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 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.
When Access Becomes Chaos: The Fan Safety Crisis Motorsport Is Not Seeing
My fear is that motorsport is again careening down a treacherous road it’s already travelled, waiting for something to go wrong before writing the rules.
Let’s not do that.
I want to enjoy a day at the track with my wife, and another after that, and another, until we can’t physically go to the track anymore.
I want the same for everyone else and their family.
Let’s not wait until we’re reading about another disaster, this time not involving a car, but a crowd.
Not a fatal crash, but a failed evacuation.
Not a broken barrier, but a blocked tunnel.
This isn’t about catastrophizing. It’s about foresight, it’s about respecting people’s very lives by assuring them that if they show up to an FIA event, the only strong emotion they will feel is the joy they experience as a Hypercar or Formula 1 car flashes by them.
5 Strategies Motorsports Racing Teams Can Implement Today to Cut Costs Without Sacrificing Performance
Every year, costs go up: fuel, freight, parts, labor.
And now we should add tariffs to the mix.
Meanwhile, sponsorship dollars are harder to secure, and prize money can’t be relied on to keep pace either as both fall under the squeeze of tough macro-economic conditions.
The result? Teams are burning through budgets faster, with less margin for error. Without proactive cost management, many risk being priced out of competition—or forced to make painful compromises that hurt on-track performance.
Doing nothing is always a choice, and an understandable one: it is easy to make.
At least in the short-term.
However, in times where costs do not go down, this choice.means falling behind, or closing up shop completely.