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Until the mid-2000s, a large part of Formula 1 revenue was generated by cigarette manufacturers.
Team sponsorship dates back to 1968 and flourished, but by the start of the 2000 season, Williams F1 became the first and only team that did not sponsor a tobacco company.
Tobacco sponsorship is now gone, and the sport, along with its teams, is currently experiencing ever-increasing restrictions on the advertising of alcohol as governments around the world crack down on its advertising.
F1 countered this by sending out a “Don’t Drink and Drive” message and Heineken, an F1 partner, only uses the sport to promote its soft drinks. The two have been bedfellows since 2016 when they signed a contract reportedly worth a quarter of a billion dollars.
But the clouds are thickening over the alcoholic beverage companies. In the summer of 2021, the French authorities insisted that no alcohol-based sponsors could have their products represented during the race weekend. This was independent of the products that contained zero traces of alcohol.
The pranksters can speculate when it is politically incorrect to spray champagne at trophy ceremonies. At the Bahrain Grand Prix it is already banned for religious reasons. In Sakhir, successful drivers spray a non-alcoholic rose water drink called Waard during the podium ceremony.
Sweet sponsorship
So what’s next on the Formula 1 sponsorship radar? There are energy drink companies out there, but one, Red Bull, already has a very strong foothold in the sport and it’s unlikely any rival would want to enter an arena where it can’t compete.
The answer seems to be the gambling sector. Bernie Ecclestone has turned down advances from betting sites throughout his tenure, but attitudes have changed under the ownership of Liberty Media, which bought F1 for $ 4.6 billion in 2017.
There had been some entanglements between teams and gambling companies in the past. In 2000 a company called Eurobet supported the Arrows Supertec team. In 2010, Full Tilt Poker sponsored the Marussia Virgin F1 Racing, and if you take a close look at Alfa Romeo’s F1 car in late 2019, you might have spotted some relatively tiny Betsafe logos.
But activity has spiked lately, suggesting that the sport itself is viewing the gambling sector as a potentially rich source of income.
In September 2018, a partnership between Formula 1, the interregional sports group and Sportradar was signed. Subsequently, from the first race of 2019, data from racetracks was broadcast live, converted into odds and then offered to customers of certain F1 betting sites.
party time
In 2020 a five-year contract was signed between 188Bet and Formula 1. This has resulted in the online sports betting and casino site logo appearing on the virtual track advertising for races broadcast in the Asia region.
PokerStars signed a similar agreement with Formula 1 in the summer of 2021. They have tied the same virtual route advertising for the European audience market by 2023.
Not to be outdone, Entain – the owners of Party Poker and Party Casino – have entered into a multi-year partnership with the McLaren Racing Team ahead of the 2021 Monaco Grand Prix.
The ‘Party’ logos are featured prominently on the team’s cars and both sides have ongoing promotions where customers can win goods, tickets and luxury corporate VIP races at the upcoming Grand Prix.
What next? Will the floodgates open like Premier League football? During the 2019/20 football season, half of all Premier League teams had a bookmaker logo on their shirts.
In addition to ten top teams, no fewer than 17 of the 24 football clubs in the English championship – England’s second division – had signed a contract in which their players’ shirts featured the logos of football betting sites.
These are remarkable numbers considering that prior to the 2002/03 season – when Betfair sponsored Fulham – no major football team had a gambling logo on their home or away shirts.
Play your cards right
When it comes to soccer, we can certainly expect more online gambling sites to jump on the Formula 1 bullet train. GGPoker could be one of those looking to partner with a Formula 1 team.
GGPoker has been battling it out with PokerStars for much of 2021 for supremacy in the online poker market. Failure to attend television shows, which regularly draw over 100 million viewers, could result in GGPoker giving away valuable ground to its rivals.
A partnership with the Haas F1 team could be a good fit as GGPoker has its eye on entering the US market and Haas is an American team. On the other hand, they could follow the lead of 188Bet and PokerStars by buying virtual signposts along the way.
These prime properties may have been sold for Europe and Asia, but the “for sale” mark may still be in the Americas.
You can bet that there are plenty of bookmakers out there making inquiries. You can also bet on the outcome of each race while enjoying a cold non-alcoholic beer and a nicotine-free cigarette.
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