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The recent incident involving the Supercars series serves as a crucial reminder for commercial teams about the importance of meticulous attention to sponsorship asset allocation and the importance of acknowledging athletes’ personal IP.
During last month's season opener, a new sponsorship deal with Boost Mobile was unveiled, sponsoring the pole award.
The agreement stipulated that the pole award winner for each race would don a Boost Mobile cap and receive prominent branding at the presentation.
That protocol was adhered to for the first race, with Will Brown of Red Bull Racing wearing the Boost cap on receiving his award.
However, a discrepancy occurred when, at the second race pole winner ceremony, Broc Feeney (also a Red Bull driver), wore his team's hat instead.
This oversight was highlighted by the motorsport website, Speedcafe, which pointed out that Red Bull Racing was strictly following the Supercars operations manual.
It had previously mandated that drivers wear the Armor All cap for such ceremonies. That sponsor had the pole award rights from 1999 to 2022.
Speedcafe, however, noted the recent amendment to the manual, which now specifies that drivers wear a hat provided by the current sponsor of the pole award.
To understand why Red Bull racing’s Will Brown opted to wear the Boost cap, yet Feeney didn’t, could come down to the latter being a brand ambassador of rival telco, Vodafone.
The head and face of drivers (as with all sports competitors) is regarded as their most valuable personal IP.
It’s not hard to imagine that many would consider an image of Feeney wearing a rival sponsor’s cap as undermining his independent commercial arrangements.
There are several Supercars drivers with telco commercial deals, possibly the most obvious being Walkinshaw Andretti’s, Chaz Mostert (Optus) and other Vodafone-backed drivers like David Reynolds.