The 2016 champion is one of several former drivers to turn to the world of finance.
When the Las Vegas race weekend gets under way, scores of fans will inevitably be lured in by the city’s bright lights to gamble their money away in its many casinos. Nico Rosberg, in contrast, will be looking to create wealth.
The 2016 Formula One champion will host around two dozen guests in the hospitality suite of Mercedes — his former team — to discuss their plans for investment.
The 39-year-old German, who shocked fans when he retired from the sport only days after winning the title ahead of teammate Sir Lewis Hamilton, has built a career outside the sport as an eco investor. Rosberg Ventures, a venture capital fund of funds the former champion launched this year, has raised more than $100mn from wealthy families and investors to deploy with investment firms, including Andreessen Horowitz, Accel and Kleiner Perkins.
“In F1, I learnt to move fast, make fast decisions and occasionally break things,” Rosberg says. “In venture capital, that’s how you get from $0 to $100mn in such a short space of time.”
Speaking to the FT via a video link from his wood-panelled offices in Monaco, Rosberg talks enthusiastically about life after leaving the sport.
He is one of a number of former F1 drivers who, having either walked away from or lost their seat at the pinnacle of motorsport, have branched out into the world of financial services. He had built a reputation during his F1 career for using his technical nous to help boost his performance on the track. After leaving the sport, he switched this analytical drive to slowly get his head around the world of finance.
Early in his retirement, Rosberg was directed by Swiss Bank UBS to build a vanilla portfolio including equity, bonds and real estate before he branched out into angel investing and venture capital — becoming involved in funding rounds for Airbnb, Lyft, and SpaceX when they were start-ups.
Rosberg now has a small team of six people running his venture fund, which has turned into a full-time job for him as he manages part of the family wealth of some of Germany’s leading industrialists.
Louise Johnson, chief executive of sports marketing agency Fuse, says that, as F1 has grown rapidly over the past decade under the ownership of Liberty Media and began to capitalise on its global reach, drivers have broadened their horizons in terms of careers after leaving the sport.
“The traditional route for drivers in the past was to commentate, become a brand ambassador, race in another series, or even buy a team,” she explains. “But a new generation is seeking other opportunities.”
F1 is ruthless and drivers rarely have an opportunity to dictate the length of their career. In the past season alone, two drivers have been dropped with several races left to run due to poor performances, and several others will move on at the end of the year having not had their contracts renewed.
“As a young driver, you have to deliver straight away or you’re out — there’s 10 other drivers waiting in line,” Rosberg says. “Look at [Franco] Colapinto,” he adds, referring to the Argentine driver who replaced American Logan Sargeant at Williams in the middle of the season.
“This is his one opportunity [to deliver] and there’s probably never going to be another one.”
The pressure cooker of F1 and the sheer focus demanded of drivers during their career leaves many unprepared for what comes next. But it can also provide a moment of clarity.
Not long after being let go midseason by the then AlphaTauri team in 2023, former Red Bull junior driver Nyck De Vries says a chance meeting with Mercedes F1 chief Toto Wolff in a coffee shop in Monaco led him to Harvard, to take an executive leadership course, after the former banker advised him to plug some of the gaps in his CV.
“I was hurt and hoped it would work out differently,” the 29-year-old Dutchman says. “But, in our industry, there is no certainty and you can’t take anything for granted. You’re only as good as your last race. I tried to quickly regroup, reset, and look ahead.”
He is part of a generation of drivers who left mainstream education early to focus entirely on their motor racing career, leaving little scope for any kind of fallback plan.
De Vries’ says the Harvard course was instructive and helped him broaden his horizons even though he subsequently returned to motorsport as an endurance racing driver with five-time Le Man winners Toyota, and to Formula E with Mahindra Racing.
“Going up the ladder to F1, everything is centred around racing and maximising your career,” he points out. “When you’re doing 24 race weekends in a year, the time you have available to explore other things is non-existent. The time [out of the sport] allowed me to explore.”
Shortly after De Vries was dropped from F1, another chance encounter with Serge Savasta, chief executive of Omnes Capital, which manages €6bn in assets and specialises in green transition investments, piqued his interest in private equity.
De Vries, who developed an interest in green investments during his first successful spell in Formula E at that start of the decade, has worked with Omnes to develop an “accelerator programme” that can help other professional sportspeople learn about private equity.
