From Tobacco to Crypto: The Search for the Next Lucrative Vice Motorsport Sponsor
Tobacco use is widely recognized as a lethal habit and has for all intents and purposes disappeared from the visible marketing landscape.
You’d be hard pressed to remember the last time you saw a tobacco brand anywhere but behind a store counter, yet racing fans will know it wasn’t always this way.
As destructive as the tobacco industry was and continues to be, there is no denying just how mightily their involvement shaped motorsports. Obviously we can talk about liveries which have since become iconic, and it’s shocking just how many names from a certain era are actually tobacco-related.
Marlboro, Gitanes, John Player Special, Silk Cut.
All tobacco brands, and that’s only a handful of examples!
Why did tobacco companies invest so heavily in motorsports?
They did so because the return on investment they received allowed them to quite literally engineer several eras of motorsports.
Tobacco companies also defined the modern era of racing sponsorship, and they did so for reasons that still form the bedrock of why any brand enters the sport today.
Part 3 - The Case Study - Drive To Survive: WEC Edition
The WEC doesn’t need reinvention, it needs translation, and a Drive to Survive-style series would provide not only the perfect educational format for a potential audience, but also the catalyst for changes within the series itself to make it more accessible, while keeping all the elements that make it unique in place.
Indeed, the challenge isn’t to overhaul the series from scratch, but to repackage it with intention, and a Drive to Survive-style series is the perfect opportunity to educate future audiences in an engaging way that makes them want to engage further with the WEC.
Part 2 - The Tradeoff - Drive To Survive: To Grow, You Have to Let Go
Hardcore fans don’t scale. They retain, and retention is not the same as expansion.
This is the problem that has plagued series like WRC and IndyCar. Their fans are knowledgeable, passionate, and loyal, but they’re not the future (if they were, there wouldn’t be nearly as much hand-wringing about where these series are headed).
Designing your product (your broadcast, branding, social content, format) to please them is like designing a smartphone for flip phone users.
You’re locking yourself into yesterday’s potential.
This isn’t always intentional. In many cases, the issue is that no one has clearly defined what growth looks like and where it should be headed.
So the default becomes: “Let’s not upset the base.”
But if you haven’t identified who your growth audience is, and what they expect, then you’re not just failing to attract new fans. You’re actively reinforcing the ceiling above you.
Part 1 - The Scorecard - Drive To Survive: Is Your Favorite Motorsport Series Ready For the Global Spotlight?
When people think of racing, they think of Formula 1 and increasingly, even among casual viewers, they know the teams, the drivers, the rivalries.
That didn’t happen by accident.
It happened because of Drive to Survive, a Netflix series that didn’t just document Formula 1, it transformed it, from a niche European sport into a worldwide luxury media property.
Since then, every struggling series has echoed the same line:
“We need our own Drive to Survive.”
But here's the truth: a docuseries won't elevate, or even save you, if your series isn’t ready to be saved.
And most aren’t.
Of course, producing good content is not a given, but it’s more straight-forward than being ready for the spotlight.
In other words, the real difficulty is having the structure in place to capitalize on that eventual good content.