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Auto racing sponsorship and how sponsors choose racing teams
By Emanuele Venturoli| Posted April 27, 2025 | In Formula 1, Sport Sponsorship, Sports Marketing
By Emanuele Venturoli| Posted April 27, 2025 | In Formula 1, Sport Sponsorship, Sports Marketing
Auto racing sponsorship and how sponsors choose racing teams
Auto racing sponsorship is a pivotal element in motorsport, driving both team viability and brand visibility through strategic partnerships. Sponsors evaluate teams based on performance metrics, audience demographics, brand alignment, and innovative activation opportunities. Recent trends also highlight sustainability initiatives and digital engagement as key decision drivers. This article examine how sponsors choose racing teams, offers case studies of marquee partnerships, and outlines emerging trends shaping the future of motorsport sponsorship.
The Role of Auto Racing Sponsorship in Motorsport
Sponsorship provides critical financial support that enables teams to cover costs ranging from technical development to logistics, while sponsors gain access to passionate global audiences through exciting, memorable branding and hospitality platforms. Beyond funding, effective sponsorship fosters long-term partnerships that enhance brand equity and fan loyalty, transforming sponsor logos into symbols of speed, precision, and innovation.
How Sponsors Choose Racing Teams
Sponsors undertake a multifaceted evaluation process to determine the optimal racing team for their investment. Key factors include:
Performance and Competitive Success
Sponsors prioritize teams with strong on-track results, podium finishes, and championship contention, ensuring visibility during high-profile events and maximizing return on investment. Consistent performance not only attracts media coverage but also aligns the sponsor’s image with excellence and reliability.
Audience Reach and Media Exposure
Teams with extensive fan bases across broadcast, digital, and social channels offer sponsors amplified exposure. Audience analytics—such as demographic profiles, geographic distribution, and engagement rates—are scrutinized to align sponsorship with target customer segments. Values like brand recall and share of voice during race weekends factor heavily into sponsorship negotiations, ensuring measurable impact for sponsors
Brand Alignment and Shared Values
Sponsors seek teams whose ethos resonates with their own brand identity. Shared values such as innovation, sustainability, or heritage create authentic partnerships that extend beyond logo placement to co-created content, hospitality experiences, and community initiatives. For example, eco-focused brands partner with teams advancing carbon-neutral initiatives, aligning brand messaging with environmental stewardship.
Innovation and Digital Activation
In an era of digital transformation, sponsors favor teams that leverage technology—such as VR/AR fan experiences, live data streaming, and AI-driven analytics—to engage audiences. These activations enhance fan experiences and provide sponsors with rich data on consumer behavior Digital platforms allow sponsors to create personalized content, track engagement in real time, and optimize campaigns for maximum ROI.
Case Studies of Successful Partnerships
LVMH’s Landmark Deal with Formula One
In March 2025, LVMH inked a 10-year global sponsorship with Formula One, replacing Rolex and bringing luxury brands like Louis Vuitton and Tag Heuer into the fold. The partnership emphasizes excellence, innovation, and lifestyle alignment, leveraging F1’s cultural momentum from “Drive to Survive” to reach affluent and emerging audiences
KitKat’s Groundbreaking F1 Sponsorship
Celebrating its 90th anniversary in 2025, KitKat launched a multi-year deal with F1 to boost global presence and appeal to younger fans under 30. The partnership features interactive fan experiences, special-edition products, and playful digital content, illustrating how FMCG brands can leverage motorsport to reinvigorate legacy products.
Trends Shaping the Future of Motorsport Sponsorship
Sustainability and Eco-Focused Sponsorship
Environmental consciousness is influencing auto racing sponsorship and sponsorship deals in general, with brands keen to partner on carbon-neutral events and waste reduction initiatives. Teams adopting green technologies are increasingly attractive to sponsors with ESG mandates.
Digital Fan Engagement and Data Analytics
Sponsors demand robust data on fan behavior—leveraging social listening, sentiment analysis, and biometric tracking—to tailor activations. Teams offering comprehensive digital ecosystems, from immersive VR paddock tours to interactive mobile apps, create premium sponsorship platforms.
Diversification Across Series
Brands are exploring partnerships beyond traditional Formula 1, including Formula E’s sustainability narrative, WEC’s endurance audience, and MotoGP’s younger demographics. Diversifying across series allows sponsors to target niche markets and experiment with innovative activations
Auto racing sponsorship continuing to evolve
Auto racing sponsorship continues to evolve, driven by performance metrics, audience insights, brand alignment, and digital innovation. By understanding how sponsors choose racing teams—prioritizing visibility, shared values, and data-driven activations—teams can craft compelling proposals and secure long-term partnerships. Emerging trends in sustainability and technology will further shape the sponsorship landscape, offering new opportunities for brands and teams to engage global audiences.
Whether you represent a heritage luxury brand seeking premium activations or an eco-startup aligning with sustainable racing, mastering these sponsorship dynamics is key to unlocking the full potential of motorsport sponsorship.