“I want to race for as long as possible,” he says. “But, in order to stay relevant in the future, I’ve developed an interest in business.”
Rosberg still remembers feeling scared during his first few months after leaving F1: “I didn’t know what was coming next,” he says. “It wasn’t until five years ago, that I finally understood where I needed to be going . . . Now I know exactly.”
While third-party targeting no longer has one foot in the grave, advertisers comfortable with using a 20-year-old technology available to everyone in the market as their primary method of accurately targeting potential customers should take a long, hard look in the mirror. In the age of AI, insights, ever-increasing addressability and attribution – those savouring the crumbs of cookies stand to miss out on the feast of alternative targeting and measurement available.
While the world of digital media and cookie alternatives is advancing faster than most can keep up, two of the foundations of advertising are still as relevant as ever. Campaigns that prioritise contextually relevant advertising to engaged audiences are proving their value and, with two in three people in the UK claiming they are sports fans, the opportunity to engage fans across the sporting landscape is huge.
As well as access to engaged fans in sporting environments, brands that can tap into these properties through sponsorship are uniquely positioned to take even better advantage of alternative targeting through contracted rights, IP-access and the global reach of rights holders.
IP-Inclusivity and Contextual Relevance
Most ads are remarkably forgettable. Exclusive access to the IP offered by premium rights holders to sponsors can change this.
System1 and Fuse’s The Sports Dividend research explains that among sports fans, brand ads that feature sports in the creative are more likely to contribute to long-term brand health, drive short-term sales performance and viewers are more likely to feel emotions like happiness more strongly.
With creative that achieves stronger results and makes consumers feel happier, contextual alignment is the next step. Research shows that ads get twice as much attention when placed in top rated / the most relevant contexts.
This means when compared to a standard ad in a standard context, IP-inclusive ads in relevant contextual environments can be twice as effective at long term brand building among relevant sport loving audiences. For example, an ad starring Tom Daley aligned with Olympics content or one with Virgil van Dijk aligned to football news will double its effectiveness compared to ads without IP in irrelevant contexts.
While leaning on contextual placements in an age of data and tracking might seem counterintuitive, for sponsors who have IP-access, content amplified with a media partner, or with AI-powered contextual targeting, produces results that are clear.
All of this is done without using any audience targeting at all. Imagine what could be achieved when privacy compliant first-party audiences are overlayed.
Privacy compliant first-party data sharing
Gone are the days when sponsors are content with simply placing a logo on a shirt or LED board and calling it a day. As well as the key role that sponsorship plays in shifting brand metrics, the ability to identify current or potential customers and serve them IP-inclusive, contextually relevant creative can improve performance further.
The most accurate way to do this is using a data clean room, a tool used to match datasets from different parties in a secure and privacy compliant way. Using a data clean room, first-party data from the rights holder can be overlayed with first or second-party data from the sponsor, meaning brands can securely identify current or potential customers who are already engaged with a rights holder and therefore are more likely to engage with branded sponsorship content.
While many rights holders are still in the early stages of developing a project that requires significant investment and a mature data strategy, Manchester City is showing it is not just ahead on the pitch, but also when it comes to driving value for its sponsors.
Following the launch of the Nissan Ariya, Nissan released its ‘Be More Pep’ campaign, encouraging people to follow in the steps of City’s iconic manager, from fashion to haircuts and ultimately, to the electric Nissan he’s seen driving around Manchester.
Using a data clean room, Manchester City’s first-party data segments were matched with second-party signals, creating an audience of “Man City fans who are environmentally conscious and interested in electric vehicles”. The segment was then tested against the “Ad Platform ‘EV Intender’ Audience” with the matched dataset resulting in significantly higher engagement for Nissan, recording 52% higher VCR and 43% longer average watch time.
While engagement metrics in a nondescript ad buying platform are not necessarily an indicator of bottom-line success, they do suggest that this relatively new strategy in the sponsorship industry has massive potential.
The next challenge for the world of sponsorship will be to reach data sharing standards expected by the rest of the industry. These are twofold – on the one hand, rights holders need to highlight the value their data can bring to sponsors, building clear audience segments and data sharing projects that sponsors can confidently buy into and activate. On the other, sponsors need to ensure their internal data-strategy includes an acknowledgement of the possibility of activating the sponsors’ data.
