If, as seems likely, BT does not renew its contract to carry MotoGP at the end of next season who are the contenders filling the first two rows of the grid.

First of all, why wouldn't they renew? Not surprisingly it all comes down to money and the cost of covering MotoGP, especially the fly-aways like Japan, Australia, Malaysia, relative to the size of the watching audience, numbered in hundreds of thousands not millions, is high.

Principally it is the amount they pay promoters Dorna for the privilege plus the cost of flying a huge team round the world, putting them up in hotels and also paying them.

But there are bigger bucks at stake. Competition for live sports rights - principally football - is growing and parking their Cadillacs on the front lawns of BT and Sky are American media giants such as Liberty, already owners of F1, and as viewing switches to online the likes of Google, Facebook and Amazon are taking more than a passing interest.

BT, a giant in Britain, is a pygmy compared to these guys. Even the mighty Sky is having to merge with its US counterpart 21st Century Fox to compete. And most important to them, in fact their bread and butter, is football. And they face paying even more grotesque amounts of money when the contracts for the Premier League come up for renewal next year.

It means that some other minority sports may have to go. MotoGP, as far as BT is concerned, will be one of them. And Sky, while having deeper pockets, is unlikely to even bother to attempt to qualify. They are saddled with F1, the cost of which makes MotoGP look like the bargain of the year, and they are just hoping that the new owners can make the spectacle even remotely interesting as the health and safety fascists make it look more like saloon car racing by installing hoods to make the drivers even more invisible. Soon, not only will we have noiseless cars but robot drivers.

So will we in 2019 all have to sign up to Facebook, Netflix or YouTube? Not totally disastrous if you like that sort of thing but the channel which has been showing the greatest interest in these past few months is Discovery, already the owners of Eurosport. They certainly occupy front-row position and mutterings emerging from Dorna Towers suggest that they are sitting on pole.

Discovery are eager to expand their coverage of live sport, having bought rights to the Olympics, and have had the opportunity to study WorldSBK closely. Discussions have taken place round a 10-year contract embracing both WorldSBK and MotoGP.

But what is even more interesting, indeed exciting, is the attraction of content ownership - owning the content instead of having to negotiate a new, and more expensive, deal every three years. That is the strategy behind Liberty's deal with F1 and what Sky almost brought off with Manchester United some ten years ago.

Liberty and Discovery are the two big cats in the US media jungle. Or rather, the worldwide media jungle, owning TV and cable channels, TV production and sports management - Liberty owning  the Atlanta Braves among its $30bn of assets. Discovery claim to have three billion viewers in 220 countries. Their acquisition of Eurosport brought them, they claim, 150 million viewers and half their revenue now comes from their multi-channel operation in Europe.  Their sporting ambition was made clear when they acquired the European rights to the next Olympic Games.

What is perhaps interesting is that the Chairman of F1 owners Liberty Media, John Malone, otherwise known as the Cable Cowboy, appears to have an interest in Discovery as the name Malone appears on their list of Directors…

So BT and Sky are facing some scary competitors. What's the betting that Discovery are planning - some say already negotiating - a one billion dollar buyout of Dorna. They'll get another year of Valentino Rossi…