Max Verstappen is the hottest property in Formula One. Including bonuses he is even paid more than the once time king of the F1 cash hill Lewis Hamilton.

Since the days of his childhood, Verstappen has been sponsored by Dutch supermarket chain Jumbo but all that has now come to an end. The chain of supermarkets owned by the Royal Jumbo Food Group were an important part of Max’s rise through the junior ranks and his personal sponsorship from them in 2023 was worth $1.5m.

 

 

Dutch supermarket brand ditches Max Verstappen

The brand also sponsored other Dutch drivers including those involved in endurance racing bringing them to international stage at Le Mans.

In fact most Dutch motorsport drivers over the past decade have benefitted from Jumbo backing one way or another but the arrival of new CEO Ton van Veen, who took over from fraud suspect Frits van Eerd, who wants to go back to its core market, and global sports sponsorship does not fit that profile.

Speaking to AD.nl Van Even said: “We want nothing to do with motorsport and the allegations. We stop with Max Verstappen and Jumbo-Visma (cycling team), for a completely different reason. That sponsorship has brought us a lot of brand awareness, but we have now won everything there is to win.”

Whilst acknowledging, “Max is a folk hero, but he performs on the absolute world stage. We are a very good food retailer, but only in the Netherlands and a little bit in Belgium. We invest more than 20 million euros in sports sponsorship every year, but I can only spend every euro once. We cannot return the money that goes to Max to the customer, or put it into sustainability or health.”

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Heavy weather in global inflation has squeezed the margins of the Dutch retailer this combined with the bad publicity over the alleged fraud of the former CEO and a failed world cup advertising campaign all has created bad publicity for the company.

The contract with the agency that made created the advertisement campaign was cancelled by Van Veen, who stated: “We need to shout less and prove more.”

The cancelled deal came as no surprise to verstappen or his manager with Vermeulen telling Dutch media: “We were informed about this at an early stage, so it comes as no surprise. We knew that a lot was going to change at the company in terms of sponsoring. It had to happen sometime.

“We especially look back on ten years of successful cooperation. Max is extremely grateful for all the support. When he took his first steps in motorsport, Jumbo was behind Max. He is very grateful for that. I think when we look in the rearview mirror we can look back on ten very nice years.

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“We know that stopping sponsoring Max is a well-considered decision and after a certain period of time it is also very healthy to do this. The contact with the Van Eerd family will always remain. We hold them in our hearts. We have achieved a lot and we are going to do great things.” concluded Vermeulen’s statement.

Sponsorship in Formula One has exploded since Liberty Media became the new commercial rights holders. Previous F1 supremo Bernie Ecclestone believed that exclusivity was the way to market F1 and restricted the official number of partners.

Perennially cash strapped Haas F1 signed a $20m deal with Moneygram during last season, in a deal announced prior to the USA GP. This will now allow Haas F1 to spend up to the budget cap limit – something they’ve not achieved in previous years.

Also leaving Formula One is the Red Bull Group company, AlphaTauri. For $15m a year the clothing company claimed the naming rights to the junior Red Bull team, but in a push to improver the Faenza based outfits results a bigger paying sponsor with be brought in to replace the clothing brand based in Salzburg.

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However, the bog boy sponsors spend eye watering sums with the top end teams. Oracle have a five year deal with Red Bull Racing worth over the term half  a billion dollars to the world champions.

Zak Brown has expertise in attracting sponsors and before the team made a surge towards the front of the grid ion the second half of 2023, the McLaren CEO had pulled off a number of big deals for what was a struggling F1 team.

Last year McLaren had no fewer than 47 sponsors and of them the cryptocurrency market OKX reportedly splashed the most cash. The exact numbers of the deal have not been released but a quote provided to Blockworks suggested the deal was worth “hundreds of millions” of dollars across multiple seasons.

This clearly has enabled McLaren to invest and move forward because as always lap time and grid positions are in reality determined by the amount of cash a team can spend.

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Ferrari sponsorship is minimal

Ferrari came into existence selling road cars to pay for Enzo’s racing passion. Yet the relationship is now symbiotic as Ferrari road cars are predominantly marketed by their brand presence in F1.

For years the Italian team resisted any external sponsorship until in 1996 Marlboro tempted the bosses in Maranello and a switch was made as the tobacco company moved from white to red as the left McLaren and moved to Ferrari.

This was the beginning of a long and successful title sponsorship partnership but when tobacco sponsorship was banned in 2006, Marlboro owners Philip Morris had to find new and creative ways to showcase their products.

Ferrari earned a reported $1bn between 2005 and 2011, these days the Italian team has more modest sponsorship with British Oil company shell believed to provide $40m a year in funding and technical support with lubricants.

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