Leveraging Formula 1 Sponsorships in 2022
Before the starting gun goes off at Miami’s Formula 1 Grand Prix in May, the epic race already has a clear winner. After decades of relatively modest US viewership, the world’s premiere formula racing competition is hitting its stride in the American market, which saw a 58% increase in viewership from 2020 to 2021.
The factors driving the rapid increase in Formula 1’s popularity in the US are a testament to marketing’s power to drive audience growth: since the debut of Netflix’s F1 series “Drive to Survive” in March of 2019, Formula 1 viewership has increased 50%. With a cumulative worldwide broadcast audience of 1.55 billion viewers and an annual revenue of $2.14 billion, F1’s potential as a platform for brand partnerships cannot be overlooked.
This month’s Miami Grand Prix showcases how emerging trends in the Formula 1 fandom can benefit brands and marketers hoping to accelerate the value of sports sponsorships. Here are three ways brands can capitalize on the unique opportunities of Formula 1 sponsorships to maximize the value of sponsorship campaigns, transcending exposure to drive measurable lifts in customer spend.
Don’t be scared by the headliners
Brand sponsorships are a familiar part of the viewing experience for audiences of most professional sports today. But Formula 1 racing is unique for the central and explicit presence that corporate partners enjoy in the sport, where brands make or break teams, and company logos decorate drivers and cars alike.
In recent years, tech companies especially have flocked to F1 partnerships to capitalize on the high level of visibility that the sport offers. Big-name partnerships with heavy hitters — Oracle, AWS, Dell, AMD, Cognizant — have driven up the value of and competition over sponsorships. Deals have been clocked in the eight-figure range, with brands reporting returns as high as 14.5 times investment for brand exposure.
But the value that Formula 1 campaigns provide for marketers isn’t limited to brand visibility alone — or to tech giants. DTC brands like Puma have also gotten in on the action, accelerating and measuring their return on ad spend by shifting gears to a direct-response approach to sponsorship.
While sports sponsorships have traditionally been seen as part of a long-term strategy focused on awareness, the particularly high exposure and growing reach of F1 highlights the promise for companies of all types — From enterprise technology, to apparel, and crypto.
Encourage cross-platform interaction to track performance
Several elements driving Formula 1’s popularity also make the sport a profitable space for a direct-response approach to sponsorship.
For one, both current demographics and emerging trends in Formula 1 audiences paint a picture of a fanbase that is digitally fluent and drawn to cross-platform interaction. Viewing data shows that much of the Formula 1 audience skews young: 41% of fans are under age 35. Additionally, in line with the tech world’s natural affinity for high-octane racing, cryptocurrency enjoys an active presence in the league: eight of the ten teams entering this season have crypto partnerships, and Crypto.com — a Formula 1 league partner — is a major sponsor of this month’s Miami Grand Prix.
If the internet-breaking results of Coinbase’s bouncing QR code at the Super Bowl tell us anything, then sponsorship campaigns featuring creative and digitally-native calls to action should find fertile ground for engagement with the F1 audience. This means brands can align the unique affinities of the F1 fan base with direct-response tactics to generate higher value.
Using a cross-platform approach, a brand might build on the success of the famous Super Bowl bouncing QR code to follow up on and solidify potential customer impressions. Marketers could retarget fans who engage with CTV campaigns on social channels to transform leads into conversions. In this way, brands can use real-time data from cross-platform engagement both to assess the impact of their existing sponsorships and boost return on ad spend.
Use engagement today to inform future activations
Incorporating more direct-response campaigns into sports marketing not only gives brands a better sense of the effectiveness of their sponsorships and ROI. It’s also the first step toward a more strategic approach to sponsorship spending in the long run.
The immediate and dynamic audience feedback that a direct-response approach draws is a powerful tool for personalizing future campaigns — the more occasions for contact between audiences and brands, the more opportunities brands have to add specification and granular data to customer profiles. And the better that marketers can understand customers’ needs and specific interests, the more efficiently they can align those needs with messaging.
For brands with skin in the game at this month’s Grand Prix, the Miami event is a valuable test run but by no means the end of the race for companies hoping to maximize interaction with F1 audiences. The announcement of a second US stop, the October 2022 Grand Prix in Austin, and a third stop in Las Vegas in 2023, means that companies have the opportunity to refine, adjust, and iterate on the data they gather from Miami. Especially for companies who primarily conduct sponsorships in the US, Miami offers a chance to refine their messaging for a worldwide sponsorship audience. With the right data on hand, May’s audience capture can lay the ground for October’s activations and conversions.
By incorporating cross-platform measurement strategies to measure audience engagement in real time, sponsorship marketing focused on action, not just awareness, helps brands drive short-terms gains and position themselves for long-term advantage. With that combination, Formula 1 advertisers can win the first lap and the race.
FanAI helps brands understand and measure sponsorship impact on sales using unique insights to maximize investments. Our mission is to help brands realize the true value of sponsorships by proving their impact on sales, and our vision is to be the leader in optimizing brand marketing performance.