As these products evolve, there will be more pressure on rights holders to define and identify signals more accurately. This will help sponsors use their rights for more middle and lower-funnel tactics, highlighting sponsorship as a truly through-the-line channel able to drive more than just impressions and 30 second equivalents.
The case for better metrics
Across digital media, the success of sponsorship properties has largely sat with vanity media metrics like impressions, engagement or clicks, often driving to irrelevant landing pages too focused on the sponsor and not linked to the sponsorship. But, with opportunities to analyse more signals than ever with AI, using legacy digital metrics like impressions or viewability cannot show the real value of sponsorship.
Playground xyz’s Attention Time is a human-led, AI scaled metric measuring the length of time that an ad is looked at – it is 7.5x more important in determining awareness, and 5.9x more important in determining recall than viewability. While clicks can be sparse and conversions even more so, Attention Time is proving to be one of the most reliable metrics that we have to measure the effectiveness of sponsorship ads.
While Playground xyz is only one example of an ever-growing list of companies measuring attention and similar metrics (all with varying methodologies), exploring and testing new metrics is going to be vital in accurately optimising properties over the course of a campaign, season or cycle.
While the sunset of the third-party cookie is further away than ever, privacy savvy consumers and increasingly unreliable targeting suggest that reliance on this outdated technology is leading to less efficient advertising and losses for brands.
However, brands that have invested in sponsorship are increasingly finding value goes beyond impressions and time on screen. Access to IP inclusive assets, when served in relevant contexts, can result in significant boosts to long- and short-term brand metrics, and access to first-party rights holder data can then further help to reach efficiencies in campaigns. When complemented by more advanced performance metrics, the strength of alternative targeting solutions speak for themselves.
All without the crumb of a cookie in sight.
When Bet365 announced its sponsorship of pan-European soccer’s UEFA Champions League for the 2024-27 cycle, was it a surprise? Not really. The sports betting sector is dominating the global sporting scene, with recent research revealing 26 out of 100 competitions around the world are sponsored by companies in the industry.
Sponsorship of England’s top soccer clubs by betting companies has grown over 1,000% in two decades, with at least 42 different betting companies sponsoring English Premier League teams over the years. And still, nearly half of clubs in the league have front-of-shirt sponsorships from gambling brands, despite a very public ban on those deals coming into effect in 2026-27.
While many other industries are pivoting their business and partnership strategies away from sectors like betting, soccer is still scoring big. With a need to drive bottom-line revenue and rights holders looking to sell increased commercial inventory resulting from new competition formats and additional matches, it’s hard to ignore the millions in revenue these companies generate every year.
But as regulatory changes loom, it is time for brands and rights holders to “hedge their bets” when it comes to how and with whom they do business, as they pave the way for a new era of football sponsorship.
What’s changing in sport sponsorship
Change is already underway, having impacted the esports/gaming field, where digital and online safety regulations are coming to the fore. There is a greater emphasis on and regulations around targeting younger people. For example, if more than 70% of an audience is under 18, betting brands can’t use social media influencers or footballers as ambassadors.
And, most significantly for the EPL, there is the forthcoming voluntary ban on front-of-shirt sponsors from the 2026-27 season.
Not surprisingly, rights holders are pushing to maximize revenue ahead of major changes to gambling regulations in the UK and across Europe. And why wouldn’t they?
Major football tournaments attract huge global audiences which means significant global brand exposure and media value – a reason why Bet365 has signed as the global partner for the UEFA Champions League and Betano for the UEFA Europa League, and this summer’s Euros.
While the front-of-shirt sponsorship ban for Premier League clubs is a definite blow, there are still many lucrative options on the table. Betting brands are rushing to sign deals now to capitalize on the opportunity in the last couple of seasons of being a front-of-shirt sponsor.
However, the ban only applies to front-of-shirt sponsorships so other premium sponsorships such as sleeve and training wear will still be available. This is a good time to lock in a sleeve or other primary partnership packages before they start to rise in price as betting brands look to spend their sponsorship budgets on alternative assets once the ban comes into place. It’s also worth noting that the ban only applies to the Premier League clubs, not those in the second-tier Championship, which is still home to teams with loyal fanbases and a storied history.
