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Globally, how many people practice off road motorcycling, and what is the global market size for this sport?
Hi! Thanks for asking Wonder to find the global market size for off road motorcycling.
The short answer is there are between 178,881,987 and 371,602,007 off-road motorcycle users worldwide. . Below you will find a deep dive into my findings. The market size for this segment is $30.36 billion.
OVERVIEW
Sales of motorcycles in general remains strong. In early 2016, BMW Motorrad recorded record sales, with a YOY increase of 3%. Major western European markets recorded strong growth, along with the emerging eastern European markets. Sales in other parts of the world, such as Thailand and Japan, were also well above average. Sales in the US were also up 3.45% in 2015 (latest available year).
The global motorcycle industry is worth $93.7 billion, with a CAGR of 4.9% over the next five years.
OFF-ROAD MOTORCYCLES
In Australia, off-road motorcycles account for 31.9% of the total motorcycle market. In the UK, they hold a 32.9% share. Statista predicts that in 2018, 132.4 million motorcycles will be sold that year. Unfortunately, there is no way of knowing how this correlates to the number of total motorcycle users. We can, however, use some other data to attempt to extrapolate an answer.
According to this report, off-road motorcycles are not yet popular in non-car-centric countries like India, China and southeast Asia, where motorcycles are used for primary transportation instead of sport. 58% of motorcycles worldwide are said to be in these countries. Therefore, in order to get a true estimate of the number of off-road motorcycles, this figure needs to be removed from the global total.
132.4 million - 58% = 55.6 million motorcycles sold in car-centric countries
If we then calculate that off-road motorcycles make up approximately an average of 32.4% of the total market, then that means there will be, roughly, 18 million off-road motorcycles sold in countries where off-road motorcycling is popular.
According to a survey of motorcycle users, the average number of bikes owned per person is 2.8. Another survey, also US-based, gave the mean number of off-road vehicles per owner as 1.75. However, since we have removed the countries where motorcycles are not generally used for sport, this also means we have mostly eliminated countries where multiple bike ownership would be impossible. While this is not perfect, the lack of any other concrete data means this is best estimation possible with free, publicly available data.
Therefore, 18 million off-road motorcycle purchases in 2018 could be new (supplemental) or replacements. A simple calculation could be: 18 million / 1.75 bikes per owner (this was an off-road specific figure, so am erring with the lower number as it seems more practical for worldwide application) = 10.3 million off-road motorcycles.
We know that in the US there were 8,410,255 motorcycles in the US. In that same year, there were a total of 483,526 sales. This gives us a ratio of 5.75% total:yearly sales. We can extrapolate this to the global 18 million figure to scale up to a total of 313,043,478 off-road motorcycles worldwide. To find the number of owner/riders, we then divide that number by 1.75 average bikes per owner to arrive at: 178,881,987.
As an alternative method of calculation, we could instead take the average ownership rates of several non-car-centric countries where off-road motorcycles are likely to be used in some quantity (the high on-road ownership rates of SE Asia & India would skew the averages). This gives a global average of total motorcycle ownership at 15.34%. Then to find off-road motorcyclists out of this, we then divide further by 32.4% market share = 4.97%.
4.97% of the total worldwide population is 371,602,007 off-road motorcycle users.
MARKET SIZE
32.4% (off-road market share) of the industry total worth of $93.7 billion equals an off-road motorcycle market size of $30.36 billion.
CONCLUSION
In conclusion, there are between 178,881,987 and 371,602,007 off-road motorcycle users worldwide, using 2018 projection data.
I hope this is helpful. Please feel free to ask Wonder if you have any more questions!