Going firmly against the trend of major
banking groups dropping sponsorships of motor racing’s Formula 1,
Spain’s Santander has set the sports world alight with news it is
switching its multi-million-dollar sponsorship of F1’s McLaren
Mercedes team to arch-rival Ferrari.
Santander, which recently published bullish
half-yearly results, plans to take its Formula 1 sponsorship to the
Ferrari team from 2010.
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The Madrid-based group will pay around €40
million ($57 million) to sponsor Ferrari, making the deal one of
the biggest sports sponsorship deals in history. Spanish driver
Fernando Alonso is set to join Ferrari next year.
The move comes at a volatile time for the
sport. A number of teams, including Ferrari, threatened to set up a
rival competition earlier this year over arguments about control of
the sport. The new deal will help ensure Ferrari’s continued
involvement in the sport – and F1’s own survival. It will also
almost necessarily mean a new advertising strategy for Santander in
its third most important market, the UK, where it has for the past
two years used McLaren, a UK team, and the current F1 world
champion, the British driver Lewis Hamilton, in its UK
marketing.
HSBC, ING, Royal Bank of Scotland and Credit
Suisse have all significantly reduced, stopped or announced plans
to halt F1 sponsorship, citing the need to cut costs.
At the start of the year, Switzerland’s Credit
Suisse said it would end its long-running deal with the
soon-to-be-disbanded BMW team, worth a reputed €17 million a year,
while ING said it would quit the sport after reviewing its
investment in F1 and its three-year partnership with the Renault
team.
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By GlobalDataING, which took €10 billion in Dutch state aid
last year, said in February that its participation in F1, its first
global sponsorship, had “achieved its objectives” by raising
overall global brand awareness by 16 percent from March 2007 to
November 2008.
In its 2008 annual report, Santander stated
that in 2008, its second year of sponsoring the McLaren team as
well as sponsoring six major F1 events, the bank earned a return of
€4 for every €1 invested. According to an internal study, 54
percent of its branch managers in Spain, Germany, Brazil and the UK
said sponsorship enhances the capacity to attract and keep
customers, while 90 percent said it increased employees’ links with
the brand.