How the industry is responding to change: The role of tech and data
It’s not just IRL shirts and merchandise where gambling brands and rights holders are responding to change. Increasingly, the role of tech will ensure that rights holders can maximize their assets while still staying on the right side of regulations. There will be more pitch-side virtual advertising to address pan-European or global betting regulations.
Currently, Bet365 perimeter boards still appear on TV in the UK, even when the match is being played in a market where gambling advertising is banned. This tech advancement is benefiting other sponsors too who are looking to geo-target the promotion of distinct products or services in specific markets.
Rights holders who continue to invest in better targeting capabilities to ensure they are compliant with regulations can be sure of their assets selling.
Tapping into other advertising inventory
With greater regulation and scrutiny of the industry, we will see a continuing increase in spending for other advertising inventory around football.
Where the promotion of a betting brand is prohibited, surrogate brands and advertising will continue to flourish. These can either retarget fans with betting messages in line with regulation, such as Bet365scores in Italy, or Entain Foundation when BWIN was the official sponsor of the UEFA Europa League can be used to reinforce brand messages without explicitly saying ‘buy me’ or ‘bet now.’
Likely as a result of regulatory changes, there is still significant investment being put behind responsible gambling messaging, with the likes of Sky Bet using playoff inventory to promote grassroots activation and responsible gambling.
For rights holders concerned about the sponsorship tap being turned off around betting, there are emerging and growing new categories to plug any gaps in their sponsorship portfolio.
One of those sectors is crypto, with the likes of Kraken sponsoring Spurs among others, and fan token platform Socios signing a $20 million deal with Argentine soccer superstar Lionel Messi to be their brand ambassador and offering token holders matchday tickets and merchandise. Deals, such as that with Messi, open up new opportunities with older talent and are becoming more prevalent in the legends’ space.
There will also be a continuing upsurge of interest in brands from the Middle East (Qatar hosted the 2022 World Cup) and China as we saw with the 2024 Euros where five of the 13 global sponsors were Chinese companies.
So, while brands and rights holders need to get match fit for regulatory changes, they can be confident that for any gaps in their sponsorship line-up, there is a squad of super subs on the bench warming up and ready to score lucrative and imaginative deals.
The Super Bowl stands as an unparalleled spectacle, seamlessly merging the worlds of sport and music to create a cultural phenomenon that transcends traditional boundaries. It is an event where the love for the game and the anticipation of the Halftime Show coalesce, attracting a diverse audience that extends beyond avid sports fans. This unique fusion has positioned the Super Bowl as the pinnacle moment in popular culture, creating a powerful magnet for global viewership and engagement.
I would go as far to say that this year’s Usher masterclass was my personal favourite Super Bowl Halftime Show ever! A nostalgic 13-minute journey through Usher’s epic catalogue of hits, with intricate choreography, flawless vocals and seamless costume changes. The impressive guest line-up of Alicia Keys, Ludacris, will.i.am, H.E.R and Lil Jon kept the energy high throughout, but perhaps the most memorable was the seamless skating sequence with clips filling my social feed this morning.
I was interested to read Adele’s recent comments where she told fans at her Caesars Palace residency show that she won’t be attending the Super Bowl in person this year as she claims the Halftime Show is a better viewing experience on TV. This just goes to show how the Halftime Show is curated with the global TV and VOD audience front of mind, vs just those lucky enough to be in stadia.
It prompted me to reflect on how the NFL serves as a compelling inspiration for other sports properties and brands on how best to leverage the marriage of sport x music at notable sporting events. Beyond enhancing the fan experience through entertainment, in my view there’s a lot of untapped potential, particularly in the UK/Europe where there are several other brand and business benefits for rightsholders, including:
There are some notable examples of UK/European rightsholders that are successful in this space. The Hundred, cricket’s newest innovation, have partnered with BBC Music Introducing since 2021, offering an exciting line-up of live music and DJs from emerging artists at each of the 64 games, which they describe as the biggest sport and music collaboration in UK history. Off the field and on the track, British icons Ella Eyre and Tinie Tempah performed at the season finale of the ABB FIA Formula E World Championship last year to celebrate the culmination of the motorsport championship series. I admire the fact that these emerging sports events see the value in incorporating entertainment to promote and spark interest in these relatively new events.
With the 2024 Guinness Women’s Six Nations kicking off last weekend at the Stade Marie-Marvingt, where France played host to Ireland, the buzz around this year’s tournament was more apparent than ever. Following the first round of fixtures, there are several storylines that make this year’s Women’s Six Nations incredibly intriguing.
