Was Max vs. 100 Worth the Hype?

👋 Welcome back to Sponcon Sports, a weekly newsletter dedicated to sponsored content strategy in the sports industry! 

This is a resource for sports organizations to generate more sponsorship revenue and for brands to get more from their sports partnerships by building sponsored content fans actually want to engage with.

In Today’s Edition:

• 🏎️ Max vs 100 By The Numbers

• 🦊 Wrexham Trolls Southampton With Sponcon

• 💧 Gatorade Gets Elite Treatment From Overtime

🏊️ DEEP DIVE
The Red Bull Strategy Behind A Quarter Billion Views

When Red Bull announced Max vs. 100 in August, I loved the strategy.

Take four-time Formula 1 World Champion Max Verstappen back to where his racing career started, put him at the back of a 101-kart field at Silverstone, and see if he can pass everyone.

It was a ridiculous enough idea to immediately get attention.

But what interested me even more was everything Red Bull built around it.

They used their massive network of social accounts to distribute the event. They filled the field with Red Bull athletes, creators and personalities who could document the experience themselves. And despite having one of the strongest owned media ecosystems in sports, Red Bull still took the livestream to ESPN and Disney+.

Back in August, I said that Red Bull had designed the event to feel like it would be everywhere by race day.

Now we can see whether that actually happened.

I partnered with Mondo Metrics, using MondoTrends to analyze the social performance around Max vs. 100 from August 25 through September 21.

• 633 event-related posts

• 146 accounts

• 241.3M+ views

• 14.5M engagements

The dataset included Red Bull brand accounts, participating creators, F1 teams, sports media, broadcasters, and Max Verstappen.

And that 241.3 million is a floor, not a complete view count. Public view totals aren't available for every post type across every platform, so some of the content tracked couldn't contribute to the total.

So, yes, it lived up to the hype.

But the more interesting part is how it got there.

The Announcement Was Only The Beginning

A big announcement can generate plenty of attention on its own.

The harder part is sustaining that interest until the thing actually happens.

Red Bull had nearly three weeks to bridge between the Max vs. 100 announcement and race day, and kept finding ways to bring the idea back into people’s feeds.

On September 1, Red Bull Motorsports recreated the launch treatment used for its F1 car with Max's kart, a post that generated 5.2 million views and became one of the campaign's most-viewed pieces of content.

Then performance took off around the race itself.

Race day alone delivered:

• 122.4M views

• 7.6M engagements

That's roughly 51% of all measured views and 52% of engagement from the entire campaign in a single day.

But the three-day stretch surrounding the race tells an even bigger story.

From September 15–17, Max vs. 100 accounted for approximately 74% of all measured engagement and 80% of views across the entire campaign.

Red Bull kept the audience warm between announcement and race day, then got its biggest return when the event actually happened, with enough content to keep the conversation going afterward.

This Is What An Owned Audience Is Worth

One of the things I highlighted when Max vs. 100 was announced was how Red Bull used its network of accounts to distribute the event.

Instead of relying on one massive account, the launch showed up across different parts of the Red Bull ecosystem:

1. Red Bull UK collaborated with Silverstone, where the race was held.

2. Red Bull partnered with ESPN.

3. Red Bull South Africa teamed up with Disney+ South Africa.

4. Red Bull Motorsports brought together ESPN UK, Disney+ UK and Red Bull Racing.

And that was only the beginning.

Across the full campaign, Red Bull's brand accounts generated:

• 381 event-related posts

• 183.5M views

• 10.3M engagements

That's roughly 76% of all measured views and 71% of engagement across the campaign.

Red Bull has spent years building audiences around different sports, countries, and communities. Max vs. 100 gave them an idea big enough to put that distribution network to work.

A single piece of creative could move through regional accounts with localized copy, while different Red Bull channels could tailor the event to audiences they had already built.

Did Max vs. 100 Move The Needle?

How did Red Bull's accounts perform compared with their usual content?

We compared the total views generated by Red Bull's most active accounts during race week (September 14–20) with their average weekly performance over the previous seven weeks.

The results varied considerably.

• Red Bull UK: +348%

• Red Bull Motorsports: +871%

• Red Bull USA: +167%

• Red Bull Global: −59%

Red Bull Motorsports generated 75.1 million views during race week, compared with its usual 7.7 million. Red Bull UK delivered another 48.7 million views, more than four times its weekly average of 10.9 million.

