5 ways to Make WSBK Great… AGAIN

1.) Big name wildcards…

This is how you would get people to watch WSBK in the first place. You need to either make big names through the media or bring in big names for the other riders to beat, therefore becoming big names after. It is what happened to Ben Spies, having made a name for himself against tough competition in the USA, he did the same at WSBK level in 2009 before going to MotoGP a year later.

So, what I propose is at the Italian rounds, have the likes of Valentino Rossi, Andrea Dovizioso, Andrea Iannone etc come over and ride for their respective manufacturers in World Superbikes as wildcards. Having the Valentino Rossi pull factor would boost numbers massively at the trackside events and would probably be much cheaper than going to a MotoGP race too. For the Spanish rounds, fetch in Marc Marquez, Jorge Lorenzo and Maverick Vinales. British rounds have a good enough amount of wildcards but for the American round, why not get the likes of Cameron Beaubier and James Rispoli to get out on circuit. At Portimao, bring over Miguel Oliveira and in France, get Johann Zarco to ride.

Problem is that you have to combine wildcards with circuits and at the moment, the circuits that WSBK use don’t offer a great deal of chance for wildcards. Malaysian riders such as Hafizh Syahrin and Zulfhami Khairrudin would be great crowd pullers at Sepang whereas a South African round could instantly welcome Brad Binder. There’s enough fast Germans to cause a potential upset if the championship ever went back there and a race in Japan could rekindle those memories of 10 or 12 wildcard riders wiping the floor with the regular boys.

Not only does it prove to be effective for scintillating racing but it also boosts numbers, something that the current WSBK grid needs urgently. A healthy grid of 24+ riders at some rounds would definitely see more people come to a weekend of sporting action and when the additional riders are high profile, it is going to make WSBK more of a crowd magnet than it currently is.