Emanuele Venturoli
A graduate in Public, Social and Political Communication from the University of Bologna, he has always been passionate about marketing, design and sport.
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Read MoreWhy choose RTR Sports Marketing
In an era where it is possible to get anywhere with a click, there is a strong temptation to approach teams and properties directly for sponsorship projects.
By doing so, we are convinced that we are shortening the value chain, saving time and money. However, these DYI methods are anything but risk-free and what initially appears to be a competitive advantage soon turns into a problem that is difficult to resolve. That’s why there are agencies. And this is why you should rely on us for your sponsorships.
Save time and money
When first approaching a sponsorship or sports marketing project, it is difficult to know immediately which stakeholders are correct, what the decision flow is, and what the right timelines are for each process. Sports is a very specialized field of action, and fitting effectively into its paths can take a lot of time and therefore money. We, on the other hand, know referents and spheres of action and know who to talk to, when and how. So you are also more effective.
The right information, the right choice
Sports is an immense passion, and for our heart colors we would be willing to do anything. But business is a different business, and it is important to make the best possible strategic decisions based on independent research, statistics and reliable data. A sports marketing and sports sponsorship agency like RTR has an objective, 360-degree picture of the scenario and can tell you what is really best for you: which sport, which athlete, which team. This is because we possess a great deal of data and information on ratings, segmentation and attitudes. Because the numbers don’t lie. Never.
Activations are the beating heart
Activations are the real heart of sports sponsorship. Without them, there remains only a blank sticker on a motorcycle, car or uniform and no contact with the public, no emotional connection, no impact on the bottom line. Then how do you do it? It certainly won’t be the teams or the athletes who will help you leverage sponsorship and enjoy the many marketing rights you have paid for. To bring out the best in a sports marketing project you need an agency that knows how to use sponsorship to engage the fanbase on the Web, to reach out to Shopping Centers, to organize hospitality, to develop B2B and B2C opportunities, and to get “your” athletes in front of millions of potential consumers.
Objective measurements for a certain return
Would you ever go to the dealer who sold you the car and ask if the competitor’s car is better? No, of course. So, how do you expect to get firm measurements of the effectiveness of your sponsorship if you do not rely on someone super partes? At RTR, we have always worked with independent third-party agencies that allow us to know the return on any exposure of your brand on TV and in the media. In addition, we believe in calculating ROI as the ultimate measure of your success-so we can tell you for every penny you spend how much you are making.
Sit back, relax, we’ll take care of it
We have been involved in sports sponsorship and sports marketing for more than 15 years. We are consultants in the sense that our goal is to maximize your investment, but we are also an agency that manages the project from start to finish. We have been doing this since 1995 with passion and professionalism, following three principles that have become cornerstones of our business: independence, verticality and transparency.
I would like to highlight the fact that one of the qualities of RTR is its great ability to approach the sponsorship scenario strategically, together with its passionate attitude, its amazing enthusiasm for solving problems, and its high level of professionalism.
Gianluca Degliesposti
Executive Director Server&Storage EMEA
Eurosport is truly delighted with its business relationship with Riccardo Tafà, who has become extremely popular, thanks to his detailed knowledge of the sports marketing sector and his highly diligent attitude to work.
Francois Ribeiro
Commercial Director
Passion and Expertise are the features that I have found in RTR since the very beginning. Serious and reliable professionals but also very helpful, nice and open-mind people, willing to listen and compare different ideas. All the values in which RTR believes make this agency a partner, not just a supplier, a partner with whom we have had the opportunity to achieve significant commercial results in term of success and image.
Luca Pacitto
Head of Communication
We have been working with RTR Sports Marketing for over 10 years. The objectives and the programmes of collaboration continue to be renewed and to grow with mutual satisfaction. I believe RTR is a team of great professionals led by Riccardo Tafà, who I consider a manager of exceptional skills and with a great passion for his work.
Lucio Cecchinello
Team Principal
I have known and worked with Riccardo Tafà since 1995 when we collaborated for the first time on a project for the Williams Formula 1 team. Several clients followed. After leaving Williams to work for Gerhard Berger then owner of the Toro Rosso F1 Team, I turned again to Riccardo to seek his help in finding a tool supplier for the team and Riccardo duly obliged with an introduction to USAG, a partnership with Toro Rosso which endured for five years. I recently started a new role as Group Commercial Director for the renowned Andretti Autosport organisation and I find myself working with Riccardo once again on a number of interesting projects. Why has this relationship with Riccardo endured ? He’s smart, knows the commercial side of sport inside out and back to front and he’s honest and trustworthy. Riccardo Tafà is a “doer” not a “talker”: in over 20 years I have never had a dispute either with him or with a company that he has introduced and each partnership introduced by Riccardo has delivered quantifiable ROI to rights holder and sponsor alike. I can think of no better testimonial of Riccardo’s diligence, knowledge, contact base and hard work than that.
Jim Wright
Group Commercial Director
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