody involved in these kinds of activities need to be more pro-active, and think about something innovative, I guess.

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