Valtteri Bottas The F1 team Sauber is threatened with fines of up to 500,000 Swiss francs, or about 530,000 euros, reports the Swiss broadcasting company SRF.
Sauber will run under the name Stake F1 Team in the starting season. Stake is an online casino where you play with cryptocurrencies.
However, Stake causes problems in Switzerland, as the company does not have a license to operate in Switzerland and its operations are therefore illegal in the country. This is also related to the ban on gambling advertising in Switzerland.
Stake’s logo is displayed, for example, on the website of the Swiss company Sauber, on social media accounts and on the clothes of the team’s employees.
According to a legal expert interviewed by SRF, Sauber is likely to violate the advertising ban.
– Sponsorship could be allowed. In this case, however, the brands of Stake and Sauber are linked to each other so that Stake is really strongly impressed in the minds of the spectators. The limits in advertising have probably been crossed there, professor of competition law Patrick Krauskopf commented to SRF.
The Federal Casino Commission has opened an investigation into the case. Sauber team representative Alessandro Alumni Bravi responded to SRF that they comply with laws in various countries including Switzerland.
The new name was announced on the first day of this year. It was announced by the world famous Canadian musician Drake.
Already earlier in December, the team’s official name Stake F1 Team Kick Sauber was revealed. On social media, many followers of the F1 series have reacted strongly to the change and criticized the name monster.
A professor who has studied the business of F1 teams a lot Joe Cobbs was not at all surprised by Sauber’s announcement.
– On the other hand, I am one of those people who think that the increase in gambling is not necessarily good for society. Disappointment might be too harsh a word. However, I wouldn’t mind if there were more restrictions on gambling advertising, Cobbs told Urheilu.
Cobbs is a professor of marketing and sports business at Northern Kentucky University.
Up to a third of the games are gimmicks
Sauber will also have to circumvent restrictions related to gambling or their advertising even more in the starting season.
There will be 24 competitions in the season starting at the turn of February-March. According to various estimates, Sauber will have to circumvent gambling laws in eight different races. The team name changes in a third of the season’s races.
Bravi, acting as the boss of the F1 team, goes public said earlier this weekthat in those games the Kick brand will be used in the name of the team.
Kick is a service where anyone can stream video content online. It is backed by the same founders as Stake. Kick was founded in December 2022 after Twitch, the industry’s number one service, banned betting-related streams.
The current Sauber frontman Alessandro Alumni Bravi has previously been known as a skilled lawyer in F1 circles.
Urheilu’s F1 expert Jukka Mildh believes that Stake and Sauber have not gone to war calling.
– Such agreements are basically made in such a professional manner. Nothing can be agreed on in formula one without lawyers, Mildh points out.
To top it all off, Sauber is about to be taken over by the German car giant Audi in two years. Sauber will become Audi’s factory team in 2026.
– This Stake agreement must have been looked at very carefully, since Audi has probably already put some money into the team and Sauber is a team tied to Audi, says Mildh.
Cynically, one might think that Stake can benefit from such uproar and extra publicity.
– In all marketing, sometimes you play with fire, but if you can get away with fines, then it’s worth trying, says Mildh.
Circumventing laws like the tobacco companies
In recent years, in the F1 series, Haas and Williams, for example, have had a hard time when they have trusted companies that have set out too optimistically to support the F1 series. They have had to face financial difficulties when the promised money has not been received.
Nico Rosberg’s According to Mildh, who once worked as an administrator in the Formula 1s, sponsor threats have decreased in the era of Liberty Media. During Liberty Media’s time, we had to go by the rule book more than Bernie Ecclestone in decades.
– Formula 1 cannot now completely lose a bluff company or a brand that does not have the ability to pay, Mildh estimates.
However, Stake is a familiar sponsor from other sports series. The logos have been seen, for example, on the shirts of Everton and Watford in soccer in the English Premier League.
Stake already became Sauber’s sponsor last season, when the F1 team was still called Alfa Romeo. Stake has raised a lot of questions with its activities. English Sky News revealed at the end of Januarythat it is easy to access Stake’s site with a fake profile in the UK, even though cryptocurrency casinos are banned and illegal in the country.
Australian Sydney Morning Herald newspaper told about the end of 2021that Stake’s operations are run in Australia, even though the company is registered on the island of Curaçao in the Caribbean.
The situation is interesting, because online casinos have been banned in Australia for over 20 years. However, there is a loophole in the law, according to which it is legal to run an online casino in Australia, as long as Australians cannot use it or the online casino is not advertised in the country.
Both Cobbs and Mildh see that Stake’s case is similar to what happened before with tobacco companies in Formula One.
Tobacco companies used to support formulas significantly before tobacco marketing was completely banned. After the ban, F1 teams and tobacco companies played tricks on F1 cooperation in many different ways.
Ferrari had in its name Mission Winnow, i.e. the so-called charity organization of the tobacco manufacturer Philip Morris. Jukka Mildh remembers how the color of Ferrari’s cars changed to a darker red at the time, in line with the cigarette brand Marlboro.
