A car, title sponsor of a race that celebrates mountains and nature. A fast-food chain, official partner of the Olympic Games for more than forty years. An Italian aperitif, on the bodywork of a Formula 1 car. On paper, none of these partnerships make sense. And yet they all happened, some of them for decades.
So why do brands that appear to have strictly nothing to do with sport keep sponsoring it anyway? And why do some of these partnerships last, while others blow up mid-flight?
Dacia and the UTMB: when the car crashes the race
The most revealing case, and the most recent, plays out in the outdoor world. In 2022, Dacia became title sponsor of the HOKA UTMB Mont-Blanc, then main partner of the entire UTMB World Series circuit. On paper, the idea isn't absurd: Dacia is betting on an image of accessible, sustainable mobility. But in practice, pairing a car manufacturer with a race that specifically celebrates the absence of an engine immediately raises questions.
In 2023, the activist running collective The Green Runners launched a petition denouncing this partnership, signed by close to 3,000 runners, including trail figures such as Kilian Jornet, Jasmin Paris and Emelie Forsberg. The argument is simple: associating the UTMB with a car brand indirectly promotes a high-carbon-footprint product, in a sport that's precisely lived out in the middle of nature.
The UTMB eventually changed its title sponsor, in favor of HOKA. Dacia remains, however, the main partner of around twenty European events on the circuit, including the Ultra-Trail Snowdonia. The same Dacia that our article on the brands present at UTMB 2026 pointed out, incidentally, can tell an outdoor story without ever selling a pair of shoes. The two readings aren't contradictory: a brand can tell a coherent story, and still see its own industry clash with the values of the event it sponsors.
Sports sponsoring has never really had rules
This kind of improbable alliance is nothing new. Professional sport is full of them.
McDonald's was an official Olympic Games partner for 41 years, from 1976 to 2017, catering to spectators and athletes in the Olympic Village alike. The International Olympic Committee and the brand ended their partnership three years ahead of schedule, officially for business-priority reasons. But the paradox between promoting athletic performance and promoting fast food never really stopped being commented on throughout those years.
Burger King, for its part, sponsored the jersey of Spanish club Getafe in 2009, with a creative idea rather than a plain logo: the brand's "King" face hidden inside the jersey, designed to appear whenever a player celebrated a goal by lifting his shirt. An operation conceived more as a PR stunt than a classic partnership.
Martini, finally, the Italian vermouth brand, has been intermittently present in Formula 1 since 1972, first with Tecno, then Brabham and Lotus, before becoming the Williams team's title sponsor between 2014 and 2018, under the name Williams Martini Racing. An aperitif on a race car, for nearly fifty cumulative years of history in the sport.
Why some improbable partnerships last, and others blow up
The difference between Martini, which occupied Formula 1 for decades without ever really being questioned, and Dacia, which left the UTMB after less than two years, probably comes down to one thing: what the public actually expects from the event it follows.
Formula 1 is a sport of speed, mechanics and prestige, a world where cars, and more broadly a certain idea of glamour, have always had their place. Martini doesn't contradict any of the sport's core values there. Trail running, by contrast, has built a fairly precise identity around its relationship with nature, restraint, and effort achieved by one's own means. A car, however responsibly it's staged, touches directly on what that community stands for.
Burger King, for its part, never tried to pass itself off as a sports brand: the Getafe jersey stunt works precisely because it owns its mismatch, with humor, rather than claiming a coherence it doesn't have.
The problem isn't that a brand has no connection to a sport. It's that it claims to have one it doesn't.
Personal takeaway
What these examples show is that there's no universal rule for who gets to sponsor which sport. There's only a question of degree: how much does the partnership contradict what that sport's audience actually stands for. A fast-food chain at the Olympics or an aperitif in Formula 1 are jarring, but remain fairly distant paradoxes from the heart of the sporting experience. A car at the center of a race that defines itself by the absence of an engine touches the subject directly.
And that might be the real question to ask before signing a partnership: not "does this brand have anything to do with my sport", but "does this brand touch something my audience considers non-negotiable".
And you, which sports partnership surprised you the most, for better or worse?
