Just a reminder that sponsors don't like bad publicity and distance themselves very quickly from anyone damaging their brand Ryan Lochte: Speedo and Ralph Lauren end sponsorship Ryan Lochte: Speedo and Ralph Lauren end sponsorship - BBC News
Last bad publicity and upset sponsors that I can remember are: ING/Renault race fix Kid Sheckter being sacked for crawling for hookers Angry Belgian Gachot (sacked from Jordan but remained in F1/racing) In general, I find them fairly forgiving. If I was a sponsor of the Olympic chaps I'd have sacked them too.
I think it fits into the greater reoccurring debate around what is needed to make it to the top of F1, which goes hand in hand with the debate which drivers are marketable to whom and why and why not etc. There was someone posting about the power of sponsors in selecting drivers based on non racing-skill attributes. On the other hand F1-drivers get away with more. Like stabbing team managers in night clubs. Or falling off boats, **** faced. Why really, I don't know. Perhaps because racers always were characters to be racers??
How many sponsors left F1 due to Max Mosley's sex scandal? - None that I recall, despite concerns that they might. How many sponsors left F1 due to Bernie Ecclestone's bribery scandal? - Again, none that I recall. Michael Schumacher attempted to deliberately ram Jacques Villeneuve off the track in Jerez '97, and ended up being disqualified from the season - Did any of his sponsors ditch him? I don't recall any walking away!
Formula 1 is already so dirty and corrupt that you would have to kill someone to loose a sponsor. And even then...
Neither Max nor Bernie made / make their money from sponsors. Bernie sells a product, and you and I buy it. He wholesales it to the media, who then retail it to us. The sponsors in the sport pay specific teams and drivers to wear their brand, so as to have it seen in the final product. They don't give a crap how the product is produced, so long as at the end of the day the fresh faced young driver standing in front of the camera wearing their logo isn't a complete Jackwagon. How many sponsors dropped soccer teams or players due to the FIFA scandals? How many stayed away from the olympics because of IOC corruption? None. Their business relationships are with the athletes. Not the sport.
Personal sponsorship has nothing to do with F1? Come off it !! Without personal sponsorship no driver would get to F1 !!! Who do you think pays for years spent in lower categories? And many drivers bring their personal sponsors to their team: Nasr, Perez, Ericson as example. So did Senna, Piquet, etc...
My post is about the power of sponsors. It's a pity you don't see the relevance with personal sponsorship in F1.
Wow sponsors are valuable. Any more insights for us, Capt. Obvious? In other news Stephen Curry is doing well with endorsements maybe I'll start a new thread in the F1 section to talk about it
Let's be fair here, there wasn't a shed of any F1 content in the opening post or link you provided and you didn't make any attempt to guide the discussion to relate it to F1 in any way. Rather, you left that to others and now are responding condescendingly to those who don't see the immediate link. This would have been a better thread if you had started it with an example of an F1 driver that had lost personal sponsors due to uncouth off-track behaviour. Perhaps you could find some examples... All the best, Andrew.
Dude..you need to cool it. Obviously we all know the power of sponsors here. What we all are scratching our heads here is what does swimming have anything to do with F1? This is totally off topic.
Point taken. I would have thought that the relation between the power of sponsors and F1 was evident; it's the oxygen of F1. I don't want to read more in TifosiUSA 's remarks ...
Riiiight... so if it is evident, perhaps you could give us an aspect of it to talk about. The recent case of the swimmer was one of dishonesty resulting in a loss of personal sponsorship, whereas in F1 the power of sponsors appears be in the selection of drivers for their increased marketability. Could you please explain how the case of a dishonest swimmer losing his personal sponsors relates to the power of sponsors in F1? I'm afraid I'm not able to see the obvious connection. All the best, Andrew. Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk
My post was to highlight the power of personal sponsors in one's career. They can support you, finance your career, help you climb through the ranks, but the day you displease them, for whatever reason, they can drop you with fracas, claiming you harmed their brand. It's also relevant to some F1 drivers who lost personal sponsors in the past.
The first who comes to mind is Nikki Lauda. In his book "From Fell and Back", Nikki recalled that after his crash at the Nurburgring whilst he was still convalescing, his picture was published in national newspapers showing the extent of his disfigurement. Some personal sponsors rang him to tell him they would not renew his contract; he mentioned Romerquelle, the mineral water company that had backed him from the beginning. The individual affected often don't mention it in public because of the bad publicity. There have been cases of racing drivers caught drink/driving, kerb crawling, domestic violence, drug abuse, etc... who were dropped on the spot by their sponsors. It's doesn't necessarily affect F1 drivers, but those knocking on the door in lower categories. I think it's Bas Jaksi who mentioned Bertrand Gachot for assaulting a taxi driver in London,
Didn't Maldonado lose his seat because his personal sponsor couldn't come up with the cash? And basically kept a seat for several seasons because he had a personal sponsor that'd pony up the cash?
I'm struggling to think of anything recent. Nikki Lauda was not dropped because of any impropriety. Did losing Römerquelle really affect his career at all? In fact, Lauda became an aggressive negotiator after that and arguably secured far more sponsorship money over the rest of his career than if he'd just coasted the rest of his career with Römerquelle. Bertrand Gachot sounds an interesting example. The name isn't familiar. Yes, he was backed by Venezuelan state oil giant PDVSA. However, in recent years they've been under greater scrutiny for how they spend their money and it was thought that paying millions to secure the seat of their countryman was difficult to justify when he'd only ever won one F1 race and had more noteworthy F1 crashes than podiums. There was actually a good article on our forum owners' main site about that: Analysis: The real cost of PDVSA sponsoring Pastor Maldonado PDVSA wanted to keep a Venezuelan in F1, but in the they couldn't really afford keep sponsoring Maldonado's seat. Sponsors and drivers/teams part ways all the time due to analysis that one or both could be better using their time/resources elsewhere. That's a bit different from the case of the lying Olympic swimmers losing their personal sponsors through their dishonesty destroying their marketability. Sure, the loss of a personal sponsorship contact is always going to be painful to any sports competitor or celebrity, but I'm struggling to think how this case of the swimmers is particularly pertinent in reference to Formula 1 today. All the best, Andrew.