Will anyone close the gap to the dominant Red Roses, looking to make it six titles in a row?
After an opening round win against Ireland, can France finally bring an end to the Red Roses’ authority after coming so close at Twickenham last year?
Which teams will take the top 3 slots, and secure automatic qualification to the 2025 World Cup in England and a spot in WX1?
One of the biggest headlines came during the build-up to this year’s tournament when Guinness signed an unprecedented £15 million per year deal to become the title partner of the Women’s Six Nations, replacing TikTok. With Guinness now the title partner for both the men’s and women’s Six Nations tournaments, it demonstrates the changing landscape of sponsorships in rugby and how major brands are becoming more committed to levelling the playing field between the men’s and women’s game.
‘The women’s game is the biggest growth engine for rugby’. This was a quote from Six Nations CEO, Tom Harrison, following the announcement of the partnership with Guinness, and when you look at all that has happened just in the past year, he isn’t wrong. Whether it be increased investment, record crowds, a higher quality product on the field, or vastly improved participation numbers at all levels, women’s rugby has seen significant progress across all areas in recent times.
A major step forward was World Rugby’s announcement of their ‘Accelerate Programme’ which has the sole aim to fast-track the development of women’s rugby through a new targeted investment approach. As part of the programme, World Rugby will look to form new partnerships with like-minded brands to help sustainably develop the women’s game on and off the pitch, following in the footsteps of the partnerships that they have already formed with Mastercard and Capgemini. With a US World Cup coming in 2033, the race is on for brands to be a part of the journey.
A major selling point for brands is the fact that women’s rugby and tournaments such as the Guinness Women’s Six Nations, offer a more diverse and engaged audience in comparison to the men’s game. During the 2023 edition 9% of those who watched were Black, Asian, and Minority Ethnic, compared to 6% who watched both the men’s and women’s competition. Also, 21% of the audience were aged 35 and under in comparison to 9% who watched the men’s and women’s competition1. This diversity and engagement are crucial for brands / sponsors. Conrad Wiacek, Head of Sport Analysis at GlobalData says, ‘sponsorship is buying access to an engaged audience’ and with women’s sport this is exactly what you get. 65% of women’s sports fans are more likely to recall brands they have seen, a staggering number compared to 35% of men’s sports fans. This is a drastic difference, and in my opinion, comes from women’s sport fans advocating for new brands to enter women’s sport and become a driver for change.
This point is supported by a 2023 report conducted by the Women’s Sport Trust, that found that 29% of fans think more favourably of brands that support women’s sport through their sponsorship, compared to 17% that support men’s sport.2 While specific to the UK, 16% of the population are more likely to buy from a brand that sponsors women’s sport, compared to 13% that sponsor a men’s sport.3 This data clearly shows that by investing in women’s rugby, and sport in general, brands are speaking to a far more valuable audience in comparison to the men’s game, hence why we have seen a far greater number of brands, such as Guinness, commit to major, long-term partnerships in the women’s game.
Women’s rugby has also become more visible than ever. Following a successful World Cup in New Zealand in 2022, World Rugby announced the launch of a new, three-tiered international competition, known as WXV. The first edition took place in 2023 and saw 18 teams compete across three different tournaments in three different countries. This significantly increased the visibility of international women’s rugby to a level not seen outside of a World Cup year.
2023 also saw viewership and attendance records broken across the Women’s Six Nations. A new TV viewership record was set in the UK, with 10.4 million viewing hours clocked up for the 2023 tournament, breaking the previous record of 7.7 million. While the Red Roses set a world record for the highest attendance at a women’s international rugby match, with a staggering 58,498 making the trip to Twickenham, Wales also set a record at Cardiff Arms Park with nearly 9,000 people watching them face England. This surge in interest and support for the Wales team has led to the WRU announcing that the team would be playing their first standalone fixture at the Principality Stadium when they face Italy in their final fixture of this year Championship.
Women’s sport also offers brands plenty of opportunity for rich storytelling, and this is no different with rugby. After significantly less media attention over the past decades, women’s rugby can provide audiences with a genuine sense of discovery. There are countless untold stories from female rugby leagues and teams across the world which are finally being shared with audiences and brands can play a role in providing access to this content in partnership with media outlets or via their owned channels.
