Picture the scene. It’s Sunday afternoon, and your marketing department has its eyes fixed on the screen. The car bearing your logo is in twelfth position, a minute behind the race leader. Someone in that room starts asking uncomfortable questions.

Yet that car has just crossed the field of view of millions of television screens simultaneously, in hundreds of countries, in front of a fanbase that in Formula 1 alone reached 826.5 million fans in 2024, according to Nielsen Sports data. The right question, then, isn’t “did our team win?” The right question is: was our brand there, where people were watching?

Sport as a stage, not a lottery for the podium

In sports sponsorship, a fundamental misconception persists: the idea that return on investment depends directly on finishing position. That sponsors and teams should tie their relationship to sporting performance as if they were betting on a horse at the races.

That’s not how it works. And the numbers prove it.

A brand entering Formula 1 isn’t betting on who wins the Grand Prix. It’s purchasing access to a media ecosystem that in 2024 recorded 826.5 million global fans — growth of over 10% compared to the previous year. It’s associating its name with a system of values: speed, innovation, precision, tenacity. Values that don’t change depending on who crosses the finish line first.

The same principle applies in MotoGP, where the global fanbase reached 632 million people in 2025, with growth of 12% compared to the previous year. Numbers that don’t belong only to the team that won the championship: they belong to the entire circus, to every team that raced that year, to every brand present on the bikes, the suits, the pit walls.

The midfield paradox: more value than it seems

Williams Racing is one of the most eloquent examples of recent years. The British team — eight constructors’ world championships, histories and fanbases spanning generations — has experienced a long period of sporting difficulties: no wins since 2012, chronic midfield finishes. Yet in 2024 it signed or renewed deals with partners including Komatsu (an industrial giant worth $20 billion), Atlassian, PUMA and Michelob Ultra. The team’s overall value was estimated at $2.14 billion.

Why does a brand decide to invest in a team that doesn’t win? Because it understood — better than many marketing decision-makers — that value isn’t in the trophy: it’s in global attention and the quality of the association. Williams isn’t just a struggling team: it’s a story, a heritage, a fanbase that has held together for decades. And it’s privileged access to an audience that no other traditional advertising channel can reach with the same emotional intensity.

Let’s define this dynamic precisely: let’s call it passion equity. The value a sponsor receives doesn’t come only from the standings, but from the intensity of the emotional bond between fans and team — a bond that survives difficult seasons, that consolidates through adversity, that doesn’t reset at the end of a championship.

The loyalty the standings don’t touch

There’s something that sport builds over decades and that no negative sporting result can demolish: the emotional bond between a fan and their team.

This bond is built from shirts worn as children, from Sundays built around a race, from something that belongs more to identity than to results. A fan following a midfield Formula 1 team is no less loyal than a fan of a dominant team. They’re often more loyal — because their support isn’t conditioned by success, but survives regardless.

For a brand, this means something very concrete: associating with a team means accessing that emotional relationship. Not the victory itself, but the passion that victory can’t buy — and that difficult periods, paradoxically, make more authentic.

We’ve seen partnerships lasting twenty, thirty years: through terrible seasons, regulation changes, market crises. The reason isn’t irrational corporate loyalty: it’s that those companies had built an activation programme capable of generating value regardless of the standings. Consistent communication, hospitality, content, B2B relationships developed in the paddock — tools that work always, not just when the car is at the front.

What to do when the team doesn’t win

The tactical response to a disappointing season isn’t to exit the partnership. It’s to work on activation.

A sponsor that limits its presence to a logo on the nose cone depends almost entirely on sporting results for its visibility. A sponsor that builds a comprehensive programme — digital content telling the team’s story, hospitality that brings key clients to the paddock, internal initiatives engaging employees, B2B partnerships developed through the sport’s relationship network — that sponsor extracts value from the partnership regardless of where the car finishes.

Sports sponsorship isn’t a lottery ticket: it’s an engine. And like all engines, it produces power only when it’s started, when it’s fuelled with a plan, when it’s accompanied by expertise and intention.

The underdog has a narrative the dominant team doesn’t

There’s an element that consumer behaviour research has consolidated in recent years: authenticity resonates more than perfection.

A brand associated with a team that fights, that gets back up after a difficult season, that shows tenacity and character — that brand communicates something a dominant team can’t transmit in the same way. The underdog has a narrative. The struggle is more relatable than an easy victory. Audiences attach themselves to teams that fight not despite the difficulties, but precisely because of them.

It’s no coincidence that some of the most powerful sponsorship stories of recent years were born alongside teams that weren’t the favourites — but that had something to tell. Something a brand could genuinely identify with, and that an audience could genuinely feel.

This is something sponsors, agencies and sports properties can no longer ignore. And that should today be placed at the centre of every serious activation plan.