{"id":22624,"date":"2025-09-04T18:39:50","date_gmt":"2025-09-04T18:39:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mysourcefunding.com\/?p=22624"},"modified":"2025-09-04T18:39:51","modified_gmt":"2025-09-04T18:39:51","slug":"why-mastercard-went-after-mclaren-f1-naming-rights","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mysourcefunding.com\/?p=22624","title":{"rendered":"Why Mastercard went after McLaren F1 naming rights"},"content":{"rendered":"

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When the Formula 1 team McLaren won its first Constructors\u2019 Championship in more than 25 years last season, it was the only team on the grid without a naming rights sponsor. Halfway through the 2025 season, McLaren is firmly in the lead for the constructors\u2019 again, but its naming rights are now spoken for.<\/p>\n

Say hello to the McLaren Mastercard Formula 1 team\u2014as of 2026, that is.<\/p>\n

Raja Rajamannar, Mastercard\u2019s chief marketing and communications officer, told Marketing Brew that while McLaren was the only team with naming rights available, he still had talks with a handful of other top teams before deciding on the partnership. The goal for the sponsorship, which is reportedly the largest F1 title sponsorship and the biggest commercial deal yet for McLaren, is to drive brand awareness and affinity through unique activations, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are now predominantly an experiential marketing organization, not an advertising-led organization,\u201d Rajamannar told Marketing Brew. \u201cOur approach is not just about flashing our brand, but bringing our brand to life through experiences that money cannot buy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pitch<\/del> Paddock perfect<\/h2>\n

About a year and a half ago, the Mastercard marketing team ran an analysis of its sponsorships and found a hole the size of F1, Rajamannar said, although it did have some motorsports experience. Mastercard sponsors the Goodwood Festival of Speed, a motorsports festival in England, during which Rajamannar said he noticed \u201cthe impact and the passion\u201d of car racing.<\/p>\n

That, combined with the growth of F1 following the rise of Netflix\u2019s Drive to Survive<\/em>, got him studying the landscape, he said\u2014which included binge-watching the docuseries.<\/p>\n

F1 has become increasingly popular in the US in large part thanks to the show, and it\u2019s growing specifically among women, who made up three-quarters of new fans as of a survey released this summer by F1 and Motorsport Network. Women also account for about 75%\u201380% of spending Mastercard cardmembers, according to Rajamannar.<\/p>\n

Those stats helped inform Rajamannar\u2019s early conversations with F1 teams about sponsorship opportunities, but he told us he wasn\u2019t interested in just any team. While some CMOs are willing to bet on teams before they have winning records, Rajamannar said he wanted to go with one of the best.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe wanted to be associated with a better team than just put our brand on some car or the other,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

McLaren stood out for a few other reasons, including the fact that the team seemed fan-focused and marketing-oriented, he said. Rajamannar also said he got along well with McLaren CEO Zak Brown, who has a marketing background, and liked that McLaren\u2019s drivers, 25-year-old Lando Norris and 24-year-old Oscar Piastri, are fairly young and are both \u201cextremely good,\u201d he said\u2014they\u2019re currently battling for the World Drivers\u2019 Championship.<\/p>\n

While McLaren hadn\u2019t won the constructors\u2019 when Rajamannar and Brown started talking, the team had enough momentum for Mastercard to get on board, debuting as a principal sponsor during the Las Vegas Grand Prix last year.<\/p>\n

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\u201cSince then, the experience has been brilliant for our customers,\u201d Rajamannar said. \u201cWe said, \u2018Wow, this has got actually a lot more potential than we originally even thought.\u2019 We come up with one idea, McLaren comes up with two ideas.\u201d<\/p>\n

That potential is what led Rajamannar to ask Brown about the naming rights, he told us, and while McLaren hadn\u2019t previously found a brand it wanted to include in its team name, Brown and the team agreed to bring Mastercard on.<\/p>\n

The deal, which was announced in late August, is \u201cvery long-term,\u201d Rajamannar said, though he declined to share the exact length of the arrangement. He also declined to comment on value, but said that given the team\u2019s and drivers\u2019 winning records this season, \u201cit is not cheap.\u201d Last week, The Athletic reported that the deal was worth somewhere \u201cin the region of $100 million per season,\u201d and that it would stretch through the 2030s.<\/p>\n

Driver\u2019s seat<\/h2>\n

In addition to naming rights, experiential opportunities for fans through an initiative called \u201cTeam Priceless\u201d are a major part of the partnership, as well as Mastercard\u2019s marketing in general. The majority of Rajamannar\u2019s total marketing budget is allocated toward experiential activations, he said.<\/p>\n

Earlier this summer, McLaren and Mastercard announced 15-year-old fan Olivia Lawson as the winner of their first \u201cJunior Race Engineer\u201d competition focused on inspiring next-generation motorsport fans and engineers; she spent a day at the McLaren Technology Centre ahead of the British Grand Prix in July. Mastercard also has plans to offer fans experiences like driver meet and greets, according to the company.<\/p>\n

Between the naming rights and the fan experiences, Rajamannar said he\u2019s aiming to achieve three different goals. First, he\u2019s hoping the McLaren partnership will \u201cmake [Mastercard] more prominent, more relevant, and more lovable,\u201d he said, which the Mastercard marketing team measures by tracking visibility of the brand on TV and elsewhere and through surveys. He\u2019s also looking to drive revenue for the company, which he\u2019ll measure by tracking card spend in markets where Mastercard activates the partnership, he said.<\/p>\n

Lastly, Rajamannar said, the sponsorship is designed to give Mastercard a \u201csustainable competitive advantage\u201d in the market, meaning \u201ccompetition will find it very difficult to replicate.\u201d<\/p>\n

And while it\u2019s not a key metric that Rajamannar said he plans to track, he is hoping that winning means added screentime for McLaren\u2014and, subsequently, now Mastercard\u2014on the next season of Drive to Survive<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf the team that we have chosen keeps winning more and more, then obviously it will show up more than the other brands in the show,\u201d he said. \u201cThe show, it\u2019s fun. It will be great to be more visible and obvious.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Read the full article here<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When the Formula 1 team McLaren won its first Constructors\u2019 Championship in more than 25 years last season, it was the only team on the grid without a naming rights sponsor. Halfway through the 2025 season, McLaren is firmly in the lead for the constructors\u2019 again, but its naming rights are now spoken for. Say […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":22625,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[78],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-22624","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-marketing"},"yoast_head":"\nWhy Mastercard went after McLaren F1 naming rights | Brandiary<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"When the Formula 1 team McLaren won its first Constructors\u2019 Championship in more than 25 years last season, it was the only team on the grid without a\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/mysourcefunding.com\/?p=22624\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" 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