Red Bull's main account actually generated 59% fewer views than its weekly average.

The flagship account operates on an entirely different scale, regularly publishing viral content across mountain biking, cliff diving, wingsuits, surfing and more.

Individual videos can attract hundreds of millions of views, including this Danny MacAskill clip.

Against that baseline, even an event as big as Max vs. 100 represents a smaller part of its overall content output.

The campaign coincided with substantial increases for several motorsport and regional accounts, demonstrating how a single activation can play very different roles across Red Bull's distribution network.

The Creators Became Part Of The Distribution

The 100 drivers Max raced weren't random.

The field included Red Bull athletes, creators, streamers, F1 journalists, employees and everyday fans from around the world.

In fact, the second-place finisher was an F1 journalist, while third place went to an engine builder at Oracle Red Bull Racing Powertrains.

• Jacky Martens: F1 journalist

• Lew Osler: Red Bull Racing Powertrains

That mix made the race feel like a genuine competition between people connected to motorsport, while giving Red Bull a group of creators who could document the experience before, during, and after the event.

For our analysis, we focused on 30 of the field's most prominent content creators.

69 creator posts
1.7M engagements
24.5K average engagements per post

Red Bull's own content averaged 26.9K engagements per post, compared with 24.5K for creators and 16.6K for sports and F1 media.

But the median tells a different story.

The typical creator post generated 8.6K engagements, more than twice the 4.1K for Red Bull's brand accounts.

Red Bull's biggest hits pushed its average higher, while creators delivered stronger results at the midpoint of their posts.

Before the race, Red Bull gave participants material to build anticipation around, including personalized invitations from Max and access to the event itself.

Then race day gave them something much more valuable: their own story.

Nathan Lust's POV footage generated 266K engagements on Instagram, making it the second-most-engaged post in the entire dataset. One of his post-race clips generated another 217K engagements.

Nathan Lust's “He didn't take it easy on me” POV footage generated 266K engagements on Instagram, making it one of the campaign's most-engaged creator posts. Another of his post-race clips delivered 217K engagements.

Other participants told the story in their own voices and languages, from pre-race excitement to helmet-cam footage and post-race reactions.

That's how I think brands should approach creators.

You're working with them because they know how to capture their audience's attention. Give them the key information they need, but don't hand them a script.

Build an experience worth documenting and provide the access to create compelling content before, during, and after it.

The distribution came with the experience.

Different Platforms Did Different Jobs

The platform breakdown is a good reminder that distribution works better when you stop judging every channel by the same metric.

Instagram was the workhorse.

It generated 54% of all measured views and 66% of engagement, giving Red Bull both meaningful reach and interaction in the same place.

TikTok punched above its weight.

It accounted for just 14% of views, but delivered 27% of all engagement.

Facebook was the surprise.

It's the oldest of the three and easy to dismiss because it's no longer the newest or flashiest platform, but it still generated 27% of all measured views, nearly twice TikTok's share, even though it accounted for less than 5% of engagement.

That mix is exactly why the platforms are more useful as a package than in isolation.

Instagram carried both reach and engagement. TikTok added disproportionate interaction. Facebook reached a meaningful audience that could easily have been missed if Red Bull had written the platform off entirely.

It also delivered two of the top three most-viewed posts in the dataset.

The biggest was a Red Bull Global Facebook Reel showing the moment Max finally reached P1, generating 14.6 million views.

And fittingly, the third-most-viewed post featured one of the smartest moments of the race.

A Red Bull UK Facebook Reel generated 9.1 million views showing Max using a karting trick he'd learned at seven years old to work his way through the first group of drivers.

So even the decision to take a four-time F1 World Champion back to karting ended up producing one of the campaign's biggest pieces of content.

Facebook delivered reach.

TikTok delivered disproportionate engagement.

Instagram delivered both.

You don't need every platform to produce the same outcome for it to be valuable. You need them to work together.

One Event. A Lot Of Different Stories.

Different publishers found their own stories within Max vs. 100.

Red Bull leaned into the impossible challenge: Max starting P101, carving through traffic, and trying to get all the way to the front.

Creators showed what it actually felt like to be one of the other 100 drivers.

Sports and F1 media gravitated toward spectacular individual moments they could package into instantly understandable highlights.

