Formula 1 banned tobacco advertising in '06.GETTY IMAGES
For decades, Formula 1 was "synonymous with tobacco," according to Kate Walker of the N.Y. TIMES. But "that all ended" late in '06 after F1 banned tobacco advertising. In '15, the last year for which public figures are available, the sport's 10 teams raised about $750M from sponsorships, a $200M drop from '12. That loss of income "hit the sport about the same time as the financial crisis," which forced the Honda, Toyota and Renault teams to shut down, although Renault "eventually returned." And now F1 is "reconsidering whether to continue to accept advertising from alcohol, fast-food and snack companies." The sport has been looking for a "new vein of money," and in the last few years, teams have been working to form partnerships with "the deep-pocket companies in the technology industry." Technology and F1 are "natural partners," and companies like Microsoft and Dell have "long invested in the sport." The loss of tobacco, the advent of lifestyle branding and active consumer engagement have also had teams like McLaren change their sponsorship focus, "abandoning the old model of a big-ticket title sponsor for a series of smaller but longer-term deals." Teams have been seeking partnerships with data storage and data security companies. The Williams team works with Acronis, while Ferrari has worked with Kaspersky Lab since '10. It is "not only the teams that benefit from technical partnerships." Thomas Been, chief marketing officer for software company Tibco, a partner of the Mercedes team, said that the F1 environment "had a singular appeal." Been: "What attracted us to Formula 1 is the level of competition, which I think is a very good analogy to what most of our customers are seeing; the level of technology, which I guess is just a laboratory in which you create the technologies that are going to be used in the cars of tomorrow; and that everything is in real time" (N.Y. TIMES, 9/14).
