Hello and welcome to the Sports Pundit Newsletter,
It's been a quiet few weeks for Formula 1, which returns next weekend, but there's still plenty to learn from the sport's commercial approach. Having recently interviewed Shergul Arshad, Head of North America for the Aston Martin Formula One Team, I decided it was worth taking a closer look at last month’s launch of the AMR Network, an initiative many sports organisations can learn from.
While I do try to keep self-promotion to a minimum, it's also been a good week for The Players Fund and our programme with Como 1907. Press was released this week announcing the partnership we helped deliver between the Serie A club and fast-growth Italian startup, Collecto. I’ll go into why I think this matters more broadly below.
Here’s what’s coming up:
Aston Martin Formula One Team Launch of the AMR Network 🏎️
Collecto Becomes First Equity-for-Sponsorship Deal of Como 1907 🧩
Google Pixel Announce Partnerships with Barca, Bayern, and PSG 📱
Let’s get into it!
IT’S IN THE GAME
Back in July, Aston Martin Aramco Formula One Team hosted a Technology Forum at the AMR Technology Campus in Silverstone, ahead of the British Grand Prix. The event marked the launch of the ‘AMR Network’, a platform built to bring the team’s partners together around collaboration, commercial opportunity and thought leadership.
The Technology Forum brought together senior representatives from ten of Aston Martin Aramco’s leading technology partners, including CoreWeave, Zscaler, Cohere, ServiceNow, Cognizant, Cognition, NetApp, Xerox, Arm and Eight Sleep.
Panel discussions and media roundtables focused on the evolving role of artificial intelligence, machine learning and high-performance computing in F1, and how that innovation carries over into other industries.
Aramco also used the day to host students as part of its STEM Racing programme, running a dedicated panel on future careers in the sport.
The Forum is part of a season-long programme of AMR Network events, content and discussions designed to bring partners and wider industry changemakers together.
Speaking to the Sports Pundit Podcast, Aston Martin F1’s Shergul Arshad summed up what’s driving the Network: “There’s an incredible amount of business to business that’s happening across our own sponsor ecosystem, and we’ve started to play into that recently.”
Why It Matters
The event itself is one thing, but the real story is how much sponsorship logic has changed underneath it. F1 sponsorship used to run almost entirely on exclusivity, brands paying to keep rivals, and sometimes anything loosely adjacent, out of their category.
The AMR Network runs in the opposite direction. Instead of keeping tech partners apart, Aston Martin is actively putting them in front of each other and treating that introduction as part of what sponsorship buys.
“I think it’s gone almost 180 degrees the other way, where exclusivity was much more precious when I started, and now I think folks are realising that there’s ample sandboxes for them to all work with together.” - Shergul Arshad, Head of North America, Aston Martin F1 Team on the Sports Pundit Podcast.
None of this started as a top-down plan. It grew out of what was already happening informally in the Paddock Club, where sponsors spend three days in a suite with 200 to 300 other people and end up getting to know each other’s businesses anyway. The AMR Network is essentially a name and a structure put around something that was organic to begin with, then reinforced with a Technology Forum, a season-long programme and an actual moniker.
That only works because of how the partner roster is put together. CoreWeave and Cohere sit on different sides of the AI stack, one closer to infrastructure and the other closer to applied AI, with Cognizant, Cognition and Arm filling in the space around them. Those overlaps are exactly what makes cross-introduction useful rather than redundant. These are companies with real reasons to talk to each other, not just adjacent logos sharing a paddock.
The approach does have its limits. Dropping exclusivity is a much harder sell with consumer brands, where category carve-outs still matter a great deal. So the AMR Network model isn’t applied evenly across the whole partner base (Celsius energy drink being a great example of this). It works where sponsors can genuinely collaborate, and Aston Martin seems to be using that distinction to decide where to open things up and where to keep them locked down.
What stands out most is the effect this has on how the team pitches itself to future sponsors. The Network has apparently become enough of a draw that companies with interests overlapping existing partners are now asking to join anyway. The exclusivity Aston Martin gave up may be bringing in more interest than it ever cost them.
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HIGHLIGHTS
Google Gemini and Google Pixel become official partners of FC Barcelona, Bayern Munich and PSG in quick succession 🤖
Google has struck near-identical partnerships with three of Europe’s biggest clubs in recent weeks: FC Barcelona, FC Bayern and Paris Saint-Germain have each named Google Gemini as their official AI/Consumer AI partner and Google Pixel as their official smartphone partner, covering both men’s and women’s first teams.
PSG’s deal runs as a Premium Partnership through 2029, while Bayern’s is described as long-term; Bayern board member Rouven Kasper said the partnership aims to bring fans closer to the club through exclusive digital content and AI-powered insights.
The Snow League heads to New Zealand for its Season Two opener 🏂
The Snow League’s Season Two will open with the inaugural Snow League World Challenge at Cardrona Alpine Resort this September, bringing together the world’s top halfpipe snowboarders and freeskiers.
