We publish in full the speech we gave at the Third Edition of the Event “Sport and Sustainability: A Growing Trend because Distinctive Factor,” held at the Civic Aquarium in Milan on November 27, 2024

The total Formula 1 fleet weighs approximately 1,540 Tons, divided between team equipment, broadcasting equipment, electrical materials and hospitality facilities. In the 2025 season, this fleet will travel a total of 130,000 kilometers by sea and sky over the course of its 24 stages-a distance that is equivalent to about three and a half times around the world.

From agencies, sponsors today are asking for help in explaining to the public and stakeholders how this all represents the pinnacle of a sustainable communications project.

The role of the agency: a changing profile

It is impossible today to talk about sports marketing agencies without quickly mentioning the profound change they are going through.

The agency as an intermediary

In fact, agency was born-and thrives in the last century-as a mediating body between two parties who possess common but not matching interests. Two parties who -in theory- want to sell on one side and buy on another but whose destinies have not yet crossed. The agency, which knows both A and B, joins the proverbial last yards of railroad track and makes the deal possible. The classic example of this model is the real estate agency. As one can easily guess, this role of pure mediation is coming to an end with the dawn of digital communication, the Internet, and everything that can be reached with a click away. If A and B can find each other -and talk to each other- independently, the role of the mediator quickly fades.

The agency as problem solver

The second and subsequent model is that of the agency as Problem Solver. With the function of the mediator gone, companies are looking for knowledge cores that solve tactical issues and specific situations without the need for expertise to be brought in-house. Communication, design-or in the sports case hospitality and sports travel-agencies are exactly that. The demise of this case in point comes with a twofold advent: the development of more advanced tools and -in the case of sports- the hardening of the skills of sports properties. Allow me to trivialize: almost no one needs a graphic design studio anymore since Canva has existed, just as almost no one needs a sports travel agent anymore if the sports property’s marketing department deals not only with passes but also with guest transfers and accommodations.

The agency as a consultant

Finally, and this is the stage we are at, we come to agency as a group of advisors, that is, that center of knowledge, expertise and skills to which we turn so that decisions can be made more profitably and more efficiently. Of course, the mediating role is still intact, as are the know-how and practical skills, but to shift here is the center of gravity of decision-making, which is moved backward and in a sense placed in the hands of the agency itself. To the agency/consultant the client entrusts his own goals, assets and vision, but trusts that the result of the equation is higher than the single sum of the factors.

At strategically important moments such as choosing a sponsorship project, building a sports communication plan, and efficiently managing the marketing benefits and activation process here is where the role of consultant comes into its own in all its extraordinary appeal.

Sports sponsorship: eras in motion

It is not only the sports marketing agency that is changing. Rather, the sports marketing agency changes because sports marketing changes. Or better yet because the sport and the culture in which it is immersed change. And especially because consumers change.

Wanting to schematize here as well, we can identify 5 eras of sports sponsorship:

• Age of visibility
• Proof of concept era
• Age of Engagement
• Era of monetization
• Era of brand building as Friendly Superhero

Age of visibility

What the era of visibility is, in the early days of the sponsorship concept, is easy to understand. At a time when brands struggled first and foremost for brand awareness and to become top of mind, big logos on cars, motorcycles and uniforms are the absolute stars of the sports marketing landscape. The basic concept is simple: sports is support, a platform for awareness.

Proof of concept era

With proof of concept, the concept changes, slipping from visibility to the excellent quality of the product represented, which is good enough to be used-at least in words-even by excellent teams, sportsmen and competitions. Technical sponsorship and the benefit of being a supplier is born. Here sport is an example, a test bed, a demonstration of goodness.

Age of Engagement

As the new millennium dawns, marketing women and men are faced with a radically changed world: competing products number in the millions, the viewing of sporting events fragmented by pay-per-views, consumer habits disrupted by a new mode of information and communication, the online one. Big consumer brands understand that to get out of clutter they have to make consumers feel something if they want to win them over. If “see” was the verb of visibility, “learn” that of proof of concept, it is “feel” that of the age of engagement, of which energy drinks are the decisive forerunners. Big activations, big experiences, worlds that intertwine with each other, jumping from online to offline and cross media. It’s an exciting world, but one that is based on a premise that is not taken for granted: we’re going to make things happen. They are already not sponsors, but partners.

Age of digital monetization

This era comes to an end precisely when making things happen becomes impossible and when COVID blocks the world of sports and beyond within the walls of closed homes and facilities. Forced by circumstances many brands begin to emerge due to their intangibility and flexibility characteristics: these are the web 3.0 brands, cryptocurrencies, NFTs, blockchains. Led by very young entrepreneurs and endowed with assets as immense-as often fragile-they completely change the sponsorship market. Sponsorship here is a flywheel for money, to enable sponsoring brands to grow their digital wallets even more. In sponsorship contracts, physical benefits precipitate against digital support, database access, social media interaction.

The Moving Iceberg and the Superhero Friend.

Speaking of activations, today sponsorship is often depicted by us as an iceberg of which visibility is only the emerged tip but which is kept afloat by the large block of activations-online, offline, experiential, and so on-that sails beneath the surface of the water.

