VR46’s Brilliant Idea: The Workaround to Avoid Sanctions

During the Mugello Grand Prix, the Pertamina Enduro VR46 Racing team announced a new commercial partnership for the remainder of the MotoGP season. Valentino Rossi’s squad has a major new sponsor: 12B SPORTS. The brand’s logos are already visible on the Ducati Desmosedici bikes and on the leathers of Fabio Di Giannantonio and Franco Morbidelli.

At first glance, the news looks like a typical commercial agreement between a team and a company seeking exposure. According to team principal Alessio Salucci, this partnership will help bring MotoGP closer to home audiences through videos and reports. In reality, this sponsorship is purely financial, and a lot of money will flow into VR46’s coffers.

The deal was brokered by Rory Anderson, CEO of 12Bet, one of the largest online casino and betting platforms in the world. This is where the strategy that many teams are adopting to circumvent European laws comes into play. In Spain and Italy, direct advertising by betting companies is strictly prohibited during sporting events. TV broadcasts cannot show these logos, and teams cannot display them on their bikes.

To avoid losing millions in revenue, online betting companies have found a perfect legal loophole. They create a secondary website dedicated to publishing general sports news, give it a name almost identical to the main betting company, and register it as a news outlet. Since, technically, they are advertising a free information portal and not a betting site, the law cannot penalize them. Ultimately, users see the same colors, the same graphics, and associate the logo with the original betting site.

This move by Valentino Rossi’s team is an exact copy of what we’re already seeing in other garages. The Gresini Racing team competes under the official name BK8 Gresini Racing MotoGP. The BK8 News logo, which follows the same scheme, appears on the fairings of the Ducatis ridden by Alex Marquez and Fermin Aldeguer. It is advertised as a news portal, but in reality serves as a cover for a mega betting company that has previously sponsored football teams in England and Spain.

With this new deal, Ducati’s two satellite teams are using the same formula to ensure their financial sustainability. Prototypes and teams competing in MotoGP require millions of euros to race, and traditional sponsors no longer provide the liquidity they once did. At this point, a shortcut was needed to bring in online betting and casino companies, currently among the few able to invest large sums of money in racing and sport in general.

If you like Corsedimoto’s content, you can select it as a preferred source by clicking here