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.
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.