As far as I am aware - MOST of the pros no longer ride SM and don't own bikes. Lets see a few, Steve Drew (no bike), Brandon Currie (no bike), Kurt Nicoll (no bike), Mickey Dymond (could borrow CHM bike) Dustin Hoffman (has been borrowing a Husky) Josh Chisum (not sure if he has his bike anymore) Mark Burkhart (HMC sold most bikes, may have one left) Team Troy Lee: (sold every supermoto part and bike) That means Jeff Ward and David Pingree don't have bikes or even wheels and brakes to build a quick bike. Cassidy Anderson (no bike, he might have a moto bike) Darryl Atkins (sold all of his Aprilias) Joey Pascarella (not sure if he has a SM bike anymore) Not sure about Casey Yarrow or Danny Casey. Graves also sold all supermoto parts and bikes a year ago.
East and West with a Final is a good idea. However, the big problem, which has been an issue even when supermoto was in full force (2004-2007) Sponsors to bring enough money to the table to have a decent purse. Pulls, Ticket sales. If it was hard to get over a few thousand people to come to race in the good times, it is going to be more difficult now. Promoters lost their asses doing nationals back in the good times because of poor ticket sales and huge AMA sanction fees (a good part of the fee was to pay for the purse)
Getting several promoters to call one of their big races a National is a good idea - but if there is not a decent purse, contingency or support, pros are not going to travel to all of the races unless they are only few hundred miles from where they live. If they have a chance to cover some of the costs with purse money or contingency, or even show-up money if you love over 300 miles from the race - if not, it will be a local race with local races. And if only 5-8 riders attend all of the "National Series Races" it is hard to call it a National. If only a handful of races attend every race, sponsors are not going to put up money for a "National" Series
Some of you might not remember. Paul Brent and Glen Curtis attempted to put on a non-sanctioned National series in the beginning of 2003. It kind of started off Ok with a few of the early names attending the first few rounds, Gary Trachy, Steve Drew, Jason Priedmore, Scott Russell, Mike Metzger, Matt Pursley to name a few. But as the series went back East and few rounds got rained out and then the Long Beach parking lot race was a joke - the series fell apart and few people attended the following rounds. Then the AMA announced the PRO series and that was all she wrote.
Something needs to be solid or it is not even worth doing. If by round three there are 8 pros showing up to events and the finals are 10-12 pros on the line, it will not look good and anti-supermoto people will call us a joke. For some reason the "Hard-Core" motocross industry has never embraced supermoto - they bagged on it more then praised it.
Talk is cheap, it will take a few people full-time commitment and a lot of start-up capitol to make a go of a "Real Pro Series" It is all about risk - and that is part of the reason I think the AMA series never got going as well as it should have. Everyone wanted to make $ right off the bat, especially the former AMA Pro Racing people. They did not invest the Red Bull money back into the sport. Instead they put the money into the general AMA Pro Racing fund and ran the SM races on a shoe-string budget and put and asked the promotes to do too much to get a unknown sport off the ground. All the AMA said was they hand no budget - even though Red Bull sponsored the series and put up Crazy money (I don't know the numbers) But some said that if they would have invested the sponsor money into the sport, (small sanction fees, better marketing, better branding) things might have been better.
I know I was hooked and I dropped everything, quite my solid job at Dirt Rider Magazine to start my own Supermoto magazine. I thought SM was the shit and I was 100% behind it. I invested a bunch of money to keep the mag going for six years until I realized others that were running the Pro Sport might not have had my passion or a way to fund the series.
Like I have written before, if anyone knows of a rich person willing to have some fun and fund a pros supermoto series and do it right - might make some $ in five-eight years. It cost probably 2-3 hundred thousand to put on a bike race like the one in Reno or the race like Troy Lee Designs did at the Queen Marry a few years ago.