Hookit’s Social Report | 2020, Part Five – A performance update on the top series, teams and brands

From chequered flag to Green Flag, who is benefitting the most from their motorsport partnerships through the pandemic and in the restart of racing?                                    

Hookit, the Black Book's official data partner, has examined all motorsports during the period of 15th March 2020, just after the coronavirus pandemic shut down most sports globally, through 15th August when most series had restarted racing. Here's what we found…

Brands

• Energy drink brands lead the way with over US$60 million in combined value from across all motorsports, including drivers, riders, teams, and series.     
• Only two car manufacturers made the top ten brands – Mercedes (fifth) and McLaren (tenth).  

When you breakdown the top brands in each series – including value recieved from drivers, teams, and the series accounts – patterns also start to emerge:

• Red Bull and/or Monster Energy make an appearance in three of the five series, leading the sponsorship value received from Formula One, MotoGP, and Supercross.
• Toyota and Petronas were the only two other brands to be among the top five across multiple series. This indicates that while Monster and Red Bull are invested heavily across a large swatch of motorsports, most brands target a specific series to focus their partnership and activation efforts on.

Series

When we look at top series by value generated, Formula One dominates all others:                               

• Formula One as a series drove three and a half times more value than any other series (series accounts only) and its teams accounted for seven of the top ten teams by value generated.
• Joe Gibbs Racing (Nascar), Movistar Yamaha (MotoGP), and Stewart Haas Racing (Nascar) were the only three non-Formula One teams to generate more than US$1 million in sponsorship value during the time period examined.

Teams

Drivers/Riders

In terms of the value generated for sponsors by the top 25 drivers and riders there was perhaps a surprising name at the top of the list:

• Ken Block, a major partner of Monster Energy and Ford, known for his rally racing videos is nearly always among the top five drivers when looking at social sponsorship value. His posts generated more engagement than any driver or rider except Lewis Hamilton
• Surprisingly, unlike the series and team rankings, Formula one drivers did not dominate the top drivers/riders list, with only two of the top ten by sponsorship value generated coming from the global motorsport series
• While all top 25 drivers/riders are male, the top female is Hailie Deegan, an up-and-coming stock car/truck racer in the Nascar development pipeline