– This was high-level branding. Philip Morris was given the right to choose the red shade of the car. They were going to put Ferrari in cigarette packs so that the name of the cigarette would be Ferrari, but that didn’t happen, Mildh recalls.
Cobbs believes that Stake is looking to use color in how they can, despite the limitations, to visually connect the sponsor and the team.
Earlier this week, Sauber unveiled its new F1 car. The difference was really radical compared to the red tinted car that ran under the Alfa Romeo name. The new car has a lot of neon green.
Stake’s purpose of sponsoring the F1 team is probably obvious. They want to gain visibility for their product and get more traffic to their online casino. Sauber, on the other hand, can probably think that through Stake they will gain new visibility from Stake’s customers.
According to the American media giant ESPN naming rights have cost around US$30-35 million. Even bigger estimates have been thrown in the F1 media, there has been talk of as much as $100 million.
Surprising meaning?
F1 sponsorship deals also have another kind of value that may surprise many. Stake is still able to invite company guests to the games even in countries where Stake’s marketing is prohibited. Likewise, Sauber is able to invite Stake’s people.
According to Mildh, the so-called sponsorship program is not affected yet, even if the name should not be displayed at all in a third of the games.
Professor Cobbs reminds us that there is a lot of business-to-business activity behind F1 sponsorship. It means that business is done between companies.
F1 sponsors of different teams can mutually agree on cooperation and network.
The oil company can sell the oils to the F1 company, but at the same time, a sponsorship contract and visibility on the side of the F1 car can be agreed separately.
A sponsor can bring together its subcontractors and other partners at F1 events.
– F1 is a different place compared to many others. If you invite business partners to a soccer game, then you spend 3-4 hours with them. When you invite them to the F1 weekend, they spend three days together. There is a better chance to build cooperation, Cobbs illustrates interesting moments behind the scenes.
In any case, sponsors are a very significant source of income for the F1 team. Cobbs estimates that sponsorship income can make up 60 to 80 percent of an F1 team’s annual budget. The reading can be higher. In mid-class or rear-end teams like Sauber, the importance of sponsorship income increases, because there is not as much prize money. They try to get money from anywhere, because competitiveness depends on it.
The American professor sees one advantage for Sauber in this situation, namely its Finnish driver Valtteri Bottas. However, he has won ten F1 races and drove in the number one Mercedes team for many years, a superstar Lewis Hamilton alongside.
– Everyone knows Bottas. Even those who occasionally follow formula one know him. He is highly regarded. That’s where the team has a big advantage compared to other mid-tier or rear-end teams. They don’t necessarily have a driver with a similar value or status, Cobbs says.
The second title monster was criticized more in North America
Stake F1 Team is not the only team name that has attracted attention since the beginning of the year. AlphaTauri’s new name became Visa Cash App RB. According to Cobbs, this name has received more criticism in North America than Sauber’s new name.
– After all, Stake F1 Team is a one-word brand, although I myself prefer the traditional Sauber name. Visa Cash App RB is clunky. It’s not easy to say. People don’t want to wear fan clothes that say Visa Cash App RB Team, Cobbs describes.
The problem with sponsor names is precisely that they are difficult to adopt. The phenomenon also speaks of the growing popularity of the F1 series, when giant companies like Visa make new openings on the sponsorship front. On the other hand, such name monsters can hit your own ankle. Heritage and history are a big part of formula one.
– A sports team should have its own clear identity. F1 should not stumble on this in this upswing. Drivers have always been fans. Now we should go in the direction of starting to support Teams. This does not make the trend easier when difficult names are made, Mildh says of his concern.
A new era in F1 history?
So can sponsor names be the new normal in the F1 series in the future? The giants of the F1 series, Ferrari, Mercedes and McLaren, are such valuable teams that experts do not see sponsor names.
The phenomenon is not entirely new either. The most recent example would be Red Bull. When the energy drink giant entered Formula One in the first decade of the 2000s, it was founded on the foundations of the well-known car brand Jaguar’s F1 team. At that time, the removal of Jaguar’s name was criticized in a similar way as it has been seen now.
Cobbs sees the growth of gambling marketing as a new era in the history of the F1 series. It has become more striking. It is more difficult to say about name sponsors.
It depends a lot on whether gambling laws will be tightened or relaxed in the F1 racing countries. For example, in the United States, gambling marketing has been liberalized in recent years.
According to experts, eight races are still not too many to ruin the interest of betting companies or casinos in the F1 series.
In the case of Red Bull, the criticism subsided when success began to come. The same can be the case with stables barked as unethical.
– If Stake starts to do well, the criticism can be forgotten. The fans are just happy to be more competitive. I think long-time F1 fans would like to see the Sauber name more prominent. I’m part of that camp. I understand why the sponsors do it and why the team does it. However, I don’t want to see the legacy disappear, says Cobbs.