The company has already made an impact during its first year in the sport as F1's official airline partner, and that will only become more apparent ifFor decades airlines studiously avoided F1, and it was always said that they didn't want the public to see crashing racing cars carrying their logos.
The country saw F1 as the perfect way to maintain an international sporting profile after the 2022 FIFA World Cup, and it was inevitable that its airline would become involved. The fact that the Emirates deal was running out handily created the opportunity for Qatar to become the official airline partner to the sport until 2027, and not just a one-off home race sponsor.Taking over from Emirates made the deal all the sweeter thanks to the healthy competition between the companies.
The 37-year-old Briton has an intriguing CV. He started his career with a spell at Prodrive, before heading to well-known sports marketing agency Prism, where he was responsible for the Ferrari/Shell account. From 2012 to 2017 he had a senior role atOver a four-year stint, he was involved in various deals as F1 built up its sponsorship portfolio. Then in August 2021, he joined Qatar Airways, just a few months before the first race at Lusail.
"But then we have F1 events and MotoGP events, and we're able to leverage the network of F1 for the purposes of the airline. So it was great to be able to lead into that, and for the World Cup to be the start of the story, rather than the end of the story." "There are so many nuances of F1 in terms of what you need from a passes perspective, what you need from branding and rights," he says.
"We can really feel confident in putting a lot of resources into making F1 as good as it can be. Because the better it can be, the better it can deliver for Qatar Airways.""Qatar does a good job at 360-degree activation," he says."We have the Qatar GP, whereas if you look at other airline partners in the past, they didn't have their own home race, which is particularly important from a domestic perspective.
"We could spend on more rights elsewhere to have a bigger portfolio, but we would prefer to double down on truly activating the rights that we have, and being quite selective of who we partner with, in order to be able to demonstrate a really good fan experience and passenger experience."