Brands crowd the starting line at the Formula 1

Nick Bower is the general manager of ad sales at Ten’s parent company, Paramount Australia. Ten has held the free-to-air rights to F1 for 23 years, and most of this year’s major partners are repeat customers.

“Advertising and motorsport are inseparable partners” Bower says. “Always have been, always will be. This relationship is fundamental to the sport’s existence.”

That isn’t just advertising speak. Motor sports are not a cheap pursuit at any level, and corporate backing is vital from an early age.

“From junior categories to the pinnacle of racing, advertising and sponsorships are essential, just simply due to cost of entry into the sport.”

Bower says that because of this early connection between brand and driver, “sponsorship transcends mere logo placement – it becomes part of a team’s identity and often achieves iconic status.”

He points to Repsol Honda, whose distinctive livery is replicated on street bikes worldwide, and the memorable Benetton F1 cars of the 1980s as two examples of brand and team identity becoming intertwined.

“Today’s partnerships, like Oracle and Red Bull Racing, are woven into the fabric of team identity and fan passion. Advertising is a part of the team iconography and a reference point for fans.”

Australian software giant Atlassian wants in on that weave, having just signed a lucrative long-term naming deal with the British-based Williams F1 team.

Andrew Boyagi, Atlassian’s global head of software development and operations, said the company was looking for a sports partnership that “really highlights teamwork at a global scale.”

He is keen to stress the difference between a mere sponsorship and a partnership.

“You can stick your sticker on the car,” he said. “That is not what we’re doing here. We’re partnering with Williams on their transformation.”

Atlassian is Williams’ official title partner (the team is now called Atlassian Williams Racing), official technology partner, and official collaboration software partner.

“We’re partnering deeply with Williams,” Boyagi says. “We have people on the ground there with them, understanding their ways of working. We’re going wall-to-wall.”

Atlassian Williams Racing

The “phenomenal change” the sport is going through formed part of Atlassian’s reasoning behind the deal.

“It actually reaches enterprise executives better than any other sport,” Boyagi said, of the sport’s shifting demographics.

“We’re betting that the partnership is going to drive awareness and expose our brand, and our teamwork with Williams, to a huge audience and help us capture more mindshare with C-level decision makers.”

The Netflix docu-series Drive To Survive was key in F1’s popularity surge — an estimated 700 million global fans over 200 countries — along with other factors.

While this is obviously a boon for anyone hoping to sell advertising, it also means that broadcasts must straddle both fairweather fans caught up in the soap opera and racing purists.

Nick Bower and Frank Smith