Some motorsport sponsorships sell visibility. Others sell access: to a team that uses your product every race weekend, to a paddock full of decision-makers, to markets where the company is not yet present. For businesses that sell to other businesses, the second part is the one that counts.

One example makes the point. Oracle has been Red Bull Racing’s title partner since 2022, but before its name went on the team it was already the team’s cloud supplier: since 2021 the race strategy simulations have run on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure. In February 2026 the deal was renewed for several years and expanded with an AI agent that supports the race engineers and with wider use of Oracle’s applications for the team’s finance, HR and marketing. Red Bull Ford Powertrains’ new hybrid power unit was also designed and tested on Oracle’s cloud. The logo on the car is the part people see. The reference customer is the part that sells.

In short

1. A motorsport sponsorship pays off for a B2B company mainly in five ways: the product used by the team, hospitality with clients, the network of other partners, access to the markets where the series races, and content and people inside the company.
2. Visibility is still useful, but on its own it rarely justifies the investment for a company that sells to other companies.
3. The return is measured in sales opportunities and influenced revenue, not in media value.

Key points

• Oracle with Red Bull Racing, Petronas with Mercedes, ABB with Formula E and TotalEnergies with the World Endurance Championship are cases where the sponsor’s product works inside the competition.
• DHL has been Formula 1’s logistics partner since 2004 and a founding partner of Formula E since 2013: two championships, the same demonstration of capability.
• The paddock and hospitality are there to spend time with clients and prospects in a setting no office can offer.

Why motorsport speaks to companies that sell to other companies

Top-level motorsport combines three things that few other sports offer in the same package. It is applied technology, with teams that are in effect engineering companies. It travels the world, with calendars that reach Europe, the Americas, Asia and the Middle East in a single season. And it has a paddock built to receive guests: hospitality areas, partner-only events, access you cannot buy at the ticket office.

For a consumer brand, the main value is still the audience in front of the screen. For a B2B company the maths is different. The right question is not how many people watch the race. It is how many of those people, and of those at the circuit, sign contracts in the sponsor’s sector.

We have mapped the options by sector in our guide to motorsport sponsorship for tech and SaaS brands. Here we focus on the mechanisms that turn a partnership into business.

Five ways a sponsorship generates B2B business

1. The product used by the team

This is the strongest route, because it turns the sponsor into a supplier. When a team uses a product to win, that product has passed a test no brochure can simulate, and the B2B customer knows it.

Beyond Oracle, there are many cases. Petronas has been Mercedes’ title and technical partner since 2010: it develops the team’s fuels and lubricants and in 2026, the first year in which Formula 1 requires a 100% sustainable fuel, it supplies the advanced sustainable fuel for the Mercedes cars. The deal had already been extended beyond 2026 back in 2022. TotalEnergies, official fuel supplier of the World Endurance Championship since 2018, in 2022 had every car racing on Excellium Racing 100, a renewable fuel based on bioethanol made from wine-production residues, and since 2026 it has supplied its successor, Excellium Racing evo. ABB has been Formula E’s title partner since 2018 and renewed the deal in 2025; since the Gen3 era it has also supplied the charging technology for the cars, a role the FIA has confirmed for the new Gen4 cars. For a company that sells electrification solutions, a championship of electric race cars is a technical showcase before it is an advertising one.

The limit of this route is that it needs a product that is genuinely useful to the team. Ordinary software does not become more credible because it is installed in a racing department. A technology that affects performance does.

2. Hospitality with clients

A Grand Prix is one of the few settings in which a chief executive is happy to spend a whole day with a supplier. The hospitality areas of Formula 1 and MotoGP, paddock access and a visit to the garage make it possible to build time with a client that simply does not exist in an office.

In our experience, hospitality pays off when it is prepared like a sales meeting: guests chosen on the basis of open deals, an objective for each guest, a follow-up in the weeks that follow. Without that work it remains a nice weekend. We cover it on our page dedicated to MotoGP hospitality.

3. The network of other partners

A top team usually has a broad portfolio of partners, and many of them are companies that buy services from other companies. For a B2B sponsor that list is also a list of potential customers, suppliers or allies, with whom it shares events, guests and communication opportunities.

In our experience teams encourage these contacts with partner-only meetings, and this is a right you can ask to have written into the contract. The value grows when partners also choose each other, not just the team: two companies that approach a shared customer together have one more argument. It is the same principle we described when writing about strategic partnerships in sport: it works when each side brings the other something it did not have.

4. Access to the markets where the series races

The calendar takes the sponsor to where its business is played out. For a company that wants to enter a country, the local Grand Prix is a rare opportunity: an event that local institutions, media and businesses follow closely, with the sponsor inside rather than outside.

The question to ask here is simple: do the races of the chosen property pass through the markets where the company wants to grow? If the answer is no, even the most prestigious paddock is of little use. If it is yes, the race weekend becomes the moment to concentrate meetings, client visits and presentations that would otherwise take months of travel.

5. Content and the company’s own people

A partnership with a team produces stories that a B2B company struggles to find elsewhere: how its product works on track, its technicians working with the team’s engineers, the results of a season. This is content for the website, for trade fairs and for the sales force, and it holds up better than advertising because it describes real use.

And there is an internal audience that is often forgotten: employees. Bringing staff into contact with the team, at the factory or at the circuit, creates pride and engagement. In our experience it also counts when the company is hiring technical staff, because the team’s name says something about the level of the work being done.

DHL: a logistics case across two championships

A B2B sponsorship case worth looking at closely is that of DHL. The company has been Formula 1’s official logistics partner since 2004 and a founding and logistics partner of Formula E since 2013, before the electric championship had even run its first race. Throughout the season it moves cars, technical equipment and championship infrastructure from one city to the next.

The point, for anyone thinking as a B2B sponsor, is that the service provided to the championship is the same one DHL sells to its own customers: moving complex freight between countries, against deadlines that cannot be missed. Every race becomes a public demonstration of that capability, in front of the same logistics managers DHL wants to win over.

DHL does not publish the commercial return of either partnership, and we are wary of anyone quoting precise figures for an ROI case study. Sponsorship values are closely guarded, and any published number should be treated with scepticism, ours included.

How to measure the return on a B2B sponsorship

Media value, meaning what it would cost to buy the same exposure as advertising, is a useful benchmark for comparing packages. It is a poor indicator of commercial impact, especially for companies that sell to other companies and have a small number of high-value customers. These are the indicators that matter:

A programme built and measured around influenced revenue will stand up to the finance director’s questions. One built around impressions will not. The full method is in our guide to sponsorship analytics.

Who it works for, and who should look elsewhere

Motorsport sponsorship works for B2B companies that have a product the team can use, clients to invite and a sales force ready to use the partnership all year round: technology, energy, industry, logistics, professional services. It also works for companies that want to enter a market where the series races and need an opportunity to make themselves known.

Companies with very few clients to look after should look elsewhere, because a bespoke event costs less; so should those with nobody in-house to run the partnership all year, and those mainly looking for awareness among the general public. In that last case a sponsorship designed for consumers, with a plan of digital and on-site activations, will deliver more.

How we work on B2B sponsorships

For more than thirty years we have worked on motorsport sponsorship, today in Formula 1, MotoGP and Formula E. In a B2B project our work starts from the client’s sales pipeline, not from a catalogue of teams: which markets, which clients to invite, which product can work with the team. Then we write a contract that includes these rights, not just space for the logo.

It is worth understanding how our independence is structured. Our commission is paid by the rights holder, not by the brand: that is why we can tell a company when motorsport is not the right choice for its commercial objective. The distinction matters.