Hello there, and welcome to 1FiveFour's first-ever blog post! We're excited to share our experiences and expertise across the worlds of sports marketing, fan engagement and sponsorship with our motorsports audience. Over the coming months, we hope that this content will be of value to you in your own motorsports endeavors!

In this blog, we'll run through the basics of motorsports sponsorship. We will 1) define motorsports sponsorship, outline the basics of 2) appealing to prospective sponsors, and 3) share a short checklist to help you get started in selling sponsorship. If you’ve been involved in racing for a while, most of this may be a refresher, but it’s a great setting-off point for blogs to come!

So, if you’re seeking to learn more about motorsports sponsorship, or actively seeking your first sponsor, get ready to dive in – this guide is created for you!
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Defining motorsports sponsorship

To best define sponsorship, let’s start by establishing what it is not:

• Sponsorship is not the same as a donation or crowdfunding. Whether it's a few hundred dollars or hundreds of thousands of dollars, companies don’t spend money on drivers or teams just for the sake of it.

• Sponsorship isn’t just a decal on a race car, either. That’s signage, which may be one asset within a greater sponsorship program, but that lone placement is *never* the end-all reason a company is allocating money to you or your race team.
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So, what actually is motorsports sponsorship?

At its core, sponsorship is a business case; an exchange of value between two parties, with each receiving tangible outcomes. In other words, you can offer the business something, in exchange for their dollars.

Sponsors invest valuable marketing dollars into race teams, venues, and events to help them achieve clear and measurable business objectives. For example, a sponsor may be looking to reach new customers or bring a new product into the market.

Key point: sponsors fund you and your team to help them reach new customers or clients.

For sponsors, the business results generated from these investments – also known as return on investment (“ROI”) – should exceed what the sponsor is paying you. Over time, if you can deliver consistent value for your sponsor over time, the more likely it is the sponsor will be loyal to funding your program.
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What value can I bring to sponsors?

To understand the ecosystem of motorsports sponsorship, step into the shoes of your sponsor – the ones signing the checks. This person may be a small business owner, or a brand manager or marketing director at a larger firm.

These decision makers have marketing objectives, along with a budget to achieve those objectives. When they consider sponsoring a racer, the pressing question on their minds is how can sponsoring this racer or race team bring me better ROI, than if I purchased Facebook ads or spent my budget elsewhere?

Simply put, they’re going to choose the option with higher potential ROI.

‍That is the fundamental question to keep in mind as a driver seeking sponsorship, especially early in your career. Be willing to listen and understand a business’s specific goals, their pressing challenges, and offer to tailor your range of capabilities to what priorities they are after. Be genuine. Whatever their goals are, you have to convince them that your race team is worthy of their marketing investment. 

For example, if they were to sponsor you, how could you help them…

• Put their product into the hands of new customers?

• Get in front of good-fit, high-value B2B clients? 

• Produce authentic photo or video content that they can use on their own social media channels?

• Drive foot traffic to their physical location(s), or online traffic to their e-commerce store?
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Whether you take the “brand ambassador” or “business connector” approach to sponsorship, your racing career lives or dies by your marketability; can you build up a legion of fans and followers, that sponsors want to reach? Social media platforms like Instagram and TikTok are powerful – yet not the only – tools to consider.

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A beginner’s checklist to approaching sponsors

1. Establish your story

Your story answers where you come from. What motivates you, and what are you truly passionate about? Think of it as your “driver bio,” that may live on your website or describe your background.

To stir some inspiration for your own “driver bio,” consider how you’d answer the following questions:
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• What first got you into racing?

• Outside of racing, what activities or hobbies do you frequent?

• Are there any worthy causes you’re passionate about or connected to? What do they mean to you?

• Do you have your own business venture? Or, do you work somewhere currently, with some of that income supporting your racing career?
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Your identity as a racer isn't solely your racing achievements. Those are a big part of it, but they alone are likely not enough to convince a prospective sponsor to sign with you.

Why is it important to establish your unique story before you set out to find sponsorship? It’s because sponsors will want to tap into the same “hook” which has helped you build and engage with your audience. This shows that you have been calculated in establishing your personal brand, and that you have the level of influence on followers that sponsors are after. 
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2. Prepare the right materials

This is where you create your marketing deck – a complete run-through of your team’s sponsorship offerings and capabilities. Your marketing deck should answer the following questions:

• What are your team’s sponsorship capabilities? In other words, how do you reach and engage with an audience – social media? Your website? At-track activation?

• In what specific way(s) can you help businesses? (If you have sponsor success stories, this is where to include these!)

• What is your audience size? On social media, how many followers have you amassed? Of those followers, what percentage of them actually engage with your posts (aka, “engagement rate”)? (Hint: this second number carries MUCH more weight than the first – quality over quantity, especially when you’re starting out!)
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3. Start the conversation

Now is when you tackle your initial outreach plan. Start small, and local – look for businesses that you’re familiar with, and try to genuinely understand their goals. With your motorsports platform, in what ways might you be able to help them get more customers? 

Sponsor outreach does require some creative thinking, but these experiences can be well-worth it in the onset of learning to sell sponsorship – after all, they are skills which you’ll need to carry with you in your professional racing career!

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