Sports business exec Peter Kenyon on scoring business wins amid losses

The Atlassian Williams Formula 1 team has won nine constructors’ championships in its 50-year history, making it one of the most successful teams ever in F1. Its last constructors’ win, however, was more than 20 years ago, in 1997, and in recent years, it’s been in more of a rebuilding (and rebranding) phase.

But F1 teams don’t need to be at the front of the grid to attract brand interest.

This year, Williams has inked deals with companies including Anthropic, Barclays, and Wilkinson Sword, and last month, the team announced martech company Klaviyo as an official partner starting next season. In its 2025 annual financial report, Williams attributed increased revenue to sponsorship growth.

While the team would undoubtedly like some podiums to go along with all those partners, Williams’ sponsorship arm isn’t waiting for wins to ink deals, according to Peter Kenyon, Williams’ board advisor overseeing its commercial and marketing functions, and the former CEO of Manchester United and Chelsea FC.

“We all care about winning,” Kenyon told Marketing Brew during a trip to New York City ahead of the United States Grand Prix in Austin, Texas, last month. “But that’s not what we sell partnerships on. We’ve been honest. You’ve got to be honest…[Our partners] believe in where we’re going to be.”

Thick and thin

At Williams, Kenyon prefers the term “partnership” to “sponsorship,” as many marketers do. The difference, he said, lies in the Williams team actually using the products and services from the companies whose logos appear on their cars and gear. Klaviyo, for instance, will serve as Williams’ B2C CRM platform to help grow the team’s fanbase, an effort that comes at a time when many sports organizations are looking to leverage fan data for business growth.

For a team that’s not currently in a winning position, storytelling opportunities are also key to securing partners, Kenyon said. Pitching based on long-term potential to win is a strategy that’s worked for other F1 teams—including McLaren, which won back-to-back constructors’ championships in 2024 and 2025 after a nearly 30-year drought—as comeback stories can make for strong content and case studies demonstrating the value of a product or service.

“We’re not selling performance,” Kenyon said. “It’s a key component, it will come, we will be a multiple world champion, but…I’ve won with not the best team, and I’ve lost with the best team.”

The team’s goal is to be profitable by 2028, and to become a championship contender again by 2030, he added.

Join the team

In his role as a board advisor, Kenyon is also focused on the marketing of the team itself—aka growing its fanbase. The task is significantly different in F1 than it was in the Premier League, he told us.

Unlike Premier League fandom, “the [F1] fanbase is not tribal,” he said, meaning that while F1 has a large following, many people who keep up with the sport aren’t hyper-dedicated to any one team in particular. “The cross-section of fans is enormous,” Kenyon later said, adding that at many races, he’s noticed families—or even individuals—supporting multiple teams at once.

The other big difference between the Premier League and F1? “No relegation,” he joked.

The absence of strong single-team loyalty among some F1 fans presents an opportunity for teams like Willaims to recruit new followers, which Kenyon said the team is aiming to do through audience research and segmentation efforts. Audience development is something else that brand partners can help with, he added—even partners outside of the martech space.

F1 has long been associated with B2B companies, but as the fandom has diversified, so too have the brands getting involved with the sport. Lately, that’s included a growing number of B2C companies. The team recently worked with Marvel, for example, to tap into comics fandom.

The Williams team is intentionally targeting more consumer brands going forward, Kenyon said.

“I’m pretty sure you’ll see our next partnerships will come from more consumer brands,” Kenyon said. “Our brand people come from McDonald’s, and Lego, and Pepsi, so we built internal skill sets that mean that we can talk to global consumer brands in the same language.”