A recent example of this can be seen through Vodafone’s partnership with The Good, The Scaz and The Rugby podcast which offers a unique insight into women’s rugby and shines a light on all the untold stories from across the professional landscape, whilst also taking every opportunity to promote the grassroots game. Through partnerships like this, brands have the platform to directly impact the relationship between players and fans, showcasing the incredible individuals who have helped make the sport what it is today and providing them with the media attention that they deserve. We are only going to see a rise in partnerships like this as the familiarity of the stories in women’s rugby continue to become more apparent.
In summary, the trajectory for women’s rugby has never looked more positive. During the rest of the 2024 Guinness Women’s Six Nations expect the product to be better than ever and more records to be broken. And keep an eye on the growing number of brands that you see associated with the game. If other brands want to seize the opportunities that the sport has to offer then they are going to have to act quickly as the market is only going to become more competitive with a World Cup approaching in 2025, and a US based World Cup confirmed for 2033.
[1] O2, RFU and Women’s Sport Trust join forces (englandrugby.com)
Vodafone and Global Sport and Entertainment agency Fuse have turned the Welsh Women’s Rugby team into Women’s Health cover stars as part of a unique paid media partnership. This is the first-time women’s rugby players have featured on the cover and comes ahead of the team’s historic game at the Principality Stadium on the 27th April – the first standalone women’s game at the stadium.
The special edition magazine covers, which feature current captain, Hannah Jones, and players Alex Callender, Lisa Neumann, Donna Rose, Sisilia Tuipulotu and Abbie Fleming, are part of a multi-channel campaign managed by Fuse. Fuse liaised with the Welsh Rugby Union to identify the six players featured, shoot the cover and build out the six-page spread within the magazine.
As part of Vodafone’s ongoing work as Founding Principal Partner of Welsh Women’s and Girls Rugby, the campaign runs across print, social media and digital (including video assets). Copies of magazine featuring the special edition covers will be distributed this weekend at the Wales and Scotland Women’s 2024 Guinness Six Nations match. The campaign is part of Vodafone’s ongoing drive to help grow the women’s game and helps to raise awareness of the matches, where tickets can be purchased for 2024 Guinness Women’s Six Nations and the location of Welsh Rugby Union home games going forward.
The landmark covers build on Fuse’s continued work with Vodafone and its commitment to helping accelerate women’s rugby with technology and connectivity. Previous work together on the proprietary menstrual tracking tool Vodafone PLAYER.Connect is helping improve female players’ performance, wellbeing and recovery and has placed Vodafone at the heart of the conversation on the impact of the menstrual cycle on sporting participation and performance.
Mark Huckerby, Head of Sponsorship Vodafone: “As Founding Principal Partner of Wales Womens’ & Girls’ Rugby, we are committed to growing the game to new audiences in the lead-up to Women’s Rugby World Cup 2025 and beyond. We are really proud to have worked with Fuse, Women’s Health and the Welsh Rugby Union on this milestone ‘first’ for women’s rugby in the UK. These six featured players, and their hundreds of peers playing international and club rugby across the UK are incredible role models for future generations.”
Charlie Baddeley, Account Director Fuse: “One of women’s sport’s greatest assets is its individuals, and the amazing untapped stories they possess – whether that be players, fans or volunteers. It was brilliant to work with Vodafone to highlight these inspiring women and deliver a first for the sport.
Our Rights Consultancy team worked closely with our Digital Planning team to develop the rights package to provide an even stronger ROI with their power and expertise.”
Amelia Dabell, Digital Planning Director at Fuse comments:
Reducing the time spent creating social assets is important for marketers at teams and brands hoping to score points with big game moments, said Amelia Dabell, digital planning director at Fuse, a sports-focused Omnicom Media Group agency.
“We all know how quick social media cycles are,” she said. “To have a chance of being relevant, of people wanting to engage with it, [brands] needs to put out content as quickly as possible.”
Though social noise increases the league’s value to advertisers and sponsors, Dabell says access to the league’s media assets provides a significant direct benefit by cutting licensing costs; without NBA access, brands activating around the sport would need to license images from providers such as Getty. “That becomes a huge value point within contracts,” she explained.
It’s in the NBA’s interests for as many of its players to straddle the line between influencer and athlete, said Dabell.
“Every player is a brand in their own right now and the more they can grow their brand, the more it grows the prestige of their team and of the league.”
