How Kuala Lumpur Turned One Weekend Into a Sports Asset

I came to Kuala Lumpur for a cricket tour and was blessed with a weekend full of sport, from one of Asia’s biggest youth rugby tournaments to the 2026 MotoGP Season Launch. Hong Kong Cricket Club were on tour in Malaysia, based between Kelab Aman, a wonderful ground just off Jalan Ampang, and our reciprocal home - the Royal Selangor Club. The plan was simple: play good cricket, enjoy time with our host clubs, and soak up the city. Instead, the weekend became a showcase of youth sport, MotoGP and how seamlessly Kuala Lumpur now stages sports tourism.

Kelab Aman, literally the “Peace Club”, is a ground with real pedigree, it hosted ICC Trophy matches and List A games during the 1998 Commonwealth Games, and remains a hub for cricket and Sikh community sport in the city. Royal Selangor Club (RSC) meanwhile, carries the history. Founded in 1884 beside what is now Dataran Merdeka, it once looked out over the padang that served as Malaya’s early cricket and rugby home, before that field was handed over to City Hall and converted into a national ceremonial space.

Today, RSC’s actual playing heartbeat is out at Bukit Kiara. Over our tour we moved between RSC’s venues at Dataran Merdeka and Bukit Kiara, getting the the old colonial façade of Malaysian crickets heritage, the heartbeat of sport in the city, and the national symbolism of the square where independence was declared.

The KL Tigers International Junior Rugby Tournament 2026 took over the Bukit Kiara Equestrian & Country Resort the same weekend we were in town. Hosted on 7–8th February, hundreds of games, thousands of kids, and a festival atmosphere. Since 2015 the event has grown into one of Asia’s largest youth rugby carnivals, drawing 150+ teams from many different countries including Malaysia, Singapore, Hong Kong and Japan, and by 2025 it was attracting around 168 teams and over 7,000 players and spectators.

A few things stand out:

From a business‑of‑sport angle, this is youth sport as a tourism product. Hundreds of families travel, stay in hotels for two or three nights, eat out, and in some cases build their annual travel calendar around this single tournament. Sponsors like Yinson GreenTech, Pos Malaysia and others attach themselves to that community, with government agencies effectively underwriting the broader impact by providing recognition and support. For investors and rights‑holders, it’s a reminder that value in sport doesn’t just live at the elite level; it’s built from the bottom up, one junior tournament at a time.

And then, layered on top of that grassroots weekend, came MotoGP.

One point of clarity first, what happened in KL this weekend was not the Grand Prix. It was the official 2026 MotoGP Season Launch, a week of fan engagement at KLCC culminating in a street‑based show‑run while the PETRONAS Grand Prix of Malaysia 2026 will take place later in the year, from 30 October to 1 November 2026, at Sepang International Circuit as Round 20 of the championship.

The launch itself was clever:

The real racing, with championship points and full grids, comes later at Sepang. That three‑day event will once again deliver “adrenaline‑fuelled MotoGP excitement” to a sold‑out circuit across Friday practice, Saturday qualifying and Sunday’s races in all classes.

At series level, MotoGP’s commercial picture has changed dramatically. In 2025, Liberty Media (the owner of Formula 1) completed a €4.2 billion (US$4.9bn) acquisition of Dorna Sports, taking an 84% stake in MotoGP’s commercial rights holder, with the remaining 16% retained by existing management. Liberty describes MotoGP as a “scarce league‑level asset” with broad IP rights and “a strong cash flow profile” driven by long‑term media and hosting contracts.

MotoGP’s revenue mix looks roughly like this:

On the Malaysia side, the event is officially the PETRONAS Grand Prix of Malaysia, with the national oil company as title sponsor and as long‑term fuel supplier to Moto2 and Moto3. Sepang International Circuit, now under direct government control, acts as promoter and venue operator, integrating MotoGP into a broader strategy to position Malaysia as an international motorsports destination.

Team sponsors show where the money is coming from in the region: PETRONAS (Malaysia), Pertamina (Indonesia), BK8 (regional digital brand), alongside global players like Lenovo, Shell and Castrol. For brands looking to speak to the Asian two‑wheel market, there are few better platforms.

The justification for all this is not abstract. For the 2024 Malaysian MotoGP, Second Finance Minister Datuk Seri Amir Hamzah Azizan told Parliament the event generated approximately RM694 million in GDP contribution and delivered a 6.3 times return on every ringgit spent by the government. Hosting the race:

This sits within a broader sports‑tourism play. Malaysia’s investment agency highlights sports tourism as a high‑potential segment, and events like MotoGP, junior rugby, golf and multi‑sport tours (like ours) are all pieces of that puzzle. The KLCC season launch adds another layer: it brings visitors into the city centre in February, showcases KL on global broadcasts and social feeds, and gives PETRONAS, tourism agencies and team sponsors another activation moment without the cost of running a second race.

From where I was standing on the boundary, the throughline is clear.

At the base, you have youth rugby and clubs like KL Tigers building participation and habit, backed by ministries that understand the tourism and community upside. In the middle, you have private clubs like Royal Selangor and Kelab Aman, whose members play, network and often sit on the boards and in the C‑suites of companies that spend money on sponsorship and hospitality. At the top, you have MotoGP: a global IP now owned by Liberty Media, anchored at Sepang, with a single race weekend generating close to RM700 million of economic impact.

For investors and decision‑makers, that stack is where the opportunity lies. You can back infrastructure and real estate around Sepang, build experience and travel products that package cricket, rugby and MotoGP into one proposition, or look at minority stakes and partnerships in teams, data and content businesses that sit inside Liberty’s expanding motorsport universe.

I came to KL for a Hong Kong Cricket Club tour, and I left with the sense of overwhelming gratitude for the reciprocal club network that we have the privilege of visiting and more of an idea of what Malaysia are trying to build, a genuine sports economy.