And Disney+ focused much more heavily on getting people to the livestream, with countdowns, tune-in messaging and “how to watch” content.

By giving everyone something different to work with, Red Bull made the event feel much bigger than the race itself.

Even Red Bull Knows When Owned Media Isn't Enough

After spending weeks using its enormous network of accounts to generate attention, Red Bull took the actual livestream to ESPN and Disney+.

That's an interesting decision for a brand with such a massive audience, established content operation, and global recognition.

Taking the event beyond its owned ecosystem gave Red Bull access to additional audiences, more promotional coverage across ESPN and Disney+’s social channels, and the potential to bring new fans into its own ecosystem.

It also gave the event another home where people could continue discovering it afterward.

For example, an ESPN UK YouTube highlights recap generated 1.6 million views.

We don't have enough data here to judge the livestream itself. I'd want ESPN/Disney+ viewership and watch-time numbers before making that call.

But the social side delivered: it created awareness, built anticipation, and surrounded the event with enough content that by September 16, Max vs. 100 really did feel like it was everywhere.

The Bigger Takeaway

Max vs. 100 looked like a great idea when it was announced. Now we have the data to show it delivered.

633 posts. 146 accounts. 241.3M+ views. 14.5M engagements.

And underneath those headline numbers was a well-designed system: an event rooted in Max Verstappen's story, a massive owned distribution network, creators with an experience worth documenting, and media and broadcast partners extending its reach.

The spectacle got people's attention. The distribution strategy made sure that attention had somewhere to go.

🔍️ SPONCONSPIRATION
Steal These Ideas

Ahead of their match against Southampton, Wrexham used a spying scandal to troll the Saints with sponcon for front-of-shirt sponsor Firefox.

Just days after announcing Disneyland Resort as their new helmet sponsor, the Anaheim Ducks worked the logo into Roger McQueen’s locker. McQueen wears No. 95, a nod to Lightning McQueen from Disney and Pixar’s Cars. The connection goes even further: the Ducks took McQueen to Disneyland after drafting him last year. A fun way to build on an existing connection between a player and a new sponsor.

I really like this offseason workout series from Overtime Elite and Gatorade. The digital signage takeover makes the sponsor impossible to miss, while the training content creates a natural connection to hydration and recovery. The Gx Sweat Patch gets some love, too. Even the on-screen text for social clips uses Gatorade orange. It’s the little details that bring the whole thing together.

SportsBall worked with MLB to use Statcast data, powered by Google Cloud and Gemini Enterprise, to show fans how different pitches work.

The Cincinnati Bengals and Fifth Third Bank are back with another punny concept. Players pick their “money play” from practice, then the video cuts to the footage. Fans get a behind-the-scenes look at moments they wouldn’t normally see, while the bank gets a clear tie to the content. It’s another fun idea from the pairing behind last year’s Two Cents question-of-the-day series.

And finally, the partnership we all knew needed to happen. Dockers has teamed up with Los Angeles Chargers head coach Jim Harbaugh, whose signature khakis are practically part of his uniform. The two actually worked together on a commercial back in 2014, making this a long-overdue reunion.

🚨 ICYMI
Industry News & Insights

Out Of Home Field: Aaron Baar explored how the New York Jets are working with Outfront to help sponsors reach fans beyond game day, connecting billboards, digital signage and in-person experiences into campaigns across New York [via Marketing Dive].

Serving Up New Inventory: Paola Marinone and Bengü Atamer broke down how the US Open uses six YouTube formats to reach fans and create new sponsorship inventory, including an American Express-sponsored, audio-only livestream that generated 444K views for the men’s final without showing any match footage [via The Business of YouTube].

Foul-Mouthed Fan Engagement: NASCAR launched its Swear Jar, adding $5 to the prize pot every time a driver curses over the radio during The Chase. Fans predict each race’s swear count and most-used swear word for a chance to win the cash. A clever way to keep fans following the playoffs while creating opportunities for first-party data capture.

Mauling The Competition: Tiannah Pedler  dove into how Hull City is winning on and off the pitch, breaking down the Tigers’ social media strategy, particularly how they’re connecting with fans on TikTok.

Preseason Performance Check: Brian Kerman shared a checklist of key areas sports performance marketing teams should review before the new NHL (or NBA) season begins.