It’s 2024 and a marketing director at a mid-sized company \u2014 B2B technology, growing exports, expanding communications budget \u2014 finds three proposals on the table: a title sponsorship package on a MotoGP rider, a logo on a Formula 1 team’s livery, and an agreement as Official Partner of the championship. Comparable budget, similar objectives on paper. The question they bring to us: where do we go?<\/p>\n
The honest answer is: it depends. But “it depends” is only useful if you know what it depends on. What follows is the framework we’ve used for thirty years to help brands make this choice with clarity rather than intuition.<\/p>\n
Sponsoring an athlete, a team, or a championship are not variants of the same tool. They operate on different psychological and commercial mechanisms, require different activation structures, and have different time horizons. Treating them as interchangeable is the first mistake we see brands make when approaching sports for the first time.<\/p>\n
A distinction that matters: the athlete is a person, the team is an institution, the championship is a platform. Three investment objects that share the sports world but respond to very different logics \u2014 and that therefore require radically different activation strategies and planning horizons.<\/p>\n
When Nike formalized its lifetime deal with LeBron James in 2016 \u2014 valued in the order of a billion dollars over its entire duration \u2014 it wasn’t buying visibility on jerseys. It was buying a narrative ecosystem: the difficult childhood in Akron, the return to Cleveland, the foundations, the public battles. The brand was overlaying a story the audience was already following with its own attention.<\/p>\n
In motorsport the logic is identical. Repsol with Marc Marquez in MotoGP, Oracle with Max Verstappen through the Red Bull Racing livery, Kimi Antonelli who in 2025 debuts in Formula 1 with Mercedes \u2014 bringing with him the interest of several brands that evaluated the window: tying themselves to a young talent, with lower prices compared to the established champion and the potential upside of a long career. It’s not just a sporting bet \u2014 it’s a narrative bet.<\/p>\n
Advantages: high emotional intensity, rich storytelling, direct engagement with the athlete’s fanbase, creative flexibility in activations, the ability to build an exclusive and distinctive bond. Disadvantages: the person is an uncontrollable variable. Injuries, team changes, reputational crises, or simply a prolonged slump in sporting results, all rebound directly on the associated brand. The bond that creates value is also the channel through which risk arrives.<\/p>\n
Unilever with Rexona on the Williams F1 team, Lenovo with Ferrari and Ducati: the logic of team sponsorship is structurally different from that of the individual athlete. You’re not buying the story of a person, you’re buying access to an institution. And institutions withstand changes in individual people \u2014 drivers change, liveries remain.<\/p>\n
Oracle Red Bull Racing in 2024 offers the most visible case of this logic taken to the maximum: a B2B technology brand that chose the most successful team of the decade not just for television visibility, but for the ecosystem that follows \u2014 hospitality at Milton Keynes, technical co-branding, access to a global network of relationships that a single driver sponsorship could never have built. For a B2B brand, the value is often not in the logo seen by a billion viewers, but in the depth of what that presence makes possible on a commercial and relational level.<\/p>\n
Advantages: long-term stability, continuity even with driver changes, structured B2B activation opportunities, access to physical structures \u2014 factory, hospitality, exclusive events \u2014 that a single athlete cannot offer. Disadvantages: the cost is higher, the level of narrative customization is lower compared to the individual athlete, and negotiations are more complex. If the team goes through a difficult sporting season, the brand is associated with that season \u2014 with no way to step out of frame.<\/p>\n
The deal between LVMH Group and Formula 1 announced in 2024 \u2014 with Louis Vuitton, Mo\u00ebt Hennessy and other portfolio brands entering as global partners \u2014 is the most recent and visible example of championship logic taken to the maximum level. LVMH did not choose a team or a driver. It chose to establish a presence across the entire platform, in a season where Formula 1 reaches 1.83 billion fans across more than 180 markets.<\/p>\n
The coverage that a global championship offers cannot be replicated with any combination of athletes or teams. TIM with Serie A, Barclays with the Premier League, Heineken with Formula 1: in all these cases the logic is the same. You don’t belong to anyone exclusively \u2014 and precisely for that reason you are potentially present for everyone. For brands like telecoms operators, beverage producers, or consumer electronics companies that speak to cross-cutting targets across multiple geographic markets, the championship is often the only option that can cover everything in a single contract.<\/p>\n
Advantages: maximum geographic and demographic coverage, neutrality with respect to rivalries between teams and athletes, exclusive category benefits, presence at all championship touchpoints throughout the entire season. Disadvantages: the cost is proportionally high, narrative customization is minimal \u2014 you’re among many partners, not the only one \u2014 and emotional engagement is structurally lower than with an athlete or team. Above all: the partnership takes time to settle. Those who enter expecting results in the first year are almost always disappointed.<\/p>\n
After thirty years in motorsport we’ve seen brands make brilliant choices and brands make wrong choices with identical budgets. The variable that separates them is almost never the budget: it’s clarity of objective before signing.<\/p>\n
Four questions you cannot avoid. First: what is the primary objective? Large-scale brand awareness and cross-cutting target calls for the championship. Emotional engagement and storytelling call for the athlete. Structured B2B relationships and continuity call for the team. Second: what is the realistic time horizon? If you can’t plan for at least two to three years, a championship sponsorship rarely has time to mature. Third: what level of narrative control is needed? The athlete is a person \u2014 you’re entering their world, not vice versa. If the brand needs precise management of all messages, the team or championship offer more predictable contexts. Fourth: what budget is available for activations, separate from rights? The rights are the entry ticket. Without activations \u2014 events, content, hospitality, co-branding \u2014 a logo on a livery rarely translates into real perception. The rule of thumb we use: allocate at least 50% of the cost of rights as additional activation budget.<\/p>\n
The right decision does not exist in the abstract. It exists in relation to a specific brand, a specific market, a specific objective. This is something sponsors, agencies, and sports properties can no longer afford to ignore \u2014 and that, approached with the right method, transforms sponsorship from a cost into an investment with a measurable return.<\/p>\n