In May 2025, in Miami, the Formula 1 drivers took part in the traditional pre-race parade on ten cars built from LEGO bricks, around 400,000 pieces each. Lewis Hamilton called it the most fun drivers’ parade ever. At first glance it was a nice gimmick. To anyone who works with sponsors it showed clearly how strategic sports partnerships work.

The common assumption is that a sponsor buys a sport’s audience. The most interesting partnerships of recent years also work the other way round: the brand brings to the sport an audience the sport could not reach on its own. Children and families, fashion and luxury enthusiasts. That is where the pool really grows.

In short

• A sponsorship buys visibility in front of a sport’s audience; a strategic partnership builds products, experiences and content together and moves audiences in both directions.
• Formula 1 does this with LEGO (since 2025), LVMH (a ten-year deal from 2025) and Disney (since late 2025): three brands, three different audiences.
• For a company the useful question is not how many people will see it, but whom it will reach that it did not reach before.

Sponsorship or partnership: what is the difference

In practice the two words are often used as synonyms, and many contracts mix them. The difference lies in what is exchanged. In a classic sponsorship the company pays to appear in front of the audience of a team or a championship: logo, hospitality, image rights. In a strategic partnership the two sides pool something more, products, channels, skills, and the value comes from what they build together. The brand does not just use the sport’s audience: it brings its own.

Three partnerships that widen Formula 1’s audience

LEGO: children and families

The partnership between LEGO and Formula 1, announced in September 2024, started with the 2025 season: a range of sets for all ages, from DUPLO for the youngest, with all ten teams represented, activities in the Grand Prix fan zones and content on LEGO’s digital channels. The Miami parade was its most visible part. In 2026 the relationship was extended to F1 Academy, the women’s championship, with a car in LEGO colours. The commercial reasoning is straightforward: a child who builds a single-seater at seven is a potential viewer at fifteen.

Disney: those who have not yet reached the races

In May 2025 Formula 1 and Disney announced a global collaboration with Mickey Mouse and friends, which kicked off at the Las Vegas Grand Prix in November 2025: experiences, content and products worldwide. In the announcement the two companies quoted a figure: more than four million children aged 8 to 12 already follow the championship across the European Union and the United States. Emily Prazer, Formula 1’s chief commercial officer, explained that the deal serves to step outside the world of sport into a broader consumer market. It is LEGO’s logic, with a brand that also speaks to people who have never watched a Grand Prix.

LVMH: luxury

The third case looks at the other end of the market. Since 2025 LVMH has been a global partner of Formula 1 under a ten-year deal, with several of the group’s maisons: Louis Vuitton, linked to the trophy presentation, TAG Heuer, official timekeeper in place of Rolex, and Moët Hennessy. For Formula 1 it is a way to cover a high-income audience that follows luxury more than sport; for LVMH, a global stage for several brands with a single contract.

And MotoGP?

In MotoGP the same principle has taken a form more closely tied to the talent pipeline. The Red Bull MotoGP Rookies Cup, created in 2007 with KTM bikes, brings young riders from many countries to race on the same weekends as the world championship: the first champion was Johann Zarco. For Red Bull it is one piece of a story that reaches all the way to the KTM factory team in MotoGP, whose title sponsor it has been since 2017. For the championship it is a channel towards the riders and the audience of tomorrow. We have written a dedicated article on how motorsport builds content for the digital audience.

What makes a partnership strategic

In our experience, the partnerships that really widen the audience have three things in common. The first is an audience the other side does not have: LEGO brings children, LVMH luxury, Formula 1 speed and a global stage. The second is a product or an experience built together, not just a logo: a set to build, a parade, a collection. The third is time: a child won over today becomes a viewer in a few years, which is also why agreements of this kind are multi-year.

Where people trip up most often

The most frequent trap is calling a sponsorship a partnership and expecting a new audience from a logo on the sidepod. The logo brings visibility in front of those who already follow the races; a new audience arrives only if the brand puts something of its own on the table. The second trap concerns measurement. Impressions say how many people saw a brand, not who arrived for the first time. For a partnership of this kind it is worth also measuring new contacts, sales of joint products and growth in specific age groups or markets. We discuss it in detail in the article on sponsorship data analysis.

How we work on partnerships

When a company asks us for a sponsorship in motorsport, the first question we ask is whom it wants to reach. Sometimes the answer leads to a classic team sponsorship in Formula 1 or MotoGP; other times to a licensing agreement, a joint product, an activation built together with the championship. In our model the commission is paid by the sports property, not by the sponsoring company: so we can propose the formula that is needed, even when it is not the most expensive one.

A sponsorship buys an audience. A partnership brings a new one.