Early 2013 produced some daylight in the supercross pits but also some dark days. The Jeff Ward Racing/L&M Kawasaki team, the Chaparral L&Mc Honda team, and the J-Star JDR KTM team announced they were done almost all at once. Luckily, riders found some life preservers. Andrew Short lost that L&Mc ride but found a spot on the growing BTOSports.com KTM team. Josh Grant was tipped off that the Jeff Ward Racing team might not last, so he shacked back up with his old friends at JGR. Dean Wilson actually did sign with JWR, but when the team died, his old friend Mitch Payton opened up an extra slot for him at Monster Energy/Pro Circuit Kawasaki. Malcolm Stewart lost his JDR ride but found a slot filling in for the injured Christian Craig with Lucas Oil/Troy Lee Designs Honda. Stewart’s JDR teammate Joey Savatgy was folded into the new Orange Brigade KTM team. These were scary times, but everyone found a safe place to land. The problem, however, wasn’t solved for the long term.
Two years later, we’re into the great free agent rush of 2014. A ton of riders had two-year deals spanning 2013-2014, so once those listed above found space mid-way through 2013, all was calm. But once this 2014 season ended, everyone’s deals expired, everyone went shopping, and several riders found there aren’t enough good rides to go around. Good riders like Jake Weimer, Josh Hill, Brett Metcalfe, Malcolm Stewart, and Kyle Chisholm…
“That’s the way it is, and it’s sad,” said Pro Circuit’s Mitch Payton to our Steve Matthes after Monster Cup. An extra team or two in the pits would solve the problem, but that’s not an easy fix. “What we need is another outside company to really love our sport to come into it,” explained Payton. “The bikes and the parts are one thing, but what really costs the money is the mechanics and the staff and the travel and a semi, and building the bikes and buying suspension.”
Pro Circuit also had visions of a 450 effort, but it fizzled when a planned outside sponsor pulled away at the last minute. The other teams ran into similar troubles. New rides have popped up, like Yoshimura Suzuki adding a second slot for Blake Baggett, and Chad Reed’s Discount Tire/TwoTwo team adding Grant, but that expansion hasn’t kept pace with riders like Eli Tomac, Ken Roczen, Wil Hahn, Dean Wilson, Jason Anderson, and Cole Seely entering the 450 Class in the last two years. It certainly won’t cover another wave that will want to move up to 450s for 2016.
So now the scramble begins again. We saw riders like Weimer, Hill, Chisholm, Metty, and Malcolm at races like Red Bull Straight Rhythm and Monster Energy Cup, but that didn’t result in any changes for them. Some, like Metcalfe and Malcolm Stewart, might just put their own deals together. Maybe Weimer and Hill might have to do the same. They’ll be privateers undeserving of such fate.
Okay, so if they do end up as privateers, we all know the basic play that everyone will call for. Increase the purse money. Give them more support, attention, press, or love. But like any discussion of the broader economy, the best answer isn’t subsidies for the privateers but actual jobs for them. Making fewer privateers privateers is the real answer. You could pump a million more bucks into the supercross purse and it wouldn’t significantly improve things once you divide it by seventeen races and eighty riders per weekend. A million bucks divided by seventeen races and eighty riders literally equates to $735 more dollars per weekend per rider. That’s helpful but not life changing.
It would be a much bigger help to find a few more teams to provide a few more riders with bikes, parts, staff, travel, and a salary. Not every fan buys a ticket to watch the battle outside of the top five. Anaheim will sparkle next year as long as the biggest names are racing. But no fan willingly wants to see talented, dedicated athletes—heroes—out of work and out of luck. The sport will be better if these riders get to compete on good footing, but what will it take to do it?
The days of simply splashing a logo on a radiator shroud and team semi and calculating the eyeballs that see it are over. This data helps, but it’s not the end. The business execs have gotten smarter and the world more fragmented. Today, many team deals actually come from the business-to-business variety, where a team finds two sponsors that want to do business with each other but only met through the common link of sponsoring a team. That’s a pretty complicated task. Finding two companies that are into this sport and also find common ground with each other that they wouldn’t have found with the motocross connection is very, very difficult.
So is life in the privateer ranks. The answer, as always, is finding a way to create more jobs. And right now the jobs at the very top are as prosperous as ever, but those in the middle are feeling the squeeze. Guys like Weimer, Metcalfe, Hill, and Stewart aren’t looking for handouts; they just want to earn a paycheck.