I say “sail” because this iceberg depicted here is in constant motion with the currents, trends, and natural marketing cycles. Just as the relationship between the emerged part and the submerged part is changeable depending on the temperature around it, so too the coordinates of this object are always changing.

What has not changed, even among the various eras of sponsorship, is instead the general concept of a bit of exposure emerging from the water-that’s what we see of sponsorship, the logos on the uniforms, on the ailerons, the LEDs on the sidelines-actually supported by the big underwater world of everything that needs to be activated.

Another representation that we like very much-and which can be placed side by side with that of the moving iceberg-is that of sponsorship as a Superhero Friend, a key figure in the fifth of the sponsorship eras mentioned and the one in which we find ourselves.

Finally, brands have become something more. No longer sponsors, no longer partners they sit next to the viewer and share-they have to share-their passions, loves, tensions, daily lives. They are friends in that they walk with them through the things they care about, but they are Superheroes in the ability to make them happen and to fulfill that desire. “I can help you meet your favorite driver,” “I can help you have extraordinary experiences,” or in the case of grassroots sponsorships, “I can help you become whoever you want to be.”

You see, the audience-call it what you will: consumers, viewers, fans, audience-has changed profoundly, especially the very young. It is an audience that today demands that brands, and even more so sponsors, support their causes, sit beside them in their battles, share their ideals, defend the world and ideas from what they fear.

Sponsorship and sustainability

Sustainability, we finally got there, is now at the center of this new friendship, at the heart of our moving iceberg.

I was conversing just a few days ago with a guy-Simone-who is very passionate about sports, from trail running to snowboarding to all things “mountain.” Simone, who works closely with professional sports and is a Ski instructor, is a good example of how these new generations, the ones before the Millennials to be clear, interpret brands: he does not like fast fashion, he is not attracted by the “brand for the brand’s sake,” he is willing to spend more if an item of clothing or an object is sustainable and before buying, he inquires about the company and the logic behind it. With great pride, on his smartphone, he shows me the new corporate headquarters-all wooden and energetically autonomous-of the new brand from which he purchased his latest snowboard. With equal passion, he tells me how he still owns the Patagonia T-shirts he bought years ago, and the great effort put into social and climate activism by the brand, which was recently sold to a nonprofit working for environmental advocacy.

The role of agency, hypocrisies and false beliefs

Where does agency fit into all this? Well, continuing in our figure of speech, in the relationship between the consumer and the Superhero friend the agency is the one who turns on the spotlight in the night to signal the need-or opportunity-for intervention. We are, in short, the Commissioner James Gordon of sports marketing. He is the commissioner of Batman, the one in short who turns on the Bat Signal.

The consulting agency today needs to show the straight and narrow path and thus the importance of sustainability to those brands that are in danger of not giving sufficient importance to the issue. It has the task of turning the spotlight on social, environmental, and economic issues by reminding them that these are not only important to the consumer, but essential to the longevity and effectiveness of the project.

How can he do this? Three ways:

1. Showing scientific research and up-to-date data on the importance of sustainable projects
2. Presenting case histories of virtuous examples
3. devising creative and impactful activations that are as memorable as they are valuable to the surrounding.

On this last point specifically, it is good to understand very clearly.

Sustainability is not free, it is not without effort, it does not come without thought. On the contrary, it imposes sacrifices, requires expertise and commitment, forces a choice that is almost never the easy one. But to agency also lies the role of removing the Mayan veil on hypocrisies and false beliefs and boldly demystifying false myths-bar beliefs.

Back to the opening: can something that travels 1540 tons of material three times the earth’s circumference ever be sustainable?

This is kind of the elephant in the room.

Motorsport and sustainability

This is indeed another hot topic, most important for those of us who work in motorsports. Motorsport suffers from no small original sin, namely that of being the jewel in the crown of an industry that has always been inextricably linked with the concept of pollution and environmental impact.

“We can’t sponsor motorsport”-a prospect tells us during an initial fact-finding meeting-“it’s too polluting.”

In truth, motorsport, like any other major event, impacts not so much the sport as the side dish that revolves around the sport. Research tells us that the 20 Formula 1 cars that run for the 300 kilometers of the Grand Prix weigh 2 percent of the total impact of the event.

Sustainability as a moldable concept

What is sustainability? In a context such as the one in which we are here today-highly specific-any definition would run the risk of being inaccurate. I personally like the one the Bruntland Commission gave in 1987 to the United Nations: “that process of development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”

I guess we all agree that this is a concept that is as fascinating as it is moldable and effective in different contexts. For years now it has been crystal clear that sustainability is not just the environment, it is not just society, it is not just the economy but an evolving paradigm that applies to everything and at all times. If you will, and in other words, a virtuous way of doing things, anything.

It is more than a recycled plastic bottle, but it is also at the same time the realization that even that bottle, if recycled effectively, is useful for the future. “Holistic” is perhaps not the right word, but to quote a great writer, it is the first that comes to mind.

Applying this concept to sports sponsorship-and agencies’ abilities to ignite these virtuous activations-is the big leap.

