Dorna bosses are likely to be paying more attention than usual to this week’s bidding for TV rights to football’s Premier League, even though they ‘re all probably Barcelona fans.

The expected announcement that BT had renewed their MotoGP contract for another four years from 2019 has not yet emerged and it may be more than a coincidence that the big football deal, costing BT and Sky £4.464bn last time round, was announced tonight.

And with Amazon rumoured to be poking its mighty nose in what might that be worth this time? And where does that leave the ‘minority’ sports? Might BT, whose spending on sport is being questioned by the government regulator, have to drop one or two to stay in the big game? Watch this space.

Meantime, the other US media giant Discovery having apparently lost interest in MotoGP, seems to be investing more into Eurosport and although World SBK is not top of its list, well behind ski-ing or snooker, it is undoubtedly intent on upping it’s game in live sport in general and racing in particular with improved coverage from both WorldSBK and British Superbikes, audiences for BSB being well ahead of the World Series.

They are, however, reticent on announcing their presenter line-up and so the rumour mill is in top gear with it now reasonably certain that Freddie Spencer will be joining Greg Haines in the commentary box and James Whitham to be seen more often at world events.

So if the new WorldSBK technical changes do manage to slow Messrs Rea and Sykes down - to the apparent disgust of Kawasaki - and certain rounds will stage three races then we might be in for a good season of tv viewing.