This is a collaborative piece by Matt Bailey, managing partner at international sport and entertainment marketing agency Fuse, part of Omnicom Media Group.
There are few sports properties, competed for every year, that can genuinely claim to be global. Not regional with international appeal. Not popular in key markets with a fringe following elsewhere. Demonstrably global. Formula One can credibly make this claim. From teams and drivers through to venues and fans, everything about it is built for the global stage.
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The 2026 season marks a new era in Formula One in many ways. Major technical regulation changes are reshaping the on-track product, with lighter and smaller cars, power units deploying 50% electrical energy, and the introduction of overtake, boost, and active aero modes designed to promote closer, more exciting racing for both drivers and fans. Off the grid, the calendar continues to evolve with the addition of a new Madrid street race in September, bringing F1 to Spain twice in a season, igniting local fan engagement around home favorites Carlos Sainz and Fernando Alonso. Further underlining the scale of change, Cadillac’s entry as the 11th team signals a bold American push into the sport.
These new technical regulations, teams, and venues have given things a shake-up, not only on the grid but also from a commercial perspective. The increased attention created around the sport, which has been built over recent years, has now created an environment that not only provides brands with effective partnerships but also a multitude of ways to be distinctive.
There’s more than one road into F1
Brands are no longer seeing F1 as a singular entry point. Take the number of B2C and lifestyle brands now invested in the sport. The likes of LVMH, PepsiCo, LEGO, Heineken, Elemis, and Chivas Regal are going far beyond one-dimensional partnerships. They are recognizing their own subculture and finding their place within it.
For PepsiCo, F1 has become a mechanism for supercharging product and product launches in specific markets. The activation of Sting energy drink around the Chinese Grand Prix is a case in point. F1 provided a moment to drive awareness, trial products, and brand messaging in a new, high-priority market, in a way that felt culturally relevant rather than parachuted in. For Chivas, it's the alignment to the various sub-cultures and influencers around F1, with the added benefit of glass-in-hand moments at the kinds of culturally-charged events that only an F1 race weekend can generate.
For LEGO, the connection happens on a different emotional register entirely, encouraging play and helping parents share their fandom with their children through products, content, and experiences that bridge generations. The Miami drivers parade put LEGO on the F1 map, and they have continued to find innovative, creative ways to showcase both the brand and the models they sell. It’s not just a sequence of PR stunts; it’s a carefully crafted partnership.
The breadth of F1’s product allows brands to play to their strengths and differentiate. Something that can be more challenging to do with other sports properties.
A Versatile and Growing Audience
It has been well documented that Netflix’s Drive to Survive docu-series was the catalyst for the building of F1’s new audience. By bringing the drama of the track and paddock into people’s living rooms, it grew and diversified its fanbase in ways that would have seemed implausible fifteen years ago. Engaged, broad, and retained, it’s exactly the type of audience where sports marketing can thrive.
Younger (a third of fans now under 35), more gender-balanced (exceeding a 40% female fan split in several key markets) and more geographically distributed (sustaining double-digit viewership growth in developing F1 markets), F1 is now resonating in corners of society that previously seemed inaccessible. And this has profound implications for the brands that sponsor it.
Where once the commercial proposition would be built around affluent, predominantly male enthusiasts in a predictable set of core markets, the entry points are now far broader. Brands can now make a credible case for F1 investment in any region.
The current landscape means that there are more types of fans to engage with, more ways to do so, and, in turn, a greater variety of brands that can authentically show up. This breadth is what makes F1 unusual and exciting.
What rights-holders get in return
What’s particularly special about the current F1 ecosystem is that the B2B and B2C brand partnerships are mutually beneficial. Look at tech as an example. Brands such as Google, Cisco, or Salesforce are not on the grid merely for visibility. The products integrate directly into team operations and the technical infrastructure of the sport. The sponsorship becomes a proof of concept. The racetrack becomes a reference point and a pipeline influence.
For B2C brands, the mutuality operates differently. Teams and the sport itself benefit from having their intellectual property taken into key existing or developing markets by partners who bring local reach and relevance. Take PepsiCo, whose products have more consumers in priority markets than F1 does. Aligning F1 with Sting in SE Asia and Gatorade in the Americas helps build recognizable associations with category-leading brands in key geographies, driving positive sentiment and fanbase growth. It’s a reciprocal relationship where brands offer meaningful audience-building work on F1's behalf while also utilizing the sport's global nature and highly valuable IP. Both sides have skin in the game.
Showing up differently
‘Drive to Survive’ is a sentiment that brands must find in order to succeed in a highly cluttered environment. The key to this is to find a distinct space within F1; there’s plenty of room. The challenge is finding a niche and owning it.
F1 is as much a lifestyle and entertainment property as it is a sporting one. That creates genuine white space for brands willing to think creatively. American Express and Grid Gigs programming, LVMH and high-fashion collaborations that blur the line between the paddock and the runway, Gatorade and track-run fan experiences that put participants in the athletes' shoes, Salesforce and AI-powered fan applications that deepen engagement in the moments between races.
These are all distinct expressions of what each brand stands for, activated in a context that makes those values feel alive and relevant. The brands that win in F1 build programming, experiences, and narratives that extend the conversation across markets, platforms, and the calendar; and the ones that will be most successful will have an appetite, at a similar level of the sport itself, for data, measurement, and evaluation to ensure activity, operations, and investments are returning positively for the business.
The 2026 opportunity
A new technical era. A genuine ESG narrative. A new constructor. An expanding calendar. A fanbase that is younger, broader, and more engaged than ever. For brands managing a global portfolio, there are few more exciting propositions than F1.
With its genuine global scale, local flexibility, and an infrastructure that allows for sophisticated, creative brand activation, F1 is an ideal home for meaningful and effective partnerships. The only limiting factor is imagination. For the brands that meet this challenge, the possibilities are vast.