The SIFI Performance Vision Science Case

I think an interesting case of this new sustainability paradigm is SIFI’s “Performance Vision Science” project, which came about as part of its sponsorship of the LCR Honda MotoGP Team.

SIFI is a prestigious multinational ophthalmology company in our country. It is headquartered on the slopes of Mount Etna, in the province of Catania, and since 1935 has had as its mission to improve patients’ quality of life through significant innovations in ere care. Today it is close to a thousand employees and produces 50 products and devices that are distributed in more than 40 countries around the world.

SIFI has always had a keen eye for both all things ESG and prestigious Corporate Social Responsibility projects: if you happen to take a look at their site you will find abundant literature and well-written documentation on all these areas.

SIFI comes to our desks in 2015, when they contacted us for a consultancy on sports marketing in motorsport. After a few months, the company signs its first sponsorship in MotoGP with Lucio Cecchinello’s LCR Honda team. It is an important moment for a partnership that lasts to the present day.

What is surprising, however, comes some time later, when the company’s top scientists begin to theorize an important correlation between drivers’ visual performance and performance on the track, and they see eye training as a possible area of improvement to maximize performance itself.

In short: In a sport like motorcycling, the eye is a fundamental tool. Where to brake, how to dodge an obstacle, what angle to give a turn are fundamental decisions that come through the eye and at such speeds must be very quick. It’s intuitive, it would seem, but what happens in the blink of an eye at 360 kilometers per hour makes the difference between winning and-probably- crashing. Indeed, it is precisely the “blinking rate,” or the frequency with which we blink that becomes an object of research for scientists at SIFI, who are beginning to speculate that talent may also come through the eyes.

Thus was born the Driving Vision Science project, later renamed Performance Vision Science, with which SIFI conducts cutting-edge scientific measurements on MotoGP riders under stress, then race, and rest conditions. Instrumentation, professionals and documentation are sent to World Championship tracks to take track, session by session, of how a speed professional’s eye sees, reacts, tires, adapts.

The research results are of extraordinary interest. In a world where everything is extreme and where every part of training, conditioning, materials and technologies are at the most cutting edge, no one ever thought that in the sight of pilots lay so much richness to be discovered.

The company itself writes in the opening of a paper devoted to Performance Vision Science, “We studied ocular surface symptoms, visual acuity, contrast sensitivity, and blink intervals in MotoGP riders on and off the track. We obtained anterior segment images and also measured, for example, tear film osmolarity. Over time, we decided to expand the collection of scientific data to a broader spectrum of the eye, such as the retina, eye pressure and other key parameters, thanks to state-of-the-art technological instrumentation and the help of the world’s leading experts in ophthalmology and eye health.”

Please note: the goal is not to make World Cup drivers go faster, but to glean valuable information about how the eye reacts and changes under extreme and extraordinarily stressful conditions and then to pour this knowledge into everyday life and work. Let’s take an example: what happens to the fatigued eyes of a truck driver after long and tiring hours of driving when something suddenly passes in front of him? And again what happens to the surgeon who has to operate with great precision under pressure every day?

How does this project fit into a sustainability discourse? It is again explained by the company itself, which says-and I quote- “We are proud to be able to continue in this direction, with the ever-present goal of ethically sharing this processed data and information with our stakeholders and our public.”

Sustainable healthcare and the future ahead

What is sustainable healthcare? According to the most recent literature and a nice WHO definition, it is “healthcarethatdelivershigh quality care in an affordable way,” that is, a healthcare system that is able to deliver very high quality atanaffordable cost.

Driving Vision Science and Performance Vision Science are just that: a platform for the highest quality research at extremely low cost, the benefits of which are already being transmitted and shared with the global scientific community.

Costs are low because the project is generated by intelligent use of marketing benefits already included in the sponsorship contract between SIFI and the Honda LCR MotoGP Team. The quality of research is very high because it is conducted on testers of proven excellence.

The Driving Vision Science project is a drop in the bucket of sustainability, but it is a project that is bringing concrete results of extraordinary scientific value. Above all, it is proven proof that sustainability is a three-dimensional and holistic system that is expressed in so many forms, which we can summarize as “things done right both for today and tomorrow.”

Sponsorship is a constantly rising tool. The global sponsorship market was estimated to be worth $55.1 BILLION in 2023-a number that is expected to reach $127 BILLION in 2032. It is imperative that sports and sponsorship become a vehicle for understandable, actionable, creative, everyday sustainability. If sport is one of the most powerful vehicles of our time, here it must possess the burden and honor of advancing such valuable issues.

It is up to the agencies to figure out how and to plan, design, and devise activations and developments that can close the triangle between viewers, brands, and sport properties by putting sustainability at the center without affecting the effectiveness and authenticity of the tool.

There is still so much work to be done in this regard. The vast majority of the projects we see, even in the top motorsport series, are still stuck on applying a sticker in the hope that somehow, some time, a miracle will happen. The culture of activating and effectively leveraging marketing benefits is what will contribute to the growth and positioning of the sports marketing industry and the growth of so many brands, which we hope will one day become superheroes.

Our good fortune is to be able to face this challenge today doing a beautiful and exciting profession, which gives us the privilege of confronting the best of world sports on a daily basis.