In motorsport and sport in general, competitiveness is never guaranteed: it must be built, negotiated, and sometimes mandated by regulation. And it is precisely this — the ability to ensure uncertainty of outcome — that represents the true strategic asset that sponsors and broadcasters buy when they invest in sports marketing.

In recent years, the theme of competitiveness has come roaring back to the center of debate. Formula 1 in 2023, with Red Bull winning 21 of 22 races, reignited discussions that seemed to have been put to rest: a sport where the result is predictable loses audience, loses sponsors, and in the long run loses commercial relevance. Then, in 2024, the season turned upside down: McLaren, Ferrari and Mercedes brought genuine uncertainty back to the final rounds, with global TV audience reaching new records. The Formula 1 case is the clearest proof that competitiveness and commercial value in sport move in tandem.

Competitiveness as a Strategic Asset for Sponsors

It is increasingly clear that building competitiveness is the challenge — and at the same time the great unknown — of modern sport. Especially in today’s fragmented digital entertainment landscape, organising committees and governing bodies need to guarantee championships, tournaments and leagues where the battle at the top is unpredictable and hard-fought. To put it plainly, there needs to be a real contest if you don’t want your audience drifting away to other disciplines or entertainment platforms.

Sports marketing theory teaches us exactly this: one of the so-called “secondary characteristics of the sports product” must be, according to Mullin, Hardy and Sutton, unpredictability. This distinguishes sport from many other modern forms of entertainment — cinema, TV series, music — where the product is packaged in advance. One of the things that make sport exciting is precisely this: unlike a film or a TV show, you never know how it ends.

For a brand investing in sports sponsorships, unpredictability is not just an aesthetic value: it is a measurable economic value. A hard-fought race generates more minutes of TV exposure, more social media mentions, more press coverage. A brand’s logo on a competitive team appears in emotionally charged contexts — the decisive overtake, the unexpected podium — that amplify brand recall in the audience’s mind. Investing in a flat sport, with the winner already decided, means paying for a presence that does not generate the same emotional response.

Different Approaches to Rebuilding Competitiveness

Sports organisations have adopted very different strategies to ensure competitive balance, with mixed results.

The NBA, the professional basketball league, has historically used the salary cap and reverse draft to limit the most powerful dynasties — with partial success. In 2023 it introduced a significant luxury tax reform, increasing the financial cost for franchises exceeding the salary cap, in an attempt to redistribute talent and balance the league. The mechanism works to a point: the wealthier teams still manage to work around it, but the direction is clear.

Formula 1 introduced the budget cap in 2021 — a spending ceiling for teams — as its main tool to bring technical packages closer together. The results have been slow but visible: in 2024, for the first time in over a decade, five different teams won a race during the season. This is a result that Stefano Domenicali, CEO of Formula 1, explicitly cited as a driver of global audience growth.

MotoGP has relied on a system of technical regulations that, season after season, has progressively aligned prototype performance. The 2024 championship delivered one of the closest finishes in recent years: Jorge Martin beat Francesco Bagnaia by just 7 points at the Barcelona finale, after a head-to-head battle lasting the entire season. The Sprint format — shorter races on Saturdays, introduced in 2023 — has added further moments of spectacle, multiplying sponsorship exposure opportunities.

World Superbike chose the “reverse grid” system, where the winner of the first race of the weekend starts from tenth position, artificially creating more on-track battles. The British Touring Car Championship even uses a random draw system for certain grid positions. Different approaches, same root: no sports organisation can afford to ignore the competitiveness problem.

Consequences for Sponsorships and Sports Marketing

In terms of sports marketing, competitiveness has become an asset to measure and communicate, not just to guarantee on the field. Sports organisations seeking high-profile sponsors must today be able to demonstrate — with data — that their championship generates engaged audiences, that moments of genuine competition produce engagement spikes on social and digital platforms.

The example of European football is instructive. The major national leagues were long dominated by one or two teams unbeatable for the vast majority of opponents, resulting in a progressive shift of attention towards the Champions League, perceived as more balanced and unpredictable. The Premier League has benefited from a broader distribution of TV rights revenue, allowing mid-table teams to invest in quality too, producing a historically more competitive league compared to other major European tournaments.

In straightforward sports sponsorship terms, the flip side of this lack of competitiveness is obvious: when the result is predictable, investments concentrate around the few most desirable properties, leaving crumbs for the rest. A championship that does not guarantee uncertainty does not generate the attention needed to justify significant brand investment.

Building — or rebuilding — competitiveness is certainly the primary marketing challenge of the future for every sports organisation. The risk — not even that remote — is that ultimately only those two or three leagues able to consistently deliver high-level spectacle with uncertain outcomes will remain strong and attractive to sponsors. For the others, commercial marginalisation seems the inevitable consequence.

For a brand evaluating where to invest in sports sponsorships, this analysis has immediate practical value: before signing a contract, it is worth asking not just “how valuable is this sport today?”, but “how competitive — and therefore relevant — will it be in the next three years?”. That is the true strategic question of the future of sports marketing.