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By Riccardo Tafà| Posted March 30, 2016 | In MotoGP, MotoGP
Team Estrella Galicia 0,0 Marc VDS riders Jack Miller and Tito Rabat embark on a two-week South and North American MotoGP adventure in confident mood after a positive outcome to the recent season opener in Qatar.
Motivation is high after Miller and Rabat rebounded brilliantly from a difficult time in practice and qualifying to finish inside the points in Doha.
And another double top 15 finish is the clear target for this weekend’s trip to the fast and technical Termas de Rio Hondo track in Argentina.
Although both have previous experience of the Argentinian venue, this weekend’s encounter will be something of a journey into the unknown, with both eager to get to grips with new Michelin tyres for the first time at the 4.806km track.
Miller is optimistic he can battle closer to the top 10 this weekend after the Termas de Rio Hondo round provided the Australian with one of the biggest highlights of his rookie MotoGP campaign in 2015.
Some skilled and aggressive riding against vastly more experienced opponents saw Miller finish top Open class rider at the end of a memorable eight-rider fight for 12th spot.
Rabat has a winning pedigree in Argentina after taking the victory from pole position on his way to dominating the 2014 Moto2 World Championship.
A key goal for the 26-year-old Spaniard this weekend is to reduce the time gap to the leading group while gaining confidence and experience on his Honda RC213V machine.
Jack Miller
“I feel really positive coming to Argentina because I’ve been working really hard on my physical preparation. I was walking in the mountains for five hours and I feel already that I’ve got a lot more motion in my right ankle, which is getting better each day after my accident in January. This is a track I think that will be more suited to the Honda and I like it, so I’m here with high hopes and looking forward to putting to good use all the experience we gained in Qatar.”
Tito Rabat
“Qatar was a difficult MotoGP debut for me but I gained a lot of experience with the bike that will help me for the future. Of course we want to be finishing closer to the front but in Qatar I didn’t take any risks because I needed to stay on the bike and learn. Argentina is another difficult challenge because I’ve not ridden a MotoGP bike here. I’ve good memories of this track from 2014 and the Honda has a good record here too in MotoGP, so hopefully I can be stronger this weekend. I am looking forward to it and I will try and improve step-by-step. I will need to make as many laps as possible in practice to understand the different references on this track compared to Moto2, but the most important objective is to be more competitive than the last race both in terms of my final position and the time to the leading group.”
Team Estrella Galicia PRESS RELEASE
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.
Managing Director for RTR Sports, Riccardo graduated in law at the University of Bologna. He began his career in London in PR, then started working in two and four-wheelers. A brief move to Monaco followed before returning to Italy. There he founded RTR, first a consulting firm and then a sports marketing company which, eventually, he moved back to London.
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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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