Where Passions Collide….in a good way!
I have been an avid Formula1 fan for decades now. What started out as any other fad, and the joy of watching fast super cars racing each other, slowly developed into fascination for the myriad complexities of strategies, the state-of-the-art technological advancement of the cars and the superhuman skills of the drivers. As I understood more about the advanced aerodynamics and the hybrid ICE engines and compared with the basics that we learnt during the college Mechanical Engineering subjects, I realized how far the world has progressed in improving these technologies.
Formula1 was no longer just a sport for me, but a combination of high end technology, impressive project management and team work, the world class supply chain and logistics of having to move the entire gear across the globe every few weeks, and the driver who has to extract the maximum from the car during qualifying and race. And even then, it is not about flat out racing, but race strategies, sometimes saving tires, managing gaps, undercutting etc. And then Netflix took it to another level in the fantastic Drive to Survive series.
Well, enough about Formula1. I continue to follow it, but this article is also about the other passion — cyber security.
I have been a passionate learner and cyber security enthusiast from almost as long as I have been a Formula1 enthusiast. What prompted this article was that, over last few years, I started to see more and more of digital and cyber security advertisements on Formula1 cars and gears. In 2022, it’s quite prominent and in your face. Look at the 2022 Mercedes Formula1 car and you cannot miss Crowdstrike, or McLaren with Splunk, Aston Martin with SentinelOne, Alpine with Mandiant and Microsoft and a few more.
What got me thinking was, what brings these two very different businesses together? Few years back, automotive brands were the prominent advertisers and sponsors of Formula1 and it makes sense. They continue to remain prominent even now, but surprisingly sponsorships and advertisements from digital companies and brands are more visible in 2022.
I started looking for Formla1 advertising data and came across this Wikipedia page listing all the teams and the sponsorships over the years. That got me thinking; how has the Formula1 advertising changed over the years, especially in relation to the pervasive digital transformation?
So, this is what I did. I took the names of sponsors from the Wikipedia page mentioned above, categorized them into industry verticals and ran a rudimentary analysis on the data. I found some some interesting trends and try to explore them below.
The number of advertisers increased from 74 in 2010 to 166 in 2022, a 224% increase, even though the number of participating teams remained at 10. That possibly shows a immense increase in popularity of Formula1. The current owners since 2016, the Liberty Media Corporation seems to be doing something right. The widely popular Netflix’s Drive to Survive series, now in its Season 4, also seems to have added to Formula1’s popularity. Could it also be that costs have gone up necessitating more sponsors?
What is also noteworthy is the change in Industry verticals. Two types of businesses; Digital and Engineering, were non existent in 2010 and command over 35% of advertisements in 2022. Digital would include all advertisers related to Internet based or purely digital business, while Engineering includes advertisers such as Siemens, DuPont, JCB etc., which are into core engineering business.
The table above shows a clear affinity to Automotive sector, which was No 1 in 2010 and No 2 in 2022. This is reasonable and expected, since Formula1 is an automotive sport. What is surprising and something that prompted this article was ‘Digital’, the leading advertiser group in 2022, commanding over 25% spread.
The above chart shows that the most prevalent digital business sponsors in 2022 are Crypto and Info security. Crypto advertisers include names such as crypto.com, Binance, Tezos and Bybit. Given the crazy popularity of crypto in last few years, this is perhaps understandable. These businesses are perhaps trying to reach maximum eyeballs.
Info security caught my eye. Names such as Darktrace, Splunk, Crowdstrike, SentinelOne, Mandiant, Microsoft, etc., are very difficult to miss. What is also notable is that almost all of them are in Detect & Respond (D&R) space. Unlike crypto, these solutions are not targeted at individuals, but enterprises. Then there are SaaS platforms, Data Analytics, Cloud Service Providers etc., which are also typically targeted at enterprises. So what makes them advertise in Formula1 in such large numbers?
The only explanation I could come up with is that modern Formula1 is driven by data, much more than it used to be. Vast amounts of telemetry data is collected by every team during design, testing and races. These data sets need to be stored and analyzed to eek out even the most marginal improvements. Where races can be won or lost by hundredths of seconds, even the most marginal improvements could be the difference between win or lose.
Keeping this data secure is probably what brings D&R technologies and Formula1 together. My hypothesis is that Formula1 teams use these technologies to protect their data and therefore provide advertising space to these business. Maybe I am wrong, but it is interesting, nonetheless to see how the nature of advertisers have evolved over a decade.
The 2022 crypto rout will perhaps lead to changes in 2023 and beyond. Let’s see what the future beholds. Meanwhile, I expectedly look forward to the second half of Formula1 2022 season. What a season it has been so far! Hopefully, the second half will be as exciting.
Note: I have uploaded the raw data at my GitHub page.
