Maybe you've been homebound, following American motorcycle racing through livestreams and social media. If so, you might reasonably conclude from the seemingly thin crowds that the sport might be on life support in the United States. The fans who do show up all seem to have arrived from roughly the same generation, and if you were selling a product to them, you'd probably be choosing between artificial hips, trust attorneys and, ahem, male enhancement products. A friend who has attended races at Laguna Seca since the 1970s went home Sunday convinced he'd witnessed the smallest crowd he'd ever seen. He wasn't angry at anyone, he was just very, very concerned. He also drove to the California dirt tracks and was spooked by all the space between fans that he saw there, too.

His fears would have been assuaged had he spent a day at just about any outdoor motocross national, where the crowds—and especially the number of young fans—paint a very different picture. Supercross and motocross are towering strengths in 2026, drawing shoulder-to-shoulder crowds, enjoying a lively television and streaming presence, and inspiring levels of fan enthusiasm that roadracing hasn't witnessed since the Valentino Rossi era.

Autograph sessions at the outdoor motocross nationals are barely controlled pandemonium. It's not unusual to see one male fan perched on another male fan's shoulders, desperately trying to catch a rider's eye, and these are not teens, either. Then there are the fans who completely defy expectations. You might strike up a conversation with a pleasant, soft-spoken woman standing quietly along the fence separating riders from spectators. She's a tenured university librarian. She says she burns vacation days every year to attend three Supercross rounds and two outdoor nationals. Does she ride? No, she replies, as though you've asked the most ridiculous question imaginable.

Then her favorite rider appears.

In an instant, the quiet librarian disappears. She becomes a screaming, nearly tearful fan, waving anything she can find in hopes of getting an autograph—program, hat, jersey, perhaps even a body part if the opportunity presented itself. The transformation is so complete that first-time observers instinctively begin looking around for an EMT armed with an oxygen mask and, just possibly, restraints. Seemingly there is a person like this every ten feet at a motocross national.

And it's not just fans that crowd the motocross event. There are factory teams from KTM, Kawasaki, Honda, Ducati, Beta, Honda, Yamaha, and Triumph. Yes, Triumph. Suzuki is the only major manufacturer that does not race the outdoor nationals with a factory team, full-time (Suzuki rider Ken Roczen won the 2026 Supercross title). And there are multitudes of support teams. Additionally, there must be around 600 people in the motocross paddock who wake up every morning because a race team signs their paycheck.

The tractor-trailer parking lot at these motocross races sometimes looks like Little Sister's Truck Wash in Barstow after a desert rain, with rigs packed in everywhere.

The streaming numbers for the outdoor motocross series are stellar: 1 million streams per race, which are NASCAR or NHL-level numbers.

So, how did this happen, and more importantly, why didn't it happen to American roadracing?

Because outdoor motocross never really underwent the upheaval that roadracing did when the AMA sold its professional racing series to Daytona Motorsports Group. It never endured the years-long nuclear winter during which fans simply stopped following this niche sport. And unlike roadracing, motocross didn't have to be rescued and painstakingly rebuilt by Wayne Rainey, Chuck Aksland and Richard Varner—with tens of millions of real dollars of Varner's own investment (God love him). Dirt bike racing never really lost their momentum, with stakeholders pushing forward together in a powerful package that the fans and sponsors could not ignore.

Entire seasons of US roadracing were lost while old scores were settled. And the manufacturers who did participate tried to control the championship so everything was painted blue, which made it an easy decision for the other manufacturers not to participate. So here we are.

On the upside, the Midwest rounds of Moto-Rainey are the strongest. While Laguna Seca looked barren, Road America has clocked two of its largest motorcycle events in the last two seasons, and Mid-Ohio might be again back to its late-1990s strength. If you buy the explanation that Mid-Ohio's 2026 crowd was down because a bogus weather forecast promised rain every day, consider this: motocross fans will stand in the rain for hours to watch their heroes ride. They'll park half a mile away and, when it's over, risk burying their cars to the axles trying to get out of the mud. And they will be back next year.

In 2026 US roadracing vs motocross is truly the tale of two paddocks. One paddock is searching for the audience it once had. The other is struggling to find room for the audience it already has.