Are you willing to sponsor?
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.
By Emanuele Venturoli| Posted April 22, 2024 | In Motor Racing, Motorsports, Sport Sponsorship
At RTR Sports Marketing, we’ve been at the forefront of motorsport marketing for over 25 years, helping brands leverage the power of racing sponsorships. Today, we delve into the world of technical partners and suppliers, exploring their crucial role in motorsport and the significant benefits they reap through strategic partnerships.
First, it’s important to differentiate between suppliers and technical partners in the motorsport landscape.
These companies provide essential goods and services that support a team or racing series off the track. This can encompass a wide range of areas, including logistics, catering, accounting software, IT services, and office supplies. Suppliers play a vital role in ensuring the smooth day-to-day operations of a team or event.
Technical partners, on the other hand, provide goods and services that are directly used during competition. In the high-octane world of Formula 1 and MotoGP, prime examples include tire manufacturers, fuel suppliers, brake pad companies, engine component providers, and lubricant specialists. These partners contribute directly to the performance and success of a racing car or motorcycle.
While technical partners and suppliers may not always have the same level of brand prominence as major sponsors or title partners, the benefits of aligning with a motorsport team or series are substantial:
Enhanced Brand Reputation: Motorsport is a demanding proving ground for technology and innovation. By having your product used by a top-tier racing team, you gain a powerful association with excellence. If your product is deemed good enough to withstand the rigors of Formula 1 competition, for instance, it sends a strong message to consumers about its quality and performance in everyday applications. This translates into a significant boost to brand reputation and consumer confidence.
Unparalleled Brand Exposure: Formula 1, MotoGP, and other major racing series boast a global audience that transcends national borders. Technical partnerships provide access to this vast viewership. Your brand logo will be prominently displayed on race cars, team uniforms, pit garages, and trackside advertising boards. This unparalleled brand exposure generates valuable brand awareness and keeps your company at the forefront of consumers’ minds.
Activation Opportunities: Beyond static branding, technical partnerships often unlock a plethora of activation opportunities. These can include co-branded marketing campaigns, product demonstrations at race weekends, exclusive hospitality experiences for clients, and social media content creation featuring racing personalities. These activations allow you to engage with the passionate motorsport fanbase and further amplify your brand message.
Technological Innovation: Motorsport is a hotbed of cutting-edge technology. Technical partnerships provide a unique opportunity to collaborate with racing teams and engineers on developing and testing new products. This can lead to significant advancements in your own technology and product line, giving you a competitive edge in the marketplace.
Long-Standing Partnerships: Technical partnerships in motorsport tend to be longer-lasting than many other forms of sponsorship. This sustained collaboration allows for a deep understanding between brands and teams, fostering trust and loyalty. These long-term partnerships also offer valuable data and insights into product performance under extreme conditions, leading to continuous improvement.
Cost-Effectiveness: Compared to major sponsorships, technical partnerships typically involve a lower financial investment. This makes them an attractive option for companies seeking a cost-effective way to enter the world of motorsport and reap its substantial benefits.
While technical partners and suppliers may not always garner the same headlines as major sponsors, they are the unsung heroes of motorsport. Their contributions are essential to the success of teams and racing series alike. And the benefits they receive in return – enhanced brand reputation, global exposure, and valuable activation opportunities – make technical partnerships a highly advantageous avenue for brands looking to gain a competitive edge.
At RTR Sports Marketing, we understand the intricacies of the motorsport sponsorship landscape. We leverage our extensive network of contacts and deep industry knowledge to connect brands with the perfect technical partnership opportunities that align with their specific goals. Let us help you navigate the world of motorsport sponsorships and unlock its full potential for your brand. Contact us today and get ready to take your brand to the fast lane!
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.
The online platform where you can discover the latest trends, strategies and insights from the exciting world of sports marketing.
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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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