World Moto Clash’s self-imposed deadline for depositing the promised $2.86 million prize purse in an escrow fund has passed with organizers still looking for funding (which they previously said they already had) and saying that the odds of the inaugural event actually being held are down to 25%.

Stanford Crane, founder and chief executive officer of World Moto Clash, told Roadracing World that the organization is still negotiating with one party in a last-minute attempt to find the money for the run-what-you-brung race with a prize of $1 million to the winner.

Initially slated for July at Utah Motorsports Campus, organizers moved the initial round of the event—billed as racing meets reality television programming—to Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course on the weekend of September 18-20. In an interview published on April 29 on roadracingworld.com, Crane said that the purse money would be in an escrow account 30 days prior to the event taking place. That has not taken place.

The idea for the event was first floated nearly 20 years ago, with claims that it would draw wildly unique machines that would out-perform top-level racebikes because of the lack of technical restrictions. But this year was the first in which a specific date and venue was announced for the race. In April, organizers also announced a production and marketing team for the event.

The racing, WMC organizers explained, would be the backdrop for a reality television-like product, and the back stories of the racers leading up to the event were critical. Crane said his model was more like the Ultimate Fighting Championship than a traditional racing series, and that the events would be VIP-studded occasions akin to a Super Bowl-like production. 

But to date, there have been no announcements about rider or team participation in the event. There have been no announcements about television or broadcast or production deals or that any of the shooting has started.

A major road racing event like this requires an infrastructure that is in place weeks, if not months, before it happens. Lots of soft barriers are required to make Mid-Ohio raceable for motorcycles, tire suppliers have to be in place, insurance must be purchased and at this point, there is no evidence that plans for any of that have been confirmed. (The announced plans for the weekend’s on-track activities called for much longer periods of running than at a MotoAmerica or World Superbike event, and one MotoAmerica team owner calculated that each rider at a World Moto Clash event would likely go through nearly 40 tires.)

There have been no official announcements of operational partners to actually staff and run the event.

Crane says that a final decision on whether Mid-Ohio will take place will be made no later than Monday, August 24th.

First Person/Opinion:

By Michael Gougis

Professional motorcycle racing in the U.S. is a tightly-knit community, where everyone talks to each other. So far, no one I have talked to has seen any WMC money. WMC’s strategy seems to have been to announce the idea, get some high-profile names on board and to take that to the investment community and raise the money needed to pull off the event.

From the start, it was clear that this would only work as a purely entertainment product. There’s a concept in financial circles called the Efficient Market Hypothesis, which states that when all information about a product is known, markets reflect the actual value of a product. MotoAmerica’s (and professional road racing’s) current value in terms of an entertainment product reflect the reality of the modern entertainment landscape. It’s not like motorcycle road racing is something new. And MotoAmerica’s operators work hard at promoting the sport. They’re not inept or incompetent at what they do. What you see today is what they can sell it for. 

There are lots of theories on how to make motorcycle road racing more attractive to investors and sponsors. Many have been tried, some have succeeded, some have failed. Liberty Media has expanded the audience of MotoGP, but that is a series that has roots that are decades old and Liberty Media also happens to run Formula One. The increase in the size of the MotoGP audience has not generated a concurrent increase in profitability. Liberty’s plans for further audience expansion center around ideas that either have been tried (more U.S. rounds) or are controversial, such as adding tracks closer to city centers. And believe me, neither the Utah Motorsports Campus nor Mid-Ohio are close to city centers!

A no-regulation motorsports event doesn’t suddenly make racing as an entertainment product significantly more attractive to investors; in fact, the exact opposite seems to be true. Liberty Media, and Dorna before that, had a huge rulebook for MotoGP to make sure, in part, that no one runs away with a season or series due solely to a technological breakthrough. A runaway at the front by a rider or a single team is not an entertainment product they can sell. So simply changing the rules or eliminating them doesn’t suddenly make motorcycle road racing a hot entertainment product where you can offer nearly $3 million in a purse for a single race and still make money on the deal.

And if back stories about racers would increase the value of any road racing series, well, that’s been tried. Everyone talks about the success Formula One had with their reality-like product. But MotoGP’s attempt at that failed miserably. And–no offense, all–there’s no shortage of back stories available on social media about pretty much anyone on the MotoAmerica grid. You could, I suppose, put celebrities on racebikes and bring an audience that way, but once the green flag drops, the bulls–t stops, and I’m not sure watching a celebrity getting lapped is going to attract attention or investors.

There are other structural challenges to doing a high-stakes race as entertainment. There’s the expense of going racing; it would not be out of the question for a team to spend more than $100,000 to show up and run a pair of riders on MotoAmerica-spec Superbikes for a weekend and leave empty-handed–and that figure doesn’t include the cost of building the bike. There’s the risk of injury to one of the team’s stars. Many of us remember what happened to MotoGP attendance during the dark days when Valentino Rossi broke his leg and was sidelined.

These are issues that someone looking at this as a pure investment vehicle would ponder carefully, especially when there are other entertainment products where they could invest without that risk. You could shoot an entire season of some reality programs for what a MotoGP team spends in a weekend. A purse of nearly $3 million for every WMC event is pretty much unheard of for any racing event, and investors want assurances that they will see a return. There are races that pay $1 million or more to the winner. But they are rare and all are car races. 

You can never say never, especially when the entertainment industry is involved. I still love Gilbert Gottfried’s comedy bit on pitching the TV show “Hogan’s Heroes” to network executives: “It’s set in a World War II prisoner of war camp. It’s a comedy!” Who thought that was a good idea? Yet it ran for six seasons!

But the entertainment industry has had nearly 20 years to look at the World Moto Clash concept and so far, there have been no takers. And unless something changes dramatically, it’s really hard to see how this will ever make financial sense to investors or professional racers.

For an podcast on the topic featuring Roadracing World Founder & Editor John Ulrich, watch below: