Main image courtesy of Feld Motor Sports.
Yeah! Look, we’re post Monster Energy FIM Motocross of Nations and into what should be the start of a dormant spot in moto news cycle. Instead, we’ve got an explosion of info. There’s the usual October 1 rider signing news, but on top of that we’ve got the first round of the new FIM World Supercross Championship this weekend in Wales, fresh details on the new SuperMotocross World Championship, and even Red Bull Straight Rhythm is set for a return in two weeks!
It's enough to make your head spin. We’ve posted the silly season news here on this site, probably the biggest story is Christian Craig switching to Rockstar Energy Husqvarna on a two-year 450 deal. Congrats to Christian and his management team on finally getting that 450 deal.
The racing stuff is probably getting confusing, well, except Straight Rhythm, which is the simplest event of all. No turns, all two-strokes. But what of these other races and series? Let me try to break it down.
Last summer, Feld Motorsports, producers of what was then called Monster Energy AMA Supercross an FIM World Championship, was working on a plan to align itself more closely with MX Sports Pro Racing, which promotes the Lucas Oil AMA Pro Motocross Championship. The motocross series does not have FIM sanctioning. Feld did not renew its long-standing FIM sanctioning deal. Monster Energy Supercross lost the “FIM World Championship” tag and reverted back to Monster Energy AMA Supercross branding. The FIM immediately issued a statement thanking Feld for the 20-year relationship while also saying it would begin looking for new partners to keep a supercross World Championship going. This was a hallelujah moment for the U.S. motorcycle industry, which was never too pumped on the FIM (and, specifically, its WADA drug testing) and was also never too pumped that Feld and MX Sports never seemed to get along. Feld and MX Sports went about working on their alignment plans, specifically, shopping for a TV package together. The toughest part was the timing. Previously, the MX and SX series here in the U.S. had TV deals that expired on opposite years. The goal was to let the deals expire together so they could shop as one for the 2023 season. MX Sports, then, would need to let its Peacock deal expire for 2022 and shop for a one-year-only deal to get to 2023, when Feld’s deal was also up for a renew. Peacock didn’t want to do a one-year deal for motocross, but MAVTV was willing. That was a promising move, but MAV’s streaming service wasn’t ready for the type of numbers motocross would generate.
Meanwhile, the FIM did find a new promotion partner to host a FIM World Supercross Championship, and quite quickly. A group called SX Global won the rights from the FIM to host a new World Supercross Championship, and congrats to them for whipping things together so quickly and launching plans for a 2022 season. Yes, it’s only two races and being dubbed as a “pilot season” but pulling together something of this scale within less than a year is not easy. SX Global consists of some of the people who ran the old AUS-X Open Supercross, people behind the big growth of the Australian V-8 Supercar Series, and a major injection of money via Mubadala Capital, of Abu Dhabi. That group made a big splash by announcing a $50 million dollar fund to pay teams and a big purse. By then, it was already clear the direct factory teams both from the AMA (U.S.) series and MXGP (Europe) weren’t going to support World Supercross. The $50 million in capital (over five years) would provide the support needed to make the series run with privately-owned teams instead of factories.
This, really, is the biggest difference between the FIM World Supercross Championship and the U.S. racing series. The U.S. factory teams that employ the top supercross riders made it clear they do not support a world supercross championship, as they would prefer to focus resources on racing in the U.S. and supporting a calendar of both supercross and motocross races. FIM World Supercross, then, made the move to pivot away from the factory team model and embrace private team ownership. Throughout the summer months, FIM World Supercross, or WSX, began rolling out team and rider announcements.
Then in August, Feld and MX Sports finally rolled out the alignment plan they had been working on, calling it the SuperMotocross World Championship. The exact details for that series were then revealed this week. It basically works like this: 17 supercross races as usual, crowning supercross champions as usual. Then 11 Pro Motocross races (one less than usual), crowning champions as usual. Then the new stuff: three “post season” races called SuperMotocross (or SMX) that will crown a new set of champions in the 450 and 250 class. They also stuffed big purse money into those three races, and also upped the purse at the regular rounds of supercross and Pro Motocross. If there’s one thing the 2022 announcement of new series and new styles will be remembered for, it will be the big infusion of money for the riders.
That is great. Still, this might be confusing for all. Let’s try to make this as simple as possible.
This weekend, the FIM World Supercross Championship, or WSX, begins in Cardiff, Wales. The second and final round of this first WSX season takes place a few weeks from now in Australia. We’ve been posting all the news and details of this new series as it comes out.
The SuperMotocross World Championship begins in 2023. It is simply three races after Monster Energy AMA Supercross and the AMA Pro Motocross Championship conclude. Riders are seeded into those three races based on the combined supercross and motocross points. You can read all the details in this SuperMotocross press release.
So there. Two new names in the sport, World Supercross (WSX) and SuperMotocross World Championship (SMX). Hopefully you can keep it straight and the riders continue to make more money. As for the rest of this? Well, neither WSX nor SMX has raced yet. We’ll see how it looks once it all gets started.
