Having never watch a single race of WSB, is it good? Does it feel watered down compared to MotoGP?
While they both appeal to bike racing fans, historically, WSBK appealed to a very specific type of fan.
MotoGP is the pinnacle of two wheeled racing. Purpose-built prototype bikes, corporate, big budgets, big production and the biggest names. The Formula One of the two-wheeled world. A spectacle, but not exactly accessible.
WSBK appealed to the average Joe who owned a bike. Costs were infinitely lower than MotoGP because the bikes were mostly production based, and because it was production based it was more relatable to the average bike enthusiast. The bike you saw winning the race is the same bike you could go and buy from the dealer on Monday - ''Win of Sunday, sell on Monday'' - barring the addition of a few go fast parts and race-spec suspension, brakes and tyres. And even then, these were parts you yourself could buy anyway. A big draw during the heyday of WSBK in the 90s and early 2000s were the wild card riders, especially at races in Japan and the UK. Local heroes from national superbike championships who would enter a WSBK race and compete, often winning races. Fans could turn out and watch riders they were familiar with in their national series give the big names of WSBK a run for their money. Even when we hosted WSBK races, we had some of our local guys enter. The accessibility of the series made it a huge hit, and the riders tended to be far more charismatic than their MotoGP equivalents.
The guy who rode his bike to Donington Park (scene of some legendary WSBK races) could intimately relate to WSBK. While he would also go and watch MotoGP, he wasn't as attached to it.
MotoGP is still what it was, but WSBK is not what it once was. Modern production bikes are not accessible. In local terms, a Ducati Panigale V4 R, which is what Ducati races in WSBK, is a R900,000 machine. This price inaccessibility is seen across the globe where production superbikes are ridiculously expensive and their sales are declining. A series that once appealed to the average bike enthusiast is now another playground for the rich. The dominance of Ducati in WSBK has been a consequence of their success in MotoGP, which has seen technical developments in MotoGP filter their way onto production bikes (those wings you see on road bikes? directly from MotoGP). Ducati's budget in WSBK is also significantly higher than the others, specifically the Japanese makers, so the cost of running competitively in WSBK has gone way up. The wild cards are long gone, priced out of competing and even if they had the money for the bike, operationally the sport has moved away from garage racers. All of this has robbed the sport of its competitiveness and identity.
So in a long-winded way, WSBK is essentially MotoGP lite because it has moved away from what made it stand out.
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