Motorcycle: Ducati again without plus, hope for cheaper models
Ducati is way ahead in terms of sport, but sales have been stagnating for years despite many fans. This is problematic in the long term.
The Ducati Panigale V4 is considered one of the best superbikes on the market.
(Image: Ducati)
- Ingo Gach
Ducati is extremely successful in the sport, the Italian manufacturer has become MotoGP World Champion for the third time in a row, twice with the factory Desmosedici and once as engine supplier for the Pramac-Ducati, and is also considered the favorite for the 2025 season. The traditional brand has 16 Superbike World Championship titles to its name, more than any other manufacturer, and has won the Supersport World Championship in the last two years with the Panigale 955 V2. The electric motorcycle world championship MotoE is ridden with the standardized Ducati V21L machine. Now the brand from Bologna is also ambitiously competing in the Motocross World Championship with its newly developed Desmo 450 MX.
Top in sport, poor in sales
In sporting terms, things could hardly be going better, and yet Ducati is struggling with a stubborn problem: sales figures for production motorcycles have been stagnating for years, despite the model offensive. Last year, Ducati delivered 54,495 motorcycles worldwide, a decline of 6.4 percent compared to the previous year. Obviously, sales cannot benefit from the MotoGP successes.
The situation last year is no exception, as Ducati has been hovering around 50,000 units per year for a long time, with 55,451 units sold in 2017 and a drop to 48,042 in 2020. Just for comparison: BMW Motorrad has been growing continuously for years and sold 210,408 motorcycles last year, which was over 40,000 more than in 2020.
Expensive Multistrada is the most successful model
Ducati can only dream of such figures, despite its good reputation as a cult brand with a decidedly sporty image. The models have powerful engines, state-of-the-art electronics and – in most cases – an attractive design, but Ducati is still not growing. Why is that? The best-selling model in 2024 was the Multistrada touring enduro with 13,069 units worldwide, 10,114 of which were equipped with the powerful V4 engine. The Multistrada V4 was also the most successful Ducati in Germany with 904 new registrations.
The first obstacle for buyers is the price: the Multistrada V2 (113 hp) starts at 15,990 euros, the Multistrada V4 (170 hp) costs at least 20,590 euros and the Multistrada V4 Rally with long suspension travel and wire wheels even costs 27,190 euros. The Multistradas are excellent motorcycles, but the V2 is significantly more expensive compared to the competition and the V4 has to compete against the (barely cheaper) BMW R 1300 GS (test). The boxer enduro has dominated the market for years with overwhelmingly superior sales figures; in 2024, BMW sold over 68,000 units of the R 1250 GS Adventure, R 1300 GS and R 1300 GS Adventure models worldwide.
Powerful sports bikes no longer popular
This was followed by the Panigale sports models in the Ducati sales ranking in 2024. The World Championship titles in MotoGP and Superbike should actually be boosting sales here, but in general, very powerful sports motorcycles have hardly found any buyers across all brands for years. The Panigale models sold just 8456 units worldwide. They are also in the high-price segment. The Panigale V2 with 155 hp cost 20,690 euros last year, the Panigale V4 with 216 hp started at 26,190 euros, the Panigale V4 R – the homologation model for the Superbike World Championship – with 218 hp had a hefty 43,990 euros on the price tag.
Ducati stagniert (7 Bilder)
Ducati
)The management in Bologna is trying to counteract this with a completely renewed Panigale V2 for 2025. Although it has significantly less power at 120 hp, it costs noticeably less than its predecessor at 16,390 euros. Ducati achieved the lower price by dispensing with the complex, desmodromic valve control and the single-sided swingarm, among other things. The price of the better equipped Panigale V2 S with suspension components from Öhlins jumps to 18,890 euros. Whether the measures will be reflected in the sales figures of the Ducati sports bikes remains to be seen, as they are still not really cheap.
Monster without volume
Only after all the premium models does the naked bike “Monster” appear in Ducati's 2024 sales statistics, which was actually supposed to take on the role of the volume model. Once a guarantor of steady revenue for Ducati, the Monster had sold over 350,000 units since its launch in 1992. But then, in 2022, the company management decided to completely change the design of the Monster. Without the tubular frame, desmodromic design and the V2 engine behind plastic covers, it resembled any other Asian motorcycle, according to malicious tongues. It was no longer perceived as a Monster by the die-hard Ducatisti. They therefore punished the model by refusing to buy it. A total of 6344 Monsters were delivered worldwide last year.
Yet, the current Monster is certainly not a bad motorcycle. It rides well, is light and the 937 cm3 two-cylinder engine delivers a decent 111 hp. However, at 12,390 euros, it is anything but a special offer, and as an SP version with Öhlins components in its chassis, higher-quality brakes and an exhaust from Termignoni, it even costs 15,290 euros. The best-selling naked bike in Germany and direct competitor of the Monster, the Kawasaki Z 900 (test), has a powerful in-line four-cylinder engine with almost the same displacement and 124 hp. However, last year it only cost 10,295 euros and achieved 4,129 new registrations in Germany alone. The Monster, on the other hand, only achieved 887.
Good enduro remains a slow seller
In 2022, Ducati countered the wave of success of enduro bikes such as the Honda CRF 1100 Africa Twin (test) and Yamaha Ténéré 700 Explore Edition (test) with the DesertX. The Bolognese wanted a slice of the pie in the off-road mid-range segment. Although the trade press unanimously praised the Italo-Enduro with the 110 hp V2 (it also has the 937 cm3 twin cylinder), it has not yet found too many buyers because at 16,790 euros it was around 1800 euros more expensive than the Africa Twin, which achieved 1591 new registrations in Germany.
(Image: Ducati)
The other Ducati models, such as the Streetfighter, Diavel and Hypermotard, followed the same pattern: beautiful and powerful, but expensive and therefore difficult to sell. Ducati's model policy is too premium-oriented, and the brand remains at the same level in terms of unit sales. Unsurprisingly, the market with the highest number of registrations for Ducati is Italy. In its home country, Ducati was only able to grow by a meagre one percent in 2024 with 9589 motorcycles sold. In the second most important market, the USA, sales slumped by 14 percent to 6,993 units and in Germany, sales fell by four percent to 6,575 units.
Financially well positioned
The 99-year-old Ducati brand has belonged to Audi and thus to the Volkswagen Group since 2012. Audi stands by its Italian motorcycle brand, but the 2024 balance sheet with a 6.4 percent drop in sales will have given the financially ailing car brand food for thought, even if Claudio Domenicali, CEO of Ducati, is emphatically optimistic: “We have a solid financial base that enables us to invest continuously and significantly in research and development, innovation and competition.”
Although Ducati achieved sales revenue of €840 million in 2024, this represents a decline of €48 million compared to the previous year. The operating result even fell by 18.4 percent to 91 million euros (2023: 112 million euros). After the extensive model offensive in 2024, the management had certainly hoped for more. After all, Ducati achieved a decent operating return on sales of 9.1 percent, although this represents a decrease of 1.4 percent compared to 2023.
(Image: Ducati)
Ducati needs growth
As long as Ducati can show such returns, they have nothing to worry about. But the lack of growth could become a problem in the long term. Ducati has enough expensive models with relatively high profit margins but low sales figures. What the brand is missing is a high-volume model that will win the hearts of fans again and bring in reliable cash. The Monster fulfilled this task for a good two decades, followed by the retro Scrambler model as a bestseller in 2014, but the latter no longer captures the spirit of the times, while the current Monster is simply too expensive to achieve high sales figures. Sporting success is very important for Ducati, but is not enough on its own to increase sales figures.
(fpi)