The event marks a first-of-its-kind international halfpipe competition at Cardrona, with an elite field headlined by a strong contingent of New Zealand athletes competing on home snow.
Athletic Brewing becomes first non-alcoholic beer partner of MetLife Stadium, Giants and Jets 🍺
Athletic Brewing Company, America’s largest dedicated non-alcoholic brewer, has signed a new multi-year agreement to become a Proud Non-Alcoholic Beer Partner of MetLife Stadium, the New York Giants and the New York Jets.
It’s the company’s first formal sponsorship of two professional football teams and a stadium, and the first time MetLife Stadium and its two home teams have aligned with a dedicated non-alcoholic brewer.
Cricket Australia weighs BBL expansion to 10 teams alongside a partial franchise sell-off 🏏
Cricket Australia’s board is ready to explore expanding the Big Bash League to 10 teams if a hybrid ownership model, allowing some existing franchises to be sold, gets approved, after its original wholesale privatisation plan was blocked by NSW and Queensland in April.
Following board approval, the sale process would need backing from four of the six states, with Victoria, Western Australia and Tasmania said to be strongly in favour.
Men in Blazers to stream Spurs vs Hoffenheim live and free on YouTube 📺
Men in Blazers will stream Tottenham Hotspur’s match against TSG Hoffenheim live and free for US and Canadian audiences this Saturday at 10am ET on its YouTube channel.
The broadcast is part of the Men in Blazers Media Network, with further announcements and giveaways promised later in the week.
TAKING A PIECE
Como 1907 has leveraged its Ventures infrastructure to secure its first equity partnership, taking a stake in Italian luxury collectables app, Collecto.
Collecto is Italy’s first digital platform for fractional ownership of luxury collectible assets.
The deal traces back to Como 1907 Ventures’ inaugural Pitch Day in November, where the team first met Co-Founder/CPO Salvatore (Toti) Zola.
Collecto had a live activation at Como Cup with a FanZone presence, VIP passes across four match days, and retail integration.
Next phase is a Hublot x Como 1907 watch activation, launching worldwide exclusively on the Collecto app.
In two years Collecto has grown to a €45m valuation as it has seen its transaction volume go from €380k to c.€60m, and registered users under 40 surge past 300k.
Why It Matters
Equity-based partnerships are becoming a more common thread for how sports rights holders engage with growth companies, moving beyond sponsorship inventory toward genuine participation in the value they help create (see: Aston Martin F1 and Eight Sleep or Inter Miami CF and IM8).
This deal is a live proof point of that shift, with Como 1907 choosing to align the club’s commercial upside with the startup’s growth.
When Como 1907 launched its Ventures programme in September last year, the main priority was leveraging non-commercialised assets and engaging the venture ecosystem. Como 1907 Ventures’ first deal, Connectome, saw the club take an equity stake in exchange for running a pilot inside the club, validating a high-performance application of brain health technology within an elite sporting environment.
With Collecto, the model flips towards more of a conventional commercial and brand partnership, with equity layered on top rather than the pilot being the point.
Both models have high potential, and the ability to flex to founders’ needs is enabling clubs like Como 1907, through their work with us at The Players Fund, to get access to the best possible deals available to them.
SPORTS PUNDIT PODCAST
On this episode of the Sports Pundit Podcast, I’m joined by Shergul Arshad, Head of North America for Aston Martin Formula One Team.
Shergul walks through how a career built in global football and fantasy sports led him into F1, joining the team on the back of the growth spike triggered by Drive to Survive and stepping into a role that, at the time, didn’t really exist yet.
The conversation traces how that role as Head of ‘North America’ has evolved. What started as an evangelizing job, explaining F1 to a US market that didn’t yet fully understand it, has turned into long-term sponsorship building, with Shergul personally closing nine deals in under four years, including with the likes of Cohere, CoreWeave, and Celsius.
Shergul explains the team’s move away from strict category exclusivity toward and the launch of the AMR Network, a structure that allows sponsors to collaborate with each other rather than compete for space, and how the IAM membership program is being used to capture and understand fan data.
The episode closes with a look at Aston Martin’s $350M Silverstone campus, home to more than 1,100 staff, and its role as both a talent magnet and a hospitality asset for the team.
Timestamps
01:00 - Shergul’s Career Path from Football and Fantasy to F1
04:00 - Building Relatability in the North American Market
09:00 - Sponsorship Growth Metrics and AMR’s Commercial Success
11:00 - Launching the AMR Network and Looking Beyond Category Exclusivity
20:00 - Expanding the Driver Squad and Show Car Activations
28:00 - A Silverstone Campus Tour
33:00 - Exploring Future Commercial Levers
About the Host
Andy Marston is the founder of Sports Pundit, a community and media platform for sports and technology executives. Through a weekly newsletter, podcast network, lively group chat, and regular social events, he shares industry analysis and connects leaders across the sector. Alongside Sports Pundit, Andy leads Corporate Venture at athlete-backed venture firm, The Players Fund, where he works with high-profile sports IP such as Como 1907 and Juventus to design venture strategies and drive innovation initiatives.
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