New ideas are sometimes scoffed at , but it seems that the alliance between Chelsea Football Club and Sauber may be about to produce results. The aim of the alliance was to offer sponsors a joint platform of football and F1, a very potent combination when one looks at global market penetration in sport.
Chelsea’s chief executive Ron Gourlay has told delegates at the International Football Arena in Zurich that a partner has been found and will be announced at the end of the year. It remains to be seen the scale of the deal, but it is likely to have other F1 teams scurrying off to their local soccer teams offering similar deals.
joeblogsf1 
Football, it’s called footbal Joe 🙂
What’s the different between this and the Newcastle United Lister Storm, or is it just relying on F1 being a larger marketing platform?
Yes the platform is just a tad bigger
Tony Fernandes combining airlines and F1 cars sucessfully to have GE and Airbus/EADS in the package, I would harbour a guess that he could be working on that kind of a deal with Caterham and QPR as well. Or would Renault Alpine be the one for that 🙂
Not really a “New idea” , Superleague Formula anyone ?
Yeah but that did not work
Do you think this could be with cokes- burn energy drink?
Where do you see this slot in with the other series? Do you think it will be comparable to FR3.5, F2, GP2 or is it going to be something completely different?
Another point is given Sky’s encroachment on F1, not a bad idea to pick up some tricks how to negotiate with Murdoch. I’m not so sure how the idea of a joint platform works, but anything that gets you talking to sponsors with money makes sense. Voda just wrote off 6BLN on Asian ops. That might explain the flapping door they left behind.
Not exactly Saubers ‘local team’.
Are Samsung still CFC’s shirt sponsor? Obvious link there what with the Korean GP, although it does sound like that may have had its last hurrah. Samsung could promote the hell out of it though (sorry Joe, wouldn’t wish a love hotel on anyone).
It sounds like a new sponsor has been found rather than an existing one – although it would be great to see Samsung in F1!
I cannot understand why anything or anyone connected with F1, would want anything to do with football. The two sports are mutually opposite and incompatible. Ok some F1 fans, maybe a hight percentage, may follow football but the reverse is not true. If this encourages football fans to go to F1 races then it will ensure I never go to one again.
Could you give us some definition of football fan, or at least distinction between ‘F1 fan following football’ and ‘football fan following F1’?
I think it’s more like having a good looking witty wing man, rpaco. You may not be up for a foursome, or however that kind of thing might be, but you can do better in a tandem when out clubbing and looking for hotties.
This is the best analogy ever to appear in the comments section of this blog.
^Comment filed under knee-jerk reactions.
Are you really still under the tabloid illusion of Soccer hooligans?
Anyway:
Man Utd = McLaren
Man City = Red Bull
…
,,,
…erm … well, that’s as far as I can be bothered to take that analogy.
Liverpool = Mercedes 🙂
Ha ha! Yes, that’s a good one. The equivalent, utterly bemusing shock transfer would be Ronaldo signing for the robbers.
Ferrari = Arsenal.
Classic team steeped in a lot of history, success in the early 2000s but struggling since then with question marks over the man at the top.
Can we all agree that whoever Chelsea are, it’s not Sauber?
Why didn’t they go for an F1 team who are either consistent, credible winners and contenders, or at least have a history of being such, or are British, or all three? Can’t help feeling that Mac, Red Bull, Merc, Williams or Lotus would all have made more sense.
I’ve just deleted the reasons why and will later write about it in my blog but basically “YES”
I’m afraid I think a Sky buyout feels inevitable. They’ve no way sussed F1 coverage, but (remember I keep silly almost shift hours) I was watching the ATP finals with my mom, and they nail the action. Nothing for myself to boast about, but I grew up steeped in tournament play, and little things matter. If they can get that done right for F1, maybe they can launch a bid. It’s a cumulative thing, and going back, the leverage of having the birds, then the other channels, is core to Sky. That has always been their bankable asset, and compared with a CA, I’d not trade the former for the latter. That, and if you remember about 15 years ago or more, Murdoch bet the company several times over, whilst it was public, and prevailed. People argue it was just him. I’ll point to the distribution model, and accumulating brownie points with the way games are paid attention to. P.S. Yes, this sucks. Very very sucks if you have no other sporting interests. But whether Monisha has stolen a march of not, she’s savvy to these things. I fear other teams are hiding behind sponsorship “relationships”. Being personal, from my encounters, guys and gals in the sponsorship game spent always too much time mimicking their corporate sugar daddies, and not actually promoting. Dead as door nails. Ole Rupe tore them a new one, every time, for most of 30 years now. So, for F1 teams to get the getting, they need to hit back. I think it does come down to F1 or No F1. Bernie’s plan to go public never involved the corpus public of the paddock. Ultimately, that sold him and all.
I notice that no one is posting that they were wrong when they thought this idea would not work!
Ehhhh…. has it worked yet?
Yes, did you read Joe’s post?
Someone who doesn’t have to eat their words, reporting for duty,
But it still is weird, though. You just get weird, with marketing people. My overarching theory is because there’s no theory, anything goes if you can brazen it out. You can see why that might attract the wrong sort . .
Its all about money and exposure.