For twelve seasons DHL and Rolex sponsored Formula 1 side by side: DHL has been its official logistics partner since 2004, while Rolex was its official timepiece from 2013 to 2024. They watched the same races, but spoke to different people. Rolex addressed those who can afford a luxury watch; DHL addresses companies that need to ship goods around the world, and uses the Formula 1 calendar to prove it can do so.

It is the clearest summary of what targeting in sports sponsorship means: the same sports property can serve opposite goals, as long as the brand knows exactly who it wants to talk to. Without that choice, even the most visible sponsorship risks talking to everyone and convincing no one.

In brief

• Targeting is the choice of the audience to reach, and it comes before choosing the championship, the team or the driver.
• It is defined by four questions: who the customer is, where they are, what they watch, what they need to do next.
• It is measured by business results, not by visibility alone.

What targeting in sports sponsorship is

Targeting is the work that leads a company to choose a precise audience segment and build the sponsorship around it. In motorsport it means starting from people, consumers, business customers, the sales network, and only then looking for the championship, event, team or driver that reaches them best.

The reverse path is the most common, and the most expensive: you start from a famous property and only then try to work out who it speaks to. In our experience, almost every sponsorship that disappoints has an audience that does not match the sponsor’s customers.

Four questions to define the target

1. Who is the customer?

An end consumer or a business? A consumer brand looks for numbers and repetition; an industrial supplier looks for a few dozen of the right relationships. In the first case audience matters; in the second, hospitality, meetings in the paddock and opportunities to show expertise matter.

2. Where are they?

A championship’s calendar is a map of markets. A company that sells mainly in Europe has little to gain from a series that races half the season in Asia and the Americas, and vice versa. The right question is not where the championship races, but where it races in relation to your own markets.

3. What do they watch?

Age, gender and consumer habits of fans change from one championship to another. At the end of 2025 Formula 1 estimated 827 million fans, 43% of them under 35 and 42% women. MotoGP reported 632 million fans, with more than half of its fans and followers under 35. These are the championships’ own figures and should be read as such, but they are enough to show that two audiences that look similar are not.

4. What do they need to do next?

Get to know the brand, try it, ask for a quote, sign a contract? The expected action decides the activation: a point-of-sale promotion, an event with customers, digital content with a clear call to action. If the action is unclear, targeting stays half done.

Three examples of targeting in motorsport

Rolex: the premium endurance audience

For decades Rolex has built its presence in motorsport around prestigious events and a story of precision: it has been the title sponsor of the 24 Hours of Daytona since 1992, a partner of the 24 Hours of Le Mans since 2001 and, from 2013 to 2024, was the global partner and official timepiece of Formula 1. The target is clear, and every choice confirms it.

DHL: the business audience

Since 2004 DHL has been the official logistics partner of Formula 1, today the championship’s longest-standing global partner. For DHL the value is not just the logo on track: it is moving an entire championship from one continent to another every year, and being able to tell business customers about it as proof of what it can do.

Red Bull: the young audience

Red Bull does not just sponsor: it owns two Formula 1 teams (Red Bull Racing and Racing Bulls) and since 2007 has run the Red Bull MotoGP Rookies Cup, the series many Grand Prix riders have come through. Its target, a young audience looking for adrenaline, is the same one on which the brand has built much of its communication.

How to measure successful targeting

Media value, meaning what it would cost to buy the same visibility as advertising, helps compare two proposals, but it does not tell you whether the audience reached was the right one. Successful targeting shows in other numbers: how many qualified leads came in, how many sales came from promotions linked to the sponsorship, how many business relationships were born in the paddock. We cover this in our guide on how to use analytics in sponsorship strategies.

These indicators must be set before signing, together with the target. Afterwards, it is too late to choose what to measure.

Who narrow targeting works for, and who it does not

Narrow targeting works well for companies that sell to a few high-value customers, for those entering a specific market and for those with a limited budget: better to own a small, well-chosen audience than to disappear in a large one. It works less well for consumer brands that need reach, where the scale of the big championships remains an advantage. Even then, though, targeting matters: it decides which markets, channels and moments to focus the activation on.

How we work on targeting

We start from the sponsor’s customers, not from the properties available: who they are, where they are, what they watch, what they need to do next. Only then do we compare championships, teams and events, in Formula 1, in MotoGP or in smaller series, and propose the one that best reaches that audience. In our model the commission is paid by the sports property, not by the sponsoring company: that separation is what lets us recommend the choice best suited to the target, even when it is the least expensive.