MotoGP Haemorrhaging in Italy

While the Assen circuit saw over 97,000 fans show up for the races on Saturday, in Italy the viewing audiences on Italia 1 plunged to a record low this year.
These are the Auditel numbers for the 2010 Dutch GP race: 2.
579.
000 people tuned in to watch Jorge Lorenzo dominate and that was a 16.

79% share, while last year’s race at Assen the viewers were almost twice that number, hitting 5.

249.
000 households and a 31.
60% share and the numbers are even worse for this year’s 125cc and Moto2 races.
In a little more than twenty days since Valentino Rossi crashed out at the Mugello, audiences have been slowly, but relentless dropping.
The Mugello saw 4.
8 million, Silverstone 4.
3 and now Assen with a little more that 2.
5 million and this last number is scary, especially for a TV channel who rakes in millions of euros from adverstising that includes commercials from various MotoGP sponsors, before and during the races.

We were convinced that the drop was due to the World Cup, people getting out more and beautiful beach weather and finally on Rossi crashing, but this doesn’t seem the case anymore, and if this haemorrhaging is a sign of what will happen when Rossi finally retires, yours truly may end up having to subscribe to motogp.

com or a satellite channel instead of watching the races for free.
We’d like to know if this trend is only related to Italian viewers or if audiences are dropping this fast in other countries, so if you have the numbers from your country why not send them to us.