A One Poll study of 2,000 adults has revealed that Wales is the kindest region in Great Britain, with those in the country carrying out an average of eight acts of kindness each week, compared to the six that people in the East of England will accomplish.
Londoners took second place, closely followed by the West Midlands, and adults in the North West.
It also emerged one in four adults in the UK volunteer, dedicating an average of eight hours of their spare time each week. Whilst 56 per cent would volunteer to help a disabled friend or person complete a sporting event, if they were equipped with the right tools and training.
Results of the survey were released as Nissan UK is working with The Richard Whitehead Foundation to train amazing volunteers to support disabled runners around mass participation races – through the Supported Runner Project. The initiative is helping to make this year’s TCS London Marathon more inclusive than ever on Sunday 21 April.
Gold-medal winning Paralympian and Nissan GB’s Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Ambassador, Richard Whitehead, said: “It’s fantastic to see how people support each other across the country and so many would be willing to help disabled runners if they had the tools and training to do so.
“Helping others is not only incredibly important, but also very rewarding, so we’re delighted to give people the opportunity to do so around mass participation running events like the TCS London Marathon.
“The Supported Runner Project provides comprehensive training to volunteers. Allowing them to offer all-encompassing support to runners with physical or neurodiverse disabilities before, during and after each event, helping to remove some of the challenges and barriers to entry that they may encounter.
“We’re looking forward to seeing the impact this will have at this year’s race and hopefully we can inspire even more people to take part in the future.”
Supported Runner Project volunteer Gill Menzies, who is helping her friend Julie McElroy become the first female frame runner to complete the TCS London Marathon, added: “I’m excited to be supporting Julie – it’s a real privilege to help her both physically and mentally complete the marathon and a rewarding experience for both of us.
“Volunteers are vital to the project – helping to break down those barriers to entry giving people a chance to take part in amazing events. With the training process being tailored to the needs of each athlete and support runner, it provides everyone involved with the best chance of completing their challenge.”
Runners who are interested in volunteering as a Support Runner for mass participation running events in 2024 can visit www.whitehead.foundation/supported-runner-project-overview or contact [email protected].
Kindest regions, ranked by weekly acts of kindness:
Top 30 things adults do regularly to help other people:
Key Stats:
We need a ‘Drive to Survive,’” said many a rights holder at some point in the last five years.“You should do a behind-the-scenes documentary,” said pretty much every sport sponsorship agency at some point in the last five years in response to a client brief.
Many sports industry professionals have drunk the sports documentary Kool-Aid, deeming it a panacea to any number of marketing ills. Make *insert sport here* famous among a peripheral audience and the growth will look after itself.
But as marketing commentator Bob Hoffman regularly reminds us, “There is nothing about marketing that is black and white, true or false. All we have are likelihoods and probabilities. Fame is no guarantee of brand success, but it’s the most reliable driver.”
For every success story, such as “Drive to Survive” (DtS), there have been (and will continue to be) failures, such as “Break Point.” The latter was scrapped by Netflix largely due to the underwhelming narratives of tennis tour professionals relative to the depth of A, B and C storylines that are endemic to F1. Data released by Netflix shows that “Break Point” amassed a “mere” 30.5 million viewing hours in the first half of 2023 compared to 90.2 million by DtS season 5 — 121st on a list of over 18,000 titles.
It’s encouraging to see rights holders “up” their marketing ante. However, the approach involves outsourcing their most valuable assets — namely their IP and audiences — to partners in exchange for a quick buck. It seems illogical that rights holders should let someone else tell their story, but the reality is that they are not set up to execute such marketing endeavours. As a result, many of these partners, Netflix included, are successfully building businesses from this relatively “cheap” way of working.
“Drive to Survive” is perhaps the strongest manifestation of this challenge. The hope was to bring new audiences to F1 which, in turn, would drive commercial value. However, it could be argued that outsourcing these efforts to Netflix has had an unintended effect.
Instead, DtS has mostly succeeded in building a secondary audience, one that has limited interest in the main event. As a result, much of this audience sits outside of F1’s commercial ecosystem which, in theory at least, hinders F1’s ability to commercialise this newfound fandom.
In 2023, F1 saw increased revenue, operating profit, attendances, and team valuations. It also saw a decrease in the average age and male skew of the fan base — much of this attributed to the ubiquitous “Drive to Survive Effect.”
