Red Bull Racing’s F1 Academy programme has secured a multi-year partnership with Anastasia Beverly Hills (ABH) — the brand’s first step into motorsport and Red Bull’s first standalone commercial deal dedicated to its F1 Academy teams. Branding will appear most prominently on Alisha Palmowski’s Red Bull Racing Pepe Jeans entry (rear wing and cockpit), with Rafaela Ferreira’s Racing Bulls car carrying marks on the side chassis and nose. The partnership activates from the 2025 Dutch Grand Prix.
This deal matters beyond decals. It is fresh proof that non-endemic, culture-forward brands now view Formula One — and specifically F1 Academy — as a high-leverage platform to reach a fan base that is rapidly skewing younger and more female. F1’s 2025 Global Fan Survey finds three in four new fans are women, with nearly half of Gen Z respondents female and high sponsor receptivity across cohorts.
A pattern is forming: beauty is here — and it’s strategic
ABH joins a growing slate of beauty and skincare partners entering the sport with purpose-built storytelling and experiential rights:
- Charlotte Tilbury x F1 Academy (2024) — the brand’s first global sports sponsorship and the series’ first beauty partner, designed to spotlight female drivers and reach new female-skewing audiences.f
- Elemis x Aston Martin (2025) — a multi-year skincare partnership integrating trackside experiences and co-branded products across the team’s global footprint.
Viewed together with ABH’s entry, the through-line is clear: beauty brands aren’t treating F1 as a logo wall — they’re buying access to a lifestyle arena where fashion, creators, travel, and premium hospitality converge.
Why F1 is now a beauty play
- Audience shift with purchase intent: F1’s new fan growth is disproportionately female and Gen Z, and those cohorts over-index on daily content engagement and sponsor responsiveness. The 2025 survey reports that 76% of fans say sponsors enhance the sport; a third are more likely to purchase from partners (rising to ~40% for Gen Z).
- Always-on culture, not just race weekends: Female engagement time on Formula1.com jumped ~37% YoY (May ’23–May ’24), reflecting deeper, habitual fandom that brands can reach via content, creators, and commerce — not only live events.
- Scale plus diversity: F1’s global fan base sits around 750 million, with approximately 41% women — numbers that make beauty a natural category to localise and personalise across markets.
What the ABH deal unlocks (if you do it right)
- Creator-led funnels: Pair Academy drivers with beauty creators for race-week formats (get-ready-with-me, paddock styling, travel skincare). Push to shoppable video and timed drops. The formats match how new fans enter F1 — through stories first, racing second.
- Sampling where it converts: Trackside lounges, airport pop-ups on race corridors, and hotel partnerships convert intent into trial — then into CRM. Elemis’s model with Aston Martin shows how product experiences can live beyond the paddock.
- Merch x beauty bundles: Capsule kits tied to liveries, cities, and drivers, redeemable via QR in-venue and on creator feeds.
- Data-tied rights: Build measurement into the contract — unique codes, pixel’d landing pages, fan-ID matches where permissible — to prove incrementality among women 18–34 and Gen Z segments the survey highlights as most responsive.
- Pathway storytelling: F1 Academy is now the second-most-followed series among women and a major entry point for Gen Z; invest in long-form and behind-the-scenes arcs that sustain between rounds.
How non-endemic brands should structure F1 plays in 2025/26
Start with an audience thesis, not an asset list. If your goal is female Gen Z acquisition, F1 Academy plus team-level extensions often beats a single premium logo on a Sunday grid. Map “discovery → consideration → trial → repeat” across creators, streaming clips, and race-week IRL touchpoints.
Rights architecture we recommend:
- Anchor: F1 Academy team or series rights for inclusive storytelling and year-round content.
- Amplify: Team hospitality and paddock access for sampling and VIP conversion (Elemis/Aston Martin shows the template).
- Distribute: Creator/IP rights for shoppable video and collabs; geo-target to priority markets where growth is fastest.
- Prove: Survey-backed KPIs: daily engagement lift, sponsor favourability, purchase intent, and CRM growth among women/Gen Z; tie these to incentives.
What good looks like in measurement
- Leading indicators: creator reach in female 18–34, watch time, CTR to PDPs, sample redemptions per 1,000 attendees.
- Revenue signals: DTC code share from F1 audiences, retail sell-through in race-week cities, repeat purchase rates within 60–90 days.
- Brand health: lift in “brand for people like me,” “innovative,” and “confidence-building” among new female fans.
The bottom line
ABH’s move with Red Bull’s Academy Programme is not a one-off — it’s a signal. Beauty and skincare brands now see F1 as a culturally rich, data-friendly channel to build relevance and revenue with the sport’s fastest-growing audiences. Charlotte Tilbury’s series-level bet and Elemis’s team integration illustrate the playbook; ABH adds a high-profile, driver-led layer.
How 365247 can help
Strategy sprint (2–3 weeks): We convert your growth goals into an F1 thesis, prioritising Academy vs. team vs. driver rights, creator mix, and market selection.
Rights and deal design: We negotiate measurement-ready contracts with content, sampling, and CRM baked in from day one.
Creator and content studio: Always-on storytelling calibrated for women and Gen Z, with shoppable formats and retail tie-ins.
Activation and analytics: Trackside experiences, product drops, and a unified dashboard that attributes trial and revenue back to your F1 investment.
If you’re a non-endemic brand looking to make F1 work like a growth channel — not a cost line — let’s architect the right entry. Share your 2025/26 objectives and priority markets, and we’ll return a rights and activation blueprint tailored to your budget and KPIs. Let’s talk
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IMAGE Oracle Red Bull Racing
