It was 2012 when Chevrolet announced one of the decade’s most discussed sponsorship deals: seven years, 600 million dollars, the American automaker’s logo on Manchester United’s jerseys. Before those kits were even printed, the public reaction was immediate — and for many marketing executives, surprising. It wasn’t the predictable buzz about the size of the cheque. It was something more specific: why would an American car manufacturer support an English football team?

T. Bettina Cornwell, who led the marketing department at the Lundquist College of Business at the University of Oregon, noticed that question. “The problem was not so much a car manufacturer sponsoring a football club — that’s quite common,” she said. “Questions about the nature of the deal arose even before the shirts were printed.”

The Research That Changed How We Read the Phenomenon

Cornwell worked with two European researchers: David Woisetschläger of the Technical University of Braunschweig and Christof Backhaus of Aston Business School. Both were interested in understanding whether audiences could grasp the real motivations behind a sponsorship deal, and how those perceptions affected acceptance of the sponsor itself.

The two studies they published in the Journal of Marketing covered different ground: 44 sponsorships in the German Football League (sample of 2,787 consumers) and a fictitious sponsorship in a professional handball league (576 participants). The results, with some differences in detail, converged on one point: spectators are not passive when it comes to deals involving the teams they follow. They evaluate, discuss, judge.

Authenticity vs. Calculation: The Two Perceptions That Matter

The first study found that sponsorships with very high fees and internationally distant sponsors are perceived as the result of pure commercial calculation. Stadium naming rights — at least up to a point — follow the same perceptual trajectory. On the other hand, a sponsor’s geographic proximity is associated with affective motivations: whoever sponsors the local team is seen as a supporter, not an advertiser.

“Long-term contracts with companies in the same country or region are perceived as natural and right,” Woisetschläger observed. “Spectators believe a sponsor remains loyal to the team even through less successful seasons.” Backhaus added the values dimension: “A company must consider who it is in relation to the team or sport, and what message a sponsorship communicates to the public. If you are an international sponsor, you must demonstrate your relevance.”

There was an interesting exception in the handball study, however: higher fees were not automatically read as calculation. In a lower-profile sport, a sponsor’s generosity is perceived as helping keep the sport alive. The same figure, in different contexts, generates opposite perceptions.

By 2024, This Scrutiny Is Faster, More Public, and Louder

When that research was published, social media was still a relatively young phenomenon. Today every sponsorship deal is scrutinised in real time by global communities that have the tools and time to evaluate its coherence.

The Netflix series Formula 1: Drive to Survive, launched in 2019, brought a wave of new viewers inside the mechanisms of the circus — younger, more curious, more inclined to follow news about technical and commercial partners as well as sporting results. In MotoGP, the narrative around paddock dynamics and commercial deals has built an audience that can read a title sponsor contract, not just a lap time. The fan base has grown and, with it, awareness.

It is no coincidence that the debate about sponsor categories has intensified in precisely this period. The English Premier League has begun phasing out gambling sponsors from the front of shirts, effective from the 2026-27 season. In motorsport, public pressure on sponsors linked to betting, tobacco and high environmental impact sectors has grown in proportion to the visibility of the sports themselves. The audience no longer simply receives a message: it participates in building the narrative surrounding every deal.

The Value of Authenticity in Motorsport

This dynamic has concrete consequences for brands that choose motorsport as a platform. In MotoGP, Formula 1 and WSBK, long-standing partners — those who have renewed contracts through difficult sporting seasons, who have built a values-based association with the discipline — enjoy a credibility capital that no launch campaign can buy. They have become part of the sporting story, and the audience treats them as such.

For a brand approaching motorsport today, the question is not only how much it costs to enter: it is how to build an association that the public perceives as coherent. MotoGP sponsorships offer a concrete case study of this dynamic — a championship with a global, highly attentive audience that knows how to distinguish a genuine partner from an occasional guest.

The Task of Sports Properties

The other side of the research concerns those who organise sport. Woisetschläger was explicit: “Clubs must communicate how a sponsor is important to the team, the market and the region. They must share with the public how sponsorship proceeds will be used and how the partnership benefits the team and its supporters.”

Transparency is no longer an optional communications choice: it is a response to an audience that has already decided to analyse. An unexplained deal gets filled by the public’s own narrative — which is rarely benevolent when context is missing.

This is something that sponsors, agencies and sports properties can no longer treat as a secondary variable. Public perception is an integral part of a sponsorship’s value, not a side effect. Building that perception requires a strategy — and it starts with choosing who you decide to support and why.