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By Emanuele Venturoli| Posted January 7, 2015 | In Bikes, MotoGP, Motor Racing, Motorsports
Italian manufacturer Ducati and web provider Aruba have signed a 3 year Title Sponsorship deal for the Borgo Panigale SuperBike team, starting from this year. The Davis-Giugliano squad will compete in the FIM Superbike World Championship under the official name of “Aruba.it Racing – Ducati Superbike Team”. Earlier today Borgo Panigale issued the below press release to officially announce the deal.
Borgo Panigale/Arezzo (Italy), 8 January 2015: Ducati and Aruba confirm the signing of a three-year agreement that will see their joint participation in the 2015 Superbike World Championship with the “Aruba.it Racing – Ducati Superbike Team”. This is a partnership agreement that sees Aruba directly involved in the management of the official Ducati team as well as in the role of title sponsor.
Aruba, based in Arezzo, is Italy’s leading web hosting and cloud services company and has consolidated its activities in Europe with a network of Data Centres in France, Germany, the UK and the Czech Republic. The Tuscan firm has decided to take on this new challenge in collaboration with Ducati as it shares a significant number of values with the Bologna-based manufacturer, ranging from the technological avant-garde in their respective sectors, to the ability to offer the excellence of “Made in Italy”, operating with passion and competence to guarantee the satisfaction of their users and clients across the world. Important affinities that, combined with Ducati’s long-time experience and success in Superbike and the passion that Aruba has for sport, have contributed to the birth of this prestigious partnership.
Ducati Corse will continue to be responsible for the development and preparation of the Ducati Panigale R bikes with which the team will compete in the upcoming championship. Ducati and Aruba have made the decision to continue collaboration with Feel Racing, the technical and logistical structure that has long been linked to Ducati. Aruba will be responsible for certain organizational aspects of the team and also, together with Ducati, for team communication and marketing activities.
Chaz Davies and Davide Giugliano will continue as official riders for the second consecutive year, with Serafino Foti confirmed in the role of Team Manager. Ernesto Marinelli will continue to be the Ducati Corse Superbike Project Director and Technical Director of the team. Aruba will be represented at the tracks by Luca Scassa. The 31-year old rider, who hails from Arezzo and has sixty Superbike races under his belt, will also be one of the team’s official test riders.
Claudio Domenicali, CEO of Ducati Motor Holding S.p.A, stated: “It’s with great pleasure that we can announce this important agreement with Aruba that guarantees a solid work platform for Ducati in the Superbike World Championship over the next three years. While fully respecting our philosophy of using racing to test and continuously improve the product that we offer to our fans, the new “Aruba.it Racing – Ducati Superbike Team” will be able to count on a profoundly evolved version of the Panigale in 2015, which will also be available to our fans and be even more powerful, lightweight and electronically cutting-edge. For Ducati, races have strategic importance, and the Superbike World Championship allows us to demonstrate, on track, just how high-performing and fast a twin-cylinder can be. With the new 2015 regulations, which stipulate that the bikes competing must be even closer to production models, we believe we have everything we need to be very competitive. With its 14 Riders’ titles and 17 Manufacturers’ titles, Ducati has an extraordinary history of successes and victories in the Superbike World Championship and, with this agreement, we think that we have laid the foundations from which to build on this unique record of achievement. I therefore wish Chaz and Davide lots of luck and extend a warm welcome to Aruba.”
Stefano Cecconi, CEO of Aruba S.p.A, commented: “We are very proud of this partnership in which we have great faith, and that will allow us to manage, together with Ducati, an official team with two very competitive riders. We have taken the decision to enter the world of racing because it links in many ways to our world and shares some of the same fundamental pillars, such as the continuous quest for maximum performance and ever increasing reliability, and a constant focus on safety. We will take on this new challenge with the same commitment and with the same passion that we show our clients each day. This is why we have chosen our Data Centre IT1 in Arezzo, the symbol and heart of technological development for our group, as the setting for the official presentation of the team.”
The new team will be officially presented to the press in early February, with a dedicated event that will take place at the Aruba Data Centre in Arezzo. Further details will follow in the coming days.
Are you ready to explore the transformative power of athlete sponsorship for your brand? Click here to learn more about how sponsorship can help brands grow and thrive in the exciting world of motorsports.
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 MoreIn 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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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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