Mercedes’ cars will no longer carry the logos of cryptocurrency brand FTX this weekend after the team suspended its sponsorship deal with the troubled company.
The cryptocurrency exchange experienced a sudden drop in value as users withdrew billions of pounds from it this week. A rescue deal involving another exchange, Binance, collapsed two days ago.FTX states on its website it is “currently unable to process withdrawals” and they “strongly advise against depositing”.
Now Mercedes has confirmed it will not promote the brand on its cars this weekend. “As a first step, we have suspended our partnership agreement with FTX,” a spokesperson told RaceFans. “This means the company will no longer appear on our race car and other branded assets from this weekend.
“We will continue to monitor closely the situation as it evolves,” the spokesperson added.
Mercedes’ deal with FTX began in September last year and was intended to “span multiple race seasons”. The team has carried FTX logos on the nose, rear wing endplates and cockpit surrounds of its W13. It added eye-catching graphics at the Miami Grand Prix to promote the launch of its range of Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) in conjunction with FTX.
Mercedes has also displayed FTX’s logos on its drivers caps and its other branded presences in the paddock.
The team removed the logos of another sponsor for different reasons less than 12 months ago. Mercedes ended its association with insulation manufacturer Kingspan after the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix, following criticism from a group representing the victims and survivors of the Grenfell Tower fire.
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Carbonized
11th November 2022, 14:06
And yet INEOS goes on…..
Spencer (@spencer)
11th November 2022, 14:33
A well capitalized, consistently profitable entity is able to fulfill its sponsorship obligations? Are you somehow surprised by this? Are you trying to say that you don’t want them to be there? Pretty sure a 33% stakeholder’s company may show up on the car somewhere.
Kerry Maxwell (@kerrymaxwell)
11th November 2022, 15:04
Is INEOS running a ponzi scheme too? I thought they were a chemical company.
MichaelN
11th November 2022, 15:34
INEOS owns a third of the F1 team. Their income is in the billions annually. Some of their business ventures have attracted criticism, that’s fair enough – but they’re more than financially capable of being a part of said F1 team.
Steve (@duuxdeluxe)
11th November 2022, 14:17
And so the great collapse begins…
On a more serious note, it does seem like big sponsorships are falling through more often in the last decade or so than before. We’ve had shady companies appearing on F1-cars for a long time, but I feel like recently it’s gotten a lot worse.
Tobacco was an obvious one to vanish, then came booze (probably because there’s quite a lot of races in countries that have interesting laws against alcohol) and now crypto. Not to mention HAAS’ ‘energy drink’ followed by the Mazepin-saga.
Maybe it’d be a ‘fun’ (with the lack of a better word) to have a feature on the disappearing of certain brands from sponsorships.
Steve Rogers (@beeflin)
12th November 2022, 10:49
It seems there’s a permanent cycle of cryptocurrency “being the future” vs. “inherently unstable and speculative”. I continue to not invest in it.
BasCB (@bascb)
11th November 2022, 14:58
Yeah, makes sense. Had they removed it earlier, they might have been in breach of contract, or at least someone might try to argue that in a court. Now that it is obvious the company is defaulting, they can safely take the decals away without that risk.
I saw a comparison a few days back on Twitter how much money 10 USD invested in the various crypto sponsors’ coins and platforms at the start of the season would be worth now. The best ones were at some 1,5-2 USD right now, the rest was under a 1/4th of a dollar, with FTX off course being 0
Andy (@andyfromsandy)
11th November 2022, 15:04
Well FTX has filed for bankruptcy, so that it would appear is the end of them.
Erkr
11th November 2022, 20:14
Yea CZ didn’t buy FTX out after all. Another Celsius down the drain
Forrest (@forrest)
11th November 2022, 16:01
All of these crypto coins are nothing but scams/Ponzi schemes, and Merc is far from the only F1 team that will have to pull the stickers from one of these companies off of their car. Including Merc 8 F1 teams have crypto sponsorship.
https://twitter.com/FormulaNetflix/status/1590509126140190720
superman
11th November 2022, 18:45
Some are ponzi, many, many are genuine projects with real use cases.
Denying crypto right now is like poo pooing the internet in the mid 90s!
SteveP
11th November 2022, 19:26
So, the king’s new clothes are doing well in some places.
Mid-90’s I think the internet, the web, email etc were still largely the province of techno-geeks. Late 90’s it was ramping up fast.