On 31 December 2024 one of the longest-running and most successful sponsorships in MotoGP history came to an end. Repsol and Honda had raced together since 1995: thirty years, 183 wins, 15 riders’ titles across 500cc and MotoGP, and an orange livery that even people who never watch racing recognise at first glance. One story, two lessons. The first is that an association this strong can only be built over time. The second is that even the most solid programme remains exposed to what happens on track: Honda’s technical slump and Marc Márquez’s departure weighed on the decision to part ways.

Updated September 2026.

Between those two lessons sit almost all the mistakes we see first-time sponsors make in the MotoGP World Championship. The 2026 context makes them more expensive than usual. The calendar has 22 Grands Prix in 18 countries, from the Buriram opener in late February to the Valencia finale in November. Since July 2025 the championship has been owned by Liberty Media, the same group that owns Formula 1. And from 2027 come 850cc engines, less aerodynamics and Pirelli as sole tyre supplier in place of Michelin: anyone signing a multi-year contract today is signing across a change of regulations. Here are the eight mistakes worth avoiding.

1. Buying the result instead of the meaning

Everyone enjoys a podium, but a sponsorship built on podiums is a bet, not an investment. Performance depends on variables no sponsor controls: a bike that doesn’t work, an injury, a change of team. The programmes that last are the ones built on what is predictable: the values shared with the team or rider, the audience reached, the rights to use the brand, access to the paddock for clients and partners. If the value of the contract evaporates when the rider slides down to fifteenth place, the contract was badly written from the start.

2. Choosing the sport you like

It is the most natural instinct and the most dangerous one: taking the brand where we would take ourselves on a Sunday afternoon. The owner’s passion is not a marketing criterion. The right question is a different one: does that championship speak to the audience we care about, in the markets where we sell, with values our customers recognise? MotoGP is very strong in Mediterranean Europe, South-East Asia and Latin America, and Brazil’s return in 2026 confirms it. For a company that sells mainly in North America or Germany the answer might be different, and finding out beforehand costs far less than finding out afterwards.

3. The empty sticker: no activation budget

We call it the “empty sticker”: a sponsorship that stops at the logo on the fairing. The contract with the team buys rights, not results: value is only created when those rights are activated, that is, turned into client hospitality, content, promotions, events and campaigns. And activation has a cost that is not in the contract. For years the industry used precise rules of thumb, from one to two dollars of activation for every dollar spent on rights. In 2022 IEG itself, the organisation that had made them popular, wrote that fixed ratios no longer make sense and that the budget should be built on objectives. We agree. But in our experience a first-year programme without a dedicated activation figure, budgeted from the start, almost always ends up as an empty sticker.

4. Underestimating specific expertise

Sport has a reputation problem: because everyone watches it, everyone thinks they can manage it. Nobody would hand a complex financial operation to a finance enthusiast, yet it is common to see significant sponsorship budgets handed to people who have never negotiated a contract with a team. MotoGP has its own rules, timings, hierarchies and customs, different from those of Formula 1 and even more so from those of football or basketball. That is what an agency specialised in MotoGP sponsorship is for. In most cases its commission is paid by the team or the property, not by the brand, a detail worth asking about before signing.

5. Planning once the season has started

When the bikes hit the track, it is already late. In 2026 the first Grand Prix was held in Thailand from 27 February to 1 March, and the second in Brazil three weeks later. Everything needed to make the most of a season, from the advertising campaign using the team’s images to the client hospitality programme, from sales-network incentives to social content, has to be decided during the winter months, between the Valencia finale in November and the early-year tests. A practical rule: have the complete plan ready at least a month before the first Grand Prix. Those who reach March with ideas still to be defined spend the first half of the season playing catch-up.

6. Thinking in sprint mode

Since 2023 every MotoGP weekend has had its Sprint, the Saturday race over half distance. It works brilliantly on track. In sponsorship, however, sprint logic is a mistake. Associating a brand with the values of a sport is a slow process: the audience has to see the brand, link it to the team, transfer to it what they think of that sport and, eventually, change their buying choices. It does not happen in one season. The Repsol and Honda story is the extreme example, but even on a much smaller scale a one-year contract is rarely enough to see measurable results. In 2026 there is one more reason to think across several seasons: from 2027 bikes and tyres change, and the order on track could be reshuffled. Better to have a plan that holds up in both scenarios.

To weigh up the alternatives in terms of cost and duration, we have written a guide on a single race or the whole season, and another on rider, team, Grand Prix or championship.

7. Doing everything alone

Unless you are Red Bull or Monster Energy, companies with decades of motorsport experience and dedicated in-house structures, trying to run a MotoGP sponsorship on your own is a gamble. The team’s marketing department knows its own rights, constraints and calendars better than anyone, and should be involved as a partner, not treated as a supplier. The same goes for the agency. Be wary, too, of anyone who presents themselves as an expert after being handed a paddock pass: the racing world is small, reputations are made quickly and lost even faster.

8. Not deciding in advance how to measure

The last mistake is also the most widespread: signing without having established what will count as success. TV visibility, contacts generated in the hospitality area, sales in Grand Prix markets, brand awareness: each of these objectives requires different measurement tools, and none can be reconstructed once the season is over. An advertising equivalency calculated after the fact says nothing about commercial return. A well-measured sponsorship, on the other hand, involves the whole company, from sales to management, and becomes defensible in front of a board. We have covered the topic in depth in how sponsorship ROI is really measured.

What remains

None of these mistakes concerns the budget itself. You can make all eight with a million euros and avoid all of them with a tenth of that sum. They concern the way sponsorship is conceived: as a purchase of space or as a marketing project that lasts over time. The difference usually only shows after a few seasons, which is exactly why it pays to decide it beforehand. For those weighing up the first step, our guide to MotoGP sponsorship is the place to start, and our team is available for a first conversation.

Sources: Honda Racing Corporation, the end of the collaboration with Repsol; MotoGP, the 2026 calendar; MotoGP, Liberty Media completes the acquisition; IEG, Activation Ratios Are Dead.