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 November 17, 2021 | In MotoGP, MotoGP
Those who do this job cannot fail to write these few lines today. We are aware that this is not a sports newspaper, that the ghosts of the SEO advise us against it, and that all this will fall – inevitably – into a huge will-o’-the-wisp in which reason and legend will be confused for a few days. We are not even sure whether it is reverence or respect, beauty or self-love, chivalry or already melancholy.
I’m writing these lines as you would write the last letter at the end of a nice trip, as you would take the last photo before returning from a beautiful vacation, or as you would send the last email before shutting down your computer and leaving your job forever.
It is easy today to fall into sentimentality, to open the drawer of memories and pull out an anecdote. On the other hand, everyone has a story about Valentino Rossi. Like that time in the disco with Cesare Cremonini, or that other time when he was there in Tavullia eating pizza with the friends of a lifetime or when he almost ran over that guy in the paddock with his scooter. None of these stories are necessarily true or false, but it doesn’t matter either: everyone has a story because this is their way of feeling a little closer to something that resemble a legend.
With Valentino‘s farewell to MotoGP – with his best race of the year – not just a chapter, but a piece of motorsport history has come to an end. Numbers aside, which are clearly extraordinary but do not complete the narrative around the 46, Rossi has had the great merit of being the most emeritus interpreter of a sport that for a full twenty years has been recognized and identified with him. Never has any athlete had the same, symmetrical, and perfect overlap that Valentino had with motorcycling. We’re talking Jordan, Maradona, Senna, Ali.
In short, it is not yet clear whether it is Rossi who is a motorcycling icon, or motorcycling that is Rossi’s icon. If it is true that Valentino is much more than an extraordinary interpreter of this sport, it is also true that MotoGP has changed a lot from the noisy, joyful but also a bit clumsy handful of daredevils of twenty-five years ago. In this journey, the two of them helped each other, growing up together as old friends who know each other very well and then are there, in a suit and tie to witness each other’s wedding.
For two decades, Vale has been the public face of a movement that has patiently and wisely worked behind the scenes, cleverly renewing itself and growing with great management skills. Supported by the popularity of VR46 and aware of not having to worry about keeping up the fire of enthusiasm, which the man from Tavullia was already taking care of, Dorna has put together an international sports series, very popular, technologically very advanced and projected to the future. Valentino was there, taking all the flashes and feeding the hungry lion of the media, while leaving the expansion of the championship, the work with broadcasters, the growth of a digital strategy to Carmelo Ezpeleta and his team, creating one of the five most famous sports leagues in the world on social networks.
There will be plenty of time to understand what is coming afterwards. Today is not a day for statistics or accountants. For once, you can and should leave the numbers aside and just think about how much fun we had. Think about our favorite Valentino Rossi story. Like that time at San Siro cheering Inter Milan when the guy spilled a beer on him at the bar, or when he took a long motorbike ride from Misano to Tavullia to say hello to everyone or when you entered the VR46 head quarter – all mirrors and reflected lights – to find him sitting there with a Yamaha world champion bike parked next to his desk. True or false, real stories or just myth, it doesn’t matter.
Yet there is one thing that is true: Valentino does not leave a void, not at all. On the contrary, like all the greatest he had the ability to lift hearts and leave behind a wonderful legacy. The cynic is surely there to remind us that the estimates on the audience and commercial value of MotoGP without the Doctor are less than a thirty percent of what it is now, but he forgets to count on how much the man has given to the movement, both in a tangible and intangible way.
Intangible, yes. Even those who do this job and write these lines today cannot help but skim the cream from the milk of this story with the tip of the knife and understand that first of all, the Valentino legacy is measured in love. The love of an audience for his hero, of a country for his flag-bearer, of many generations for its winning, smiling, funny and eccentric front man. Marketing, audience data and engagement figures aside, Valentino is and will always be the one who on Sunday 14 June, 2009 overtook Lorenzo on the Catalan humps of the Barcelona circuit and won an era-defining race.
Look. Honestly, do you remember those Sundays? Do you remember those summer afternoons, glued to the screens in sweaty bars, houses and apartments, after lunch; do you remember how much we laughed, screamed and cheered? And how proud we were of that boy, who beat the whole world, who waved the Italian flag and, on his shirt, he wrote “old hen makes good broth”. When we had to explain to the Germans on holiday in Romagna what that WLF on the suit meant… Let’s be honest, do you remember those Sundays back then? Do you remember how beautiful it was?
Rossi’s farewell to racing does not remove Valentino from the equation that will give life to MotoGP in the coming years. While the VR46 brand and the enthusiasm of the fans will transcend the presence or absence on the tracks, just as they have transcended the presence or absence of the sporting result, in the same way the new generations of VR46 riders will hold high the name of Tavullia and the legacy of a project that – we can say – has saved this sport, at least at the Italian level.
But today, in fact, it is not yet time for predictions and forecasts. Tomorrow deserves respect and calm. Tomorrow deserves to be simply tomorrow and be whatever it is. For today, once again, thank you Vale.
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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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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