Are airlines in Formula 1 more than just hot air under the wings
Question – what is the similarity between the Manchester United football club, the Scuderia Ferrari F1 team, the New Zealand yachting team for the Americas’ Cup and the Dubai Tennis Open? They’re all sponsored by airline companies. What makes this little factoid even more interesting is that all of the airlines in question are Asian. The past decade or so has seen major economic growth in Asia and global recognition is just another byproduct of the success enjoyed by such conglomerates. It shouldn’t come as a big surprise then, that no less than four of the existing ten Formula 1 teams have or have had an Asian airline as a major sponsor.
The first of the Asian fleets to sponsor a team in the pinnacle of motor sport was Emirates. The UAE based airline signed a deal with the Vodafone McLaren Mercedes team on 10th March 2006. Airline chief Sheikh Ahmed bin Saeed Al Maktoum had commented then, “Grand Prix racing attracts millions of followers around the globe, and we believe it will be an excellent vehicle to further Emirates’ brand awareness internationally.”
The advantages are limitless, and on tap for anyone with the capacity to be able to sponsor Formula 1. The sport utilizes some of the highest budgets known to the sporting world and also enjoys one of the highest television viewerships the world over (second only to the Olympic Games and the football World Cup, events which are held once every four years).
With such endless scope of reaching out to an audience that transcends all political boundaries, there is hardly a better mode of advertising especially for a company with truly global ambitions. And with tobacco advertising (the virtual bankroller of the sport for the better part of three decades) now having been consigned to history and off the cars, F1 had to find newer sources of funding. Airlines are one such strong source of funding, via team and driver sponsorships as well as on-track and event sponsorship.
Emirates is not the only airline lined up on a colourful F1 grid. Etihad Airways struck a threeyear deal with champion team Ferrari earlier this year to have their logo put up on the F2008’s rear wing and on the drivers’ overalls and helmets.
Etihad is UAE’s premiere airline and is expanding its operations out of Asia to the Western world as well. The airline already sponsors the Chelsea football club and with their move into Formula 1 hopes to better convey their USP to the rest of the world – cheap, but high standard flying to over 45 destinations across the globe.
Another South East Asian low cost carrier – Air Asia sponsors the AT&T Williams F1 team. They even had one of their Airbus A320 aircrafts’ painted in the team’s colours with the front end resembling young Nico Rosberg’s helmet design.
One clear aspect of airline sponsorship of F1 teams is evident in that their logos are well integrated into the overall team livery, seen not just on the cars themselves but also in the overall branding on the drivers race suits and helmets plus the mechanics’ overalls and any other area worth flaunting visually.
And to round off the 2008 F1 grid with airline backing is of course our very own Kingfisher Airlines that is lead sponsor of Dr. Vijay Mallya’s Team Force India. In fact this stems from Vijay’s personal love for motor racing and he was in fact the earliest Indian to make it into F1, as far back as 1996.
His Kingfisher beer brand was a major sponsor of the Benetton Grand Prix team that year with Jean Alesi and Gerhard Berger doing the driving and that partnership did very well, clearly identifying India to the F1 circus and vice versa as an emerging powerhouse in the making.
Last year though Vijay pitch forked his fledgling but high profile Kingfisher Airlines into F1, linking it with the ethos, spunk, profile and proclivity of the Toyota F1 Grand Prix team. To say that even the essence of both parties as well as the livery being in sync made for a great harmony between Kingfisher Airlines and the Toyota F1 GP team.
Of course this partnership was never destined to go beyond the first year after Force India came into being and here Kingfisher has the prime sponsorship spots on the car as against the likes of Emirates, Etihad and Air Asia who are secondary sponsors of the McLaren, Ferrari and Williams F1 teams respectively.
The buck doesn’t stop with just the sponsorship of Formula 1 teams – the airline companies have now gone on to sponsor races as well. Gulf Air, the national airline of the Kingdom of Bahrain, sponsors the Bahrain Grand Prix and Etihad will go on to sponsor the Abu Dhabi round of the F1 calendar in 2009 as well.
In the past airlines such as BOAC (as British Airways was earlier known as), Qantas and Korean Air were prominent supporters of top flight motor sport and this is evidence enough that what one sees in F1 today is not a recent phenomenon. In fact, even our own national carrier Air India was heavily involved with motor sport, namely the sponsorship of the now defunct Himalayan Rally for over a decade and a half beginning in 1980.
Our world is shrinking and an increasing number of people are taking to the skies as their preferred modes of transport. The involvement in Formula 1 not only gets the airlines exposure to international markets but makes people aware of their existence as well. The number of airline users increases with the augment of the F1 season.
Airlines offer special rates to fly fans to various racing destinations. It’s just a snowball effect where one thing leads to another and with more and more people looking for a compromise between bargains and a good inflight experience; the association with Formula 1 helps instantly uplift an airline’s image worldwide.
The F1 bandwagon doesn’t seem to be anywhere near slowing down, and if you’re an airline looking to soar high, the route to success is a no-brainer – get up and sponsor an F1 team!
Does having the Etihad logo spread-eagled on the rear wing of the Ferrari F2008s of world champion Kimi Raikkonen and his team-mate Felippe Massa help the scarlet Italian stallions to zoom ahead of the 2008 Grand Prix pack?
Yes, of course!
F1 is more and more a money-intensive business and to make the teams successful, ample money needs to be ploughed into the cars, the infrastructure, the logistics and what have you. Etihad’s contribution (as well as those from other sponsors) helps make Scuderia Ferrari stay put at the cutting edge of the business, investing in new technologies, processes and systems, a fair portion of which does get translated into making cars mere mortals like you and me can own and drive more meaningful.
The lessons learnt from motor racing more often than not do make it into series production cars so if having an airline or a bank or a soap brand or even a liquor company bankroll top flight automotive development is pretty cool. F1 is the blue riband medium of world motor sport and glitz and glamour are part and parcel of the fastest sport in the world.
It is therefore a no-brainer why some of the world’s biggest names outside of the automotive sphere do use these flying-machines-onthe-ground to project themselves to probably the most aware audiences all over the globe. The power of F1 as a marketing tool is an established fact, impacting favorably to the well heeled and also to those wanting to be seen as having arrived. Airlines and F1 cater to this ideology, making both fly high, literally and figuratively.