However, if DtS has really fed the F1 funnel, it’s reasonable to assume that audience growth would be directly affected.
F1’s social media channels have certainly benefited. Social analytics tool Tagger suggests that Instagram alone has seen a 440% follower growth since Series 1 in 2019 (from 6.1 million to 26.7 million). According to F1, their social channels ranked second among all major sports leagues for follower growth rate in Q2 2023 — bettered only by Spanish football division La Liga.
Similarly, 6.15 million attended races in 2023, up from 4.16 million in 2019 (albeit the number of races has increased).
While these numbers may seem significant, they are dwarfed by TV audiences that average 70 million per race. Cumulative global TV viewership, however, has somewhat stagnated in the last 6 years, peaking at 1.92 billion in 2019 and clocking in at 1.55 billion in 2023. And despite the Las Vegas factor, TV audiences in America fell 10% during 2023 to an average of just 1.11 million — a small figure that belies supposed U.S. growth narrative.
Matters are not helped by the absolute dominance of Red Bull and much of F1’s broadcast ecosystem sitting behind a paywall, but from a commercial standpoint, a rights holder’s viability is largely determined by the size of its TV audience. And while F1 still presents a unique proposition — it’s an annual global sports platform that runs the best part of 10 months per year — and commands a strong audience, it’s difficult to validate a DtS related growth story unless there is tangible evidence that new audiences are tuning in to watch the main event.
It now seems that F1 has two main audiences — one whose primary motivation is racing and another whose main interest resides in everything but the racing.
This audience, younger and more female, inhabits a world of (scripted) off-track drama, subplots and personalities of F1’s main protagonists — spearheaded by Netflix and amplified by social media. For this audience, racing is a means to an end, a single plot line within a much bigger narrative.
To put it another way, Christian Horner’s early-season antics have already set up the opening episode of DtS Season 7 a year in advance. Unfortunately for F1, this will likely prove more compelling than yet another Red Bull 1-2 finish.
Sport’s business model is primarily B2B. It has profited from selling off its primary assets to broadcasters, sponsors and content platforms alike. In doing so, however, many rights holders have inadvertently relinquished control of their IP and audiences to third parties.
In the case of DtS (and others), a new subaudience has been created that exists in isolation from the rights holder’s commercial ecosystem. And while you could argue that sponsors receive a degree of “added value” due to the exposure generated via DtS, the real winners are Netflix and, in all probability, the social media platforms. It would not be a surprise to see Netflix monetise DtS through advertising and product placement given its need for new revenue streams.
While DtS has been a resounding success as a content play, its commercial impact on F1 has been overhyped. Despite this, F1 have played a blinder — capitalising on the bull market narrative generated by the supposed “DtS effect” to create tangible value out of something largely intangible. The real proof will come during the next broadcast cycle — given the depleting audiences, uncompetitive racing and challenging economic climate, it may be challenging to justify higher rights values.
For other rights holders, it’s important to be aware of the potential consequences of documentary-led endeavours and ensure the commercial model can capitalise accordingly.
The last 18 months have been hard financially for consumers and brands alike.
Marketing budgets have been stripped back and non-necessities questioned. Across the board, there was concern about how long the financial crisis would last. “Brands who weren’t in partnerships were putting a pause on investing in new partnerships,” says Louise Johnson, CEO of sports marketing agency Fuse.
“And brands that were already invested were doing less with what they were doing, and focusing on ‘less is more’,” she adds.
However, this looks to have changed. “I’ve definitely noticed in 2024 more brands coming into partnerships, brands who haven’t been in sponsorship for, like, 10 years,” says Johnson.
Fuse has had more briefs and more pitches in 2024, she adds, which reflects the increasing drive for brands to get involved, or re-involved, in the sports space.
Brands now think sport can help them modernise and “build trust back”, says Johnson. Plus, as media continues to fragment, connecting brands with culture through sport is a “great way” to go about it.
The Men’s World Cup in 2022, followed by the Women’s World Cup last year, were marquee moments for sport, and moving into 2024’s big summer, “marketers are being more optimistic,” says Johnson, while still being “very cautious” with their budgets.
“I definitely feel people are leaning into partnerships and sponsorships as a way to drive their brand, not just through traditional media and marketing channels,” she adds.
