The Next 100 Years Of Motorsport: What Will Racing Look Like In 2125?
It always strikes me how quaint the past now looks. When Alfa Romeo won that first Grand Prix, the cars were front-engined, had no aerodynamics, rode on narrow tires, and their steering wheels were decades away from a single button, let alone screens, microchips, or multi-function displays.
If you could show those drivers a modern F1 car, they’d assume it was built by aliens.
Even beyond F1, imagine the participants of the first 24 Hours of Le Mans in 1923 trying to comprehend a Ferrari 499P, a Peugeot 9X8, or any prototype from today’s WEC and IMSA grids.
And so the question is obvious:
If the last 75 years turned simple race cars into machines that resemble spacecraft, what might the next 100 years bring?
Racing’s Second Revolution - Part 5: The Objections That Will Define (Or Crush) Motorsport’s Next Business Model
The sponsorship model has been in use in some form or another almost since Formula 1’s inception, and as imperfect as it is, it’s safe.
But is it really safer in the long-term?
Arguably not, because not doing anything is itself a choice, without the benefit of having a say in the potential consequences.
Ulimately, if anything derails Racing’s Second Revolution it won’t be technical factors, since everything we’ve talked about so far rests on well-known business fundamentals.
In this fifth and final installment of the Racing’s Second Revolution series, we’ll cover the aspect of any great change initiative that is never talked about directly until it’s too late, yet has the potential to derail new ideas from the start: resistance.
The main risk is nothing more complex than skepticism.
This article addresses that head-on, and while the feeling is always the same, there could be multiple reasons behind that doubt.
Here we’ll lay out nine likely objections that executives, series managers, and investors will raise when confronted with the idea of moving beyond sponsorship, and of course we’ll explain how each can be addressed with a reliance on facts rather than gut feel.
Racing’s Second Revolution - Part 4: Building a Business Around Racing Independent of Sponsorship
From local karting outfits to Formula 1 giants, the path to independence looks different but the logic is the same: every team, regardless of size, can move up the Vaucher Analytics Relevance Pyramid by creating owned assets that work for them even when sponsors don’t pick up the phone.
For smaller teams, that might mean hustling to secure buzz-worthy creative partnerships, and for the elite tier it’s about entering culture itself, maybe even shaping it.
The execution of these ideas is another matter, but the more teams build their own IP, the less time they’ll spend chasing sponsorship deals, and the more resilient motorsport becomes overall.
Racing’s Second Revolution - Part 3: The Roadmap To Move Away From Sponsorship And Towards Owned Revenues
Whereas many online personalities with tens, or even hundreds, of thousands of followers will lead their respective audiences to believe they are living the good life, there are so many stories out there of creators with large follower counts who in reality struggle because they fail to monetize that following.
That’s because their content feeds into what social media algorithms want: quick-hit videos which generate an intense but fleeting emotion, because one video is quickly scrolled over for the next.
These audiences are entertained, but they’re not engaged.
The analogy is absolutely relevant to motorsports teams and drivers because if they can’t pivot from content that satisfies an algorithm to content that they can truly own, they will continue to be reliant on uncertain sponsorship package sales.