Choosing a sports marketing agency

RTR Sports is a sports sponsorship agency helping ambitious brands achieve corporate marketing goals by using sport partnerships as efficient branding and engagement tools.

We provide sports marketing consultancy to brands and companies wishing to use tier-one motorsports sponsorship (Formula 1, MotoGP, Formula E, WSBK) to better engage and communicate with their client, customers and stakeholders.

A sports sponsorship can be used to achieve a wide range of objectives, from building brand awareness and equity to increasing sales and market share.

RTR Sports has a proven track record in helping companies achieve their Sponsorship Objectives. We have a deep understanding of the Sponsorship industry and how to leverage a partnership to deliver on your business

Why Make an Investment in Sports?

Sport is a truly powerful marketing and communication tool for companies of all sizes and industries and has become hugely popular in the media in recent years. It is global, exciting and rich in positive values. The worldwide audience is young, savvy, highly technological and allows for long-term decision making and a huge marketing potential.

When leveraged properly, a sponsorship strategy can be highly effective for any brand looking to reach an engaged, targeted customer base, and it has the added benefit of doing so without using advertising breaks. RTR is a creative sports agency that crafts custom strategies for large, small- and medium-sized enterprises alike.

We understand that each brand is unique, with its own challenges and objectives. We also know that one size does not fit all when it comes to sports sponsorship. Sponsorship should be seen as an investment, not a cost, and we will work with you to ensure that your investment delivers a return.

Why choosing RTR Sports? A leading, independent agency for sponsorships and all things sports marketing

RTR Sports is an independent sports marketing agency, so we are able to offer our clients unique and personalized services.

This allows us to collaborate with every team, rider and organization until we find the best possible partnerships for our clients. Additionally, we are free to recommended the path that is best suited for you and your brand without any obligations. How does this benefit you? And why is this significant?

An independent agency can bring you multiple choices without any preconceived solutions, add extra knowledge and experience to help you appreciate the details, and save you time and money by having a clear vision of the market.

Moreover, it provides a clear, robust vision of the possible partnerships scenario, with multiple options and information on several routes. This is key when evaluating opportunities in such a competitive arena: making data based decisions is imperative when the goal is to create successful campaigns that stand the test of time.

More than two decades of experience in sponsorship and sports marketing

We have a lengthy history of motorsport dating back to 1995– 25 years of success with clients and sport properties in Formula 1, MotoGP, and Formula E.

We are a marketing company located in London that provides consultancy to businesses who want to use sports as a tool for their success. We begin by evaluating our clients’ goals and desires, so that we can choose the right properties, activities, and platforms to launch an impactful campaign with long-lasting results.

For additional information do not hesitate to write us a message at any time at: info@rtrsports.com. Alternatively, contact us at the following phone numbers: +44 (0) 2071939706 or +39 (051) 0827978 (VOIP). We will find the most effective solution for your business.

Our Sport Sponsorship Services

We offer a wide array of services to help with your sponsorship needs, including but not limited to: identifying, evaluating, negotiating, managing, measuring activating and mapping out connections.

As a sports sponsorship agency with a core business in Motorsport sponsorship and marketing, we can help you deal with the following:

• Sponsorship selection
• Sponsorship strategy definition
• Sponsorship consulting
• Contract and sponsorship negotiation
• Sponsorship rights management
• Sponsorship Activation (creative content production, hospitality management, Licensing opportunities, on-track event management, B2B partnerships, Fan engagement activities and much more, live monitoring and live tuning)
• Sponsorship Measurement and ROI Calculation

Please note we are not a sponsorship broker and we do not source sponsorship deals for sports properties and events. We are a leading sponsorship consulting agency providing consultancy to brands and companies wishing to use MotoGP, WorldSuperbike, Formula E and Formula 1 sponsorship to reach their marketing and business goals.

RTR: Our History as a Sports Sponsorship Agency

RTR Sports was established in 1995 when I made the impulsive decision to come back to Bologna (Italy), the city that had hosted me in my university years.

I came back to what Italians call “Il Belpaese” (lit. the country of beauty), after a couple of experiences in motor sports sponsorships at SDC in Brussels and Pro Com in Monaco, preceded by a short employment in PR at Counsel LTD in London.

