Does Red Bull Have The Wings To Replace Tobacco?

As long as there has been motorcycle racing there has been tobacco advertising gracing side fairings. Lucky Strikes, Marlboro, Gauloises, Camel and Chesterfield have all enabled champion riders such as Kevin Schwantz to ride winning machines developed by the likes of Suzuki, Ducati and Yamaha. But in the mid 2000s began to change. Teams such as Camel Honda would replace the ‘Camel’ on the bikes and leathers with ‘Bayliss’ or ‘Biaggi’ as more and more countries began to ban tobacco advertising. Some teams, such as Ducati, kept the sponsorship and instead had fairing or leathers that were similar to well known tobacco brand’s logos. But for the majority of teams the wealth of tobacco money was gone.

Since then the number of teams in all classes has shrunk, the quest for sponsorship not helped by the world’s economic troubles. Spanish and Italian companies, were MotoGP gets the majority of its viewership from, helped from a while but now even they have began to fade. Although a new industry looks to perhaps have a small amount of the much needed sponsorship money, energy drinks. The multi-billion dollar industry isn’t new to sponsoring MotoGP teams, sponsoring the Yamaha of Garry McCoy (amongst others) in the 500cc days of yore.

Energy drinks have seen an explosion in popularity from the early 2000s when Red Bull first came onto the market, now dozens of brands exist and nearly all of them seem to have an interest in MotoGP. Smaller brands such as ‘Go & Fun,’ which also make a variety of other energy products, have replaced San Carlo as Gresini’s title sponsor. ArmA has been sponsoring Scott Redding and the Marc VDS team for over three years and even budget energy drinks such as ‘Mad Croc’ have sponsored riders such a Ricky Cardus.

The two biggest brands, Red Bull and Monster, look as though they could potentially be sponsoring Honda and Yamaha’s MotoGP efforts. Red Bull have been sponsoring Dani Pedrosa and soon to be factory rider Marc Marquez for years and recently stepped up their support for Stefan Bradl and the LCR team, even being rumored as a title sponsor for them. Red Bull clearly has an interest in supporting Honda.

Monster, one of the newer companies in the energy drinks competition, have shown a huge interest in MotoGP. Sponsored riders include; Pol Espagaro, Valentio Rossi, Ben Spies, Andrea Dovizioso and the Tech 3 team. With Rossi’s move back to Yamaha it looks, if the rumors are true, as if Monster could now be a major, if not title, sponsor of the factory Yamaha team. Recent reports have it that Yamaha have bought out Lorenzo’s Rockstar contract for an estimated 2 million Euros, clearing the way for Monster, Rossi’s personal sponsor, to be a major player on the Yamaha’s fairing. It is estimated that between Eneos and Monster Yamaha could be gaining 7 million Euros, the same money Fiat once brought them.

If the energy drinks market continues to grow as it does and the world’s economic problems, hopefully, lift, they could offer a large amount of sponsorship for the struggling GP championship. Obviously energy drink money alone won’t be enough, but hopefully combined with Dorna’s cost cutting methods we’ll see the GP grid grow and just maybe more exciting racing on a regular basis.