- Fans are most likely to buy a company’s products when it sponsors in motorsport
- 62% of fans believe motorsport could not exist without sponsors
- F1 still trails Nascar when it comes to fans’ attitudes towards sponsors
Motorsport is the third-most effective sport at promoting its sponsors, according to a survey of the US market conducted by Chicago-based marketing agency REvolution.
From 1,000 US sports fans, 10.7 per cent considered motorsport the most effective at promoting its sponsors, in comparison to 48.1 per cent for football and 14.1 per cent for basketball.
Motorsport is considered higher among fans than baseball (7.9 per cent), soccer (5.6 per cent), tennis (2.9 per cent), golf (2.7 per cent) and ice hockey (2.5 per cent).
Where motorsport comes out on top is that fans believe that, when a company is an official sponsor of the sport, they are more likely to buy its products. This is likely due to the technical nature of the companies
45 per cent of respondents agreed with that statement, which was higher than any other sport included in the survey.
However, 62 per cent of motorsport fans believe the sport couldn’t exist without the contribution of sponsors, again the highest of any sport.
For individual categories of motorsport, Nascar remains the highest scoring among US fans, with Formula One still very much trailing.
“Nascar is the highest scoring motorsport in the study, and it feels like it has significant momentum as it continues to experiment with races including the Busch Light Clash at The Coliseum and the upcoming Chicago Street Race Weekend,” said David Kuhn, vice president of research at REvolution, as reported by Sports Business Journal (SBJ).
Overall, motorsport activations also garner high interest among fans, with motorsport only finishing behind soccer and tennis for venue naming rights deals (61.9 per cent) and team sponsors (56.6 per cent).