At the Las Vegas Grand Prix, Mastercard joins a pack of consumer brands flocking to Formula One

F1 “used to be quite traditionally B2B,” said Maria Kivimaa, head of planning at sports agency Octagon U.K. The agency counts McLaren sponsor Cisco, F1 partner Amazon Web Services and Shell, a partner of Scuderia Ferrari, among its client roster.

But Kivimaa and Octagon’s group director for motorsports Anthony Dealtry, said B2C marketer interest was rising. “We’re in active conversations with a number of different kinds of brands looking to enter the space,” he said, without naming the prospective clients.

Driven by content creators on and off the track, and Netflix’s documentary series “Drive To Survive,” F1 audiences have grown and diversified. Women account for approximately 40% of its fanbase. “Five years ago, [F1] was mostly for straight, white middle-aged men — petrol heads into technology with a lot of money. I’m exaggerating here, but that was the stereotype,” said Kivimaa. That’s “changed massively” in the space of just a few years, she added.

“There is something going on out here. It’s one of the fastest growing sports globally, even in countries where the race is not held,” said Rajamannar. 

With tourist infrastructure and novelty on its side, Las Vegas is en route to becoming one of F1’s new major stops. The Nevada race’s 2023 debut was among the most-viewed moments for ESPN’s coverage, its 1.3 million average viewership making it the third-largest cable audience of the sport’s season and the sixth-largest including streaming, according to SportsPro Media.

2024’s coverage has seen viewership figures rise further across the season, with race broadcasts averaging almost 1.2 million viewers per event, up from 1.1 million in 2023; the Miami and Mexican grands prix have only been beaten for viewers by the classic season highpoint of Monaco, per ESPN data. 

Mastercard’s chosen to borrow a bit of the “extremely glamorous” Sin City shine for its partnership launch, which follows the deal’s announcement in July. New paint jobs for the teams featuring Mastercard’s twin circles logo will be revealed with a performance by Cirque du Soleil, while the team’s drivers and engineers will bear the logo on their uniforms.

The company will aim its activity in Las Vegas at both B2B and B2C customers. As well as staging two hospitality lounges, it will be offering a “select” number of grand prix tickets at the cut-price rate of $135 — the cost being a reference to McLaren driver Oscar Piastri’s 2023 lap time of one minute and 35 seconds. It’ll be hosting a group of F1 creators during the race weekend, too, including motorsports influencer Lindsay Marie Brewer (2.8 million Instagram followers) and fashion creator Rickey Thompson (6.9 million Instagram followers).

The Mastercard CMO told Digiday that the company’s decision to sponsor the team was based on a cold analysis of its growing popularity. “If you’d asked me 12 months back, I could’ve cared less about Formula One,” joked Rajamannar. 

Despite that, Rajamannar had kept his eye on growing motorsports audiences and judged that Mastercard, already a sponsor of the Goodwood Festival of Speed motorsports racing event in the U.K., could find a place in F1. 

The sport’s “tremendous reach” and overlap with key international markets, the increasing gender diversity of its audience, plus the potential for hospitality activations for both its B2B and B2C customers, he said, were all attractions.

A months-long “complete immersion” into the sport via the Netflix series, books and multiple visits to races in Bahrain and the U.K. convinced the CMO of the sport’s potential for Mastercard, and converted him into a certified believer.

F1’s old mix of B2B advertisers meant corporate hospitality accounted for much of the on-site marketing activity, according to sports agency experts. That’s still the case for some brands, but as consumer advertisers begin to crowd the scene, they’re bringing consumer marketing tactics with them.

Mastercard’s mix of experiential and creator work at the Grand Prix is a case in point. It mirrors the path taken by fellow McLaren sponsor OKX for its own F1 activity, and by T-Mobile — which is sponsoring a concert at the Las Vegas Sphere, with tickets available exclusively to its customers. The cellular brand is also bringing creators to Vegas, including Josh Richards (5.9 million Instagram followers) and podcaster Brianna LaPaglia, who boasts 2.2 million TikTok followers.

There’s a good reason for that focus. With the race telecast ad-free on ESPN, there’s fewer opportunities for brands to own the event in the eyes of consumers. Providing consumers with access, whether in the form of discounted tickets or free concerts, or via creator content is a way of gaining favor with F1’s audience, given the exclusivity and cost of attending a Grand Prix, said Rick Cuellar, U.S. vp of commercial at sports agency Right Formula.

“You have to think of both [channels],” said Cuellar. “If you’re going to influence the broader fanbase… you have to have some sort of external digital presence and what seems to be the most effective is social.”

It remains to be seen whether viewership for Sunday’s race will exceed on its debut year, or if F1 TV ratings can eclipse those of NASCAR in the U.S. But for the sport’s new clutch of fans and brands, Las Vegas likely holds a vision of the future of F1.