Work hard, Play Hard

My first years were driven by the principle “work hard, play hard”, with hundreds of meetings and great professional satisfaction. Those were the years of my first deals with Williams in Formula 1 for the modernization of the team facilities with Mirage ceramics. The very first agreement for my very first sponsor was signed in the month of August, which is quite extraordinary as this is the peak summer holiday season in Italy. It was possible thanks to the help of Gaetano Vandelli, GM at the time, to whom my full gratitude goes, who had the intuition that there was something good in what I was offering him in a very disorganized, yet enthusiastic manner. We talked about sport, sponsorship, solutions for the marketing challenges of companies, and how a sponsorship consulting agency could be useful to firms operating in various fields. Good old times.

The years of Formula 1 Sponsorship

This agreement was followed by other sponsorships, entered into with the then-winning Williams team. Those were the years of Damon Hill, Jacques Villeneuve, and Heinz Harald Frentzen: the time when our close relationship with the four wheels eventually consolidated. After these experiences, we partnered with McLaren in a similar deal for the construction of their Technology Center in Woking: the partners in the deal were Pastorelli and Mapei. It was an innovative strategy and a small revolution in the industry. Later, we collaborated in the rebuilding of the Toro Rosso Factory in Faenza. Always in a rush and firing on all cylinders.

Infostrada, Ducati and MotoGP

Immediately after my return to Italy, my passion as a young lad for the two wheels was revived. First, the world SBK with Infostrada, which became the main sponsor of the official Ducati team and the entire championship for a few years, which was followed by the first license agreement of a video game between Black Bean (currently, Leade) and the SBK.

These were our first fearless steps as a sport sponsorship agency, at a time when our daily creativity was unstoppable. We were still young lads when, together with Carlo Merlini, who later became the Sales Director of the Gresini team, we won the ESA award – the European Sponsorship Association – for the best sponsorship project of the year in Italy. The project was a partnership between the regional authorities of Emilia Romagna and Ducati, which were launching their first World Ducati Weekend. If I go through the project now, I can still see all the key elements for success, including the calculation of ROI which a well-done project should always return. By the way, we never got so far as to present the sponsorship at the European final in Sweden: we have always been the kind that like actions more than words.

The give or take years

Many other companies asked us for a lift for the transition from the SBK to MotoGP. This spontaneous move enabled us to repeat and start collaborations with Ducati, Yamaha, Honda and many two-wheel protagonists, as well as with Dorna, the championship organiser.

In the meantime, to improve the signing-on fee with the end customers and to bring sports closer to consumers, we developed innovative activation projects in shopping malls, on beaches, in water parks and in areas with intense pedestrian traffic. We also started sampling tours for very large national and international businesses, and we started participating in well-known car and motorcycle exhibitions, such as the MotorShow, and other large sector exhibitions. We also gave ourselves the satisfaction to collaborate in a very nice sponsorship programme for the Olympic Games and use huge brands and sports stars for testimonial and licensing deals, such as Valentino Rossi‘s computer and the Abarth workstation. If you wish to see what we did for Fastweb, Campari, Piaggio or BMW, which are just a few examples in our list, have a look at our case histories here.

Back to London

In 2016, we went back to the United Kingdom where we established RTR Sports Marketing LTD,  a sport sponsorship agency in London with a view to being physically closer to large business centres and to the European headquarters of the major corporations. We felt that Great Britain could offer us a more international array of customers, and this operation actually opened up new opportunities on the map, at the same time trying to retain and satisfy our Italian customer base. We entered into agreements with customers from Thailand, Russia, and New Zealand, just to mention a few. Working became more global, but also more structured and strategy-oriented.

The agency was changing, just as sponsorship had changed. From the exposure-centered tool that focused on the day of the event, to a 360° marketing powerhouse that allowed every brand to create a tailor-made communication strategy to connect and engage with their users, and to monetize it. An immense potential value, in the hands of marketing managers, marketing executives and global companies.

Today, while we are still working in the sector with sponsorships and deals stipulated with many first class players, we are ready to go back to the four wheels to support its exciting new entry, Formula E as well as the now booming Formula 1 Championship .

The next 20 years are our challenge to come and we are ready for it! Still in a rush, still engaged in sports marketing and sponsorship, but with a little more experience that we are offering to our customers.