When the Formula One season begins at the Australian Grand Prix in Melbourne on March 16, the track will look a little different to fans than it did last year.
This time Louis Vuitton has stepped up as the sole title sponsor, and its trademarks will be splashed on the raceway and featured in the opening ceremony and during the presentation of the trophy, for which the brand has created a bespoke leather trunk. It is the first activation of a nearly €100mn a year, decade-long partnership signed between F1 and Louis Vuitton parent company LVMH last year, replacing Rolex. The deal will also involve LVMH’s wines and spirits division Moët Hennessy and its watchmaker Tag Heuer.
Pietro Beccari, who joined Louis Vuitton as chief executive from Dior in 2023, says the tie-up with F1 is a “particularly important” step in the company’s mission to evolve from a luxury brand — the largest and most profitable in the sector, with estimated revenues of €21.9bn — into a “cultural brand”. He pointed to Louis Vuitton and F1’s emphasis on innovation, internationality and high-stakes competition as common ground for a partnership.
“Sport is part of the culture, the life of young people,” Beccari said in a video call from Vuitton’s Paris headquarters last week. “We know that [F1 has] a younger audience than before, and a lot more women who are interested. [F1 is also] focusing on the US, and the US is a very important market for us.”
Ultimately, however, the partnership didn’t come down to demographics. “We didn’t do much calculation. Mr Arnault always goes with his stomach,” Beccari says.
Louis Vuitton first tested the F1 waters through a sponsorship of the Automobile Club de Monaco from 2021 to 2024. It designed the podium and trophy trunks for the annual Grand Prix in Monaco, which were stamped in the brand’s signature Damier checkerboard pattern and a large red and white “V”. The trophy will be presented in similar fashion in Melbourne.
Louis Vuitton will also have a presence on a smaller scale at the remaining 23 races in cities including Singapore, Las Vegas, Abu Dhabi and Montreal.
The brand’s further push into sport commences as the appeal of luxury goods, particularly among young consumers, is waning. The luxury market has shed about 50mn consumers over the past two years, according to a Bain report released in November, in part because Gen Z are turned off by the recent upsurge in prices — what some analysts are calling “greedflation” — and shifting more of their spending to second-hand goods.
Luxury groups have long been affiliated with elite sporting competitions in sailing and tennis, but in recent years have broadened their scope to include more mainstream sports such as football and basketball.
“Vuitton is the go-to luxury brand that does everything for everyone,” says Erwan Rambourg, global head of consumer and retail research at HSBC. “For them to be involved in [F1] — a very visible, high-profile sport where viewership is huge — it makes sense . . . in a way that wouldn’t have made sense for Dior or Chanel or something higher end or edgier. For [Vuitton] to be so open, so democratic, makes a lot of sense.”
In 2019 Louis Vuitton surprised luxury peers when it inked a partnership with online multiplayer video game League of Legends, designing the trophy case and releasing a set of prestige game “skins” for players to dress their avatars in, designed by creative director Nicolas Ghesquière. Analysts found the move particularly savvy in putting the brand before young would-be customers.
The leather goods maker is also expanding into new — and for luxury, sometimes unconventional — categories, most recently introducing a range of branded chocolates. Prices start at $30 for a bar of milk chocolate poured into the shapes that comprise the house’s star monogram, joining fragrances and sneakers as products to entice entry-level shoppers.
Beccari also pointed to the luxury behemoth’s pop-up store at 6 East 57th Street in Manhattan, opened late last year as the main flagship undergoes a renovation, as another step in the brand’s cultural evolution. Conceived as a “café-cum-library space”, shoppers are invited to read and listen to music and sample snacks executed by Michelin-starred chefs. The pop-up is now one of Vuitton’s top three stores globally by sales.
F1 is also hustling to broaden its appeal. A six-season Netflix documentary series has helped the championship extend its reach beyond superfans, particularly among its 40mn American followers, half of whom started following the sport in the last five years.
“Netflix was the first step in completely changing our communication approach,” says F1 president and chief executive Stefano Domenicali, speaking alongside Vuitton’s Beccari on the video call. “We wanted to shift communication from pure sport to a big entertainment platform. We want to be as socially relevant as Louis Vuitton is.”
Forty per cent of F1 fans are female, up from 32 per cent in 2018, helping attract women-focused brands such as Charlotte Tilbury, now a sponsor of F1 Academy.
The league has faced some criticism for the carbon emissions generated by the tour’s vehicles and international travel schedule. “People say we are polluting the world,” says F1’s Domenicali. “We are incorporating sustainable fuel and will be carbon neutral by 2030.”
“It is not [taken] for granted that the biggest luxury group in the world are interested in us,” he continues. “How many things are on the table for Mr Arnault and Pietro [to choose from]? There is a big expectation for us to perform.”
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