RED BULL IN MASSIVE SPONSORSHIP CHANGES

Red Bull is in the process of making big changes on its sponsorship portfolio, first as a direct consequence of Sérgio Pérez’s sacking when he still had two years left on his contract.

As expected, Claro and Telcel, two companies that belong to the Slim family and have been long-term supporters of the Mexican driver, are no longer part of Red Bull’s sponsorship porfolio and are now missing from the team’s website page dedicated to its backers.

At the same time, a large number of US-based companies have abandoned ship, possibly as a consequence of the bad press the team has been getting since the start of last year, when allegations of innaproriate behavior were made against Team Principal Christian Horner – with the process still to get to court.

Such kind of allegations are taken very serious in the United States, as the image of the companies may be affected by being linked to these sort of scandals, so it’s no surprise an important number of sponsors has decided against renewing their contracts with Red Bull.

That was the case of computer giant Hewlett Packard, digital wallet CashApp, Intel Corporation, Therabody, BMC Software, Wallmart and Poly, the seven American companies opting to terminate their connection with Red Bull Racing and putting a considerable dent in the team’s income.

That was also the case of Chinese giant byBit, the Chinese-based crypto trading company allegedly pumping 50 million USD per year into the team’s coffers and now opting to move out of the deal with Red Bull.

Add to that the loss of income resulting from dropping from first to third place in the Constructors’ Championship, and it’s clear Red Bull Racing has a lot of new deals to make in order to close on the level of income it has grown accostumed to in the last four years.

So far the team has announced the arrival of five new sporsors and partners, 

Neat, Patron, AVA Trade, Pepe Jeans and EA Sports, but it’s highly unlikely their combined contributions will get Red Bull even close to the level of sponsorship money the team was receiving in 2024.

Photo by Andrew Ferraro / LAT Images

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