Why does Sauber F1 have two different names?
Why does Sauber F1 have two different names?
You might have heard that Sauber F1 has a pretty confusing name. The team’s full name is Stake F1 Team Kick Sauber. That’s certainly a mouthful, and it’s pretty strange to have two different names for one team. Well, there is a good reason for that, and it also helps to explain why Sauber has two different liveries for the 2024 season.
Why does Sauber F1 have two different names?
In 2019, it was announced that Sauber had partnered with Alfa Romeo to change the team's name to Alfa Romeo for the next five seasons. That deal ended at the end of the 2023 season when Sauber signed a deal with Stake, who are an online casino.
This deal includes the naming rights for the team, and this is why Sauber will go by Stake F1 for the 2024 season. But that is not the only deal that Sauber has signed. They also have a deal with Kick, which is a live-streaming platform. One of Kick’s main investors is Stake co-founder Eddie Craven.
So you can understand why both companies have gone into a deal with Sauber. While Stake holds the primary naming rights of the entire team, Kick’s deal means that they have the naming rights of the chassis for the 2024 and 2025 seasons. It is why the 2024 Sauber car is in the striking green of Kick.
There are not any rules that state that a team cannot have more than one naming partner, so this is a really good way for Sauber to bring in even more money for their team. Having two naming partners also allows this team to get around some difficult laws around gambling platforms.
Sauber is certainly not the first team in F1 to have changed its name for a sponsor. Mercedes's full name is Mercedes AMG Petronas F1 team, having signed a deal with the Malaysian oil and gas company Petronas in 2010. In fact, there are only a few teams in F1 history that have not signed a name partnership in the past.
Why has Stake changed their livery?
Some of the countries that Formula One races in do not allow gambling and sports betting advertisements as they see them as harmful. In the countries where this is the case, the team will be named after Kick instead.
This is why you will see Stake F1 change their livery at times throughout the season. What you will likely see in the 2024 season is that Stake has to run a full Kick livery in certain races. This will help them get around those rules while still making money from advertising.
For the 2024 season, it is believed that there will be eight races where the Stake/Kick F1 team will have to change to their branding to be legally compliant. Those races are believed to be Qatar, Japan, Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi, Singapore, Bahrain, China, and Brazil. Stake itself is completely banned from advertising in Australia as well.
So expect to see a lot more of the Kick logo in 2024 where Stake is banned from advertising.
