Racing’s Second Revolution - Part 3: The Roadmap To Move Away From Sponsorship And Towards Owned Revenues

Revenue optimization
Written By David Vaucher

This is part 3 of a 4-part series, you can catch up on:

When drivers and teams stop chasing logos and start creating habits, products, and communities that belong to them, they build a sustainable base of revenue, and in the process shape motorsport to become more accessible, participatory, and resilient.

Part 1 was diagnosis: “Teams are fragile because they rent visibility from sponsors.”
Part 2 was foundation: “Storytelling is the infrastructure that makes a sport culturally alive.”
Part 3 is synthesis: “Cultural crossovers that are ubiquitous are how teams and drivers turn meaning into independence and accessibility.”

From hype-driven attention to ownership

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.

That was the thesis behind parts 1 and 2, part 3 closes the loop.

In this installment let’s assume that a given motorsport series has put considerable effort into creating content as described before, and it’s resonating well with fans, and perhaps even started to get through to the general population.

In other words, they have built a solid foundation on which teams and drivers can springboard to capitalize on the resulting excitement and interest.

What then are the next steps for teams and drivers within that series to working towards truly lasting, independent content, and how might this even lead to a transcendent driver or team, similar to Michael Jordan or the Chicago Bulls of the 1990’s?

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In less than 500 words.


We care about Ayrton Senna and Michael Schumacher, but does anyone else?

There’s no shortage of mythical figures in the world of F1 alone, and it’s common for hardcore race fans to trade stories about how they were at a track decades ago when Senna got pole or when Schumacher made a move characteristic of his aggressive driving style.

But what about more casual fans?

What about the general public?

I strongly doubt it, and while those are the biggest names of the last 35 years, there are many other accomplished drivers who might as well be invisible outside of motorsport circles: Juan Manuel Fangio, Nikki Lauda, Alain Prost, and on and on.

And that’s only in F1!

If you asked someone to name a well-known rally figure, if they played videogames nearly 30 years ago you might hear Colin McRae, but what’s the likelihood of hearing Sébastien Loeb, Sébastien Ogier, or Kalle Rovanperä?

Who knows about Alex Palou in IndyCar but IndyCar fans and motorsport fans outside North America willing to branch out?

There can only be a handful of truly transcendent figures in any sport, but for them to be almost totally lacking in one with as much cultural awareness as motorsport (in the sense that everyone knows that racing cars is something that happens regularly), is an indictment of the lack of identity that motorsport and its teams and drivers have created for themselves.

This is the fundamental message of parts 1 and 2 of this series: if a team is just pursuing sponsorship to go racing, what is its identity, really?

But if you’re the National Football League with an NFL Films, or you’re the NBA licensing its identity to Starter to create truly iconic streetwear, the platform is there for cultural dominance, the emergence of transcendent figures, and yes, more stand-alone revenues that don’t depend on outside support.

There’s a meme that in the 90s that everyone was somehow a Charlotte Hornets fan because of their iconic Starter-brand jacket and turquoise color scheme.

Believe it or not, I think you can draw a direct line from that example (among many others) to the success Michael Jordan had in becoming one of the world’s most successful pitchmen, and how that status then further reinforced the NBA on its way to becoming known as a platform for some of the most stylish and influential athletes on the planet.

Cultural ubiquity is what’s missing

I haven’t yet mentioned Lewis Hamilton because he serves as a perfect case study for all the elements that need to line up perfectly for teams and drivers to use content as much as possible to craft their own identities and move as closely as possible to revenue streams they control.

Hamilton arrived in F1 in the mid-2000’s and his dominant run occurred during a time when social media was still in its relative infancy; crucially, Drive To Survive premiered towards the tail-end of his reign.

This is important because for most of his championship streak, Formula 1 did not have an established platform for its drivers. There is no doubt that Hamilton made waves with his interest in fashion and culture from the moment he started to express himself off-track, but this is only relative to how low profile drivers were at the time.

Can you imagine how seismic Hamilton’s impact would be in another timeline during which he actually made his debut today and had similar success?

To tie all of this together, Senna and Schumacher existed at a time where Formula 1 was just not the global powerhouse it is presently, and let’s be honest, those two were far too hyper-focused on racing to have any relevance outside it anyways.

Lewis Hamilton was perhaps the first driver to participate in activities outside of racing that had broad cultural appeal, but F1 just did not have the reach to make those appearances ubiquitous and to imprint himself and racing in the cultural fabric like the NBA, Michael Jordan and the 1990’s Chicago Bulls.

The Vaucher Analytics Relevance Pyramid for Monetizable IP

Visual model showing the Motorsport Relevance Pyramid by Vaucher Analytics. The diagram defines five levels - Core Product, Storytelling & Media, Culture & Collaboration, Ubiquity, and Icon Status - separated by an “Independence Line” where teams and drivers shift from sponsor dependence to owned revenue and self-sustaining growth.

The work is over, now the fun can start

The pyramid is a business model and a roadmap.

Every team, series, and driver sits somewhere on it, and every step upward represents more control, more stability, and more opportunity.

Below the independence line, racing is a constant struggle to secure the next sponsor.

Above it, you start building assets that work for you every day: your stories, your products, your community.

The path to a stronger, more accessible motorsport begins when more people start experimenting at every level of this model and that experimentation is where the fun truly starts, because the options are only as limited as your imagination and the data you have on your target audience.

In Part 4 of Racing’s Second Revolution, we’ll look at concrete examples of what this transformation could look like for teams and drivers willing to be as brave off-track as they are on it.

Are you ready to optimize your motorsport potential?

At Vaucher Analytics, we help race teams and manufacturers turn racing ability into brand capital.

If you’re serious about making your motorsport team or series matter beyond the podium, let’s talk.

Book your 30-minute discovery call by contacting us today:

Main image credit: Warren Jones via Unsplash

David Vaucher
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