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- Revolut targets the young ‘Drive to Survive’ F1 audience.
- Audi’s “premium but achievable” image perfectly aligns with Revolut.
- Revolut acts as the Audi team’s official banking system.
- Saved FX fees are reinvested into the car’s performance.
Record crowds attended this year’s Formula 1 Australian Grand Prix in Melbourne, with more than 480,000 people coming through the gates throughout the event. Sure, it’s short of the all-time Australian Grand Prix record set in 1995 when approximately 520,000 visited the final race in Adelaide. However, Saturday and Sunday at this year’s race saw the second-highest attendance on record, according to the Australian Grand Prix Corporation.
I’ve visited for the last three years, and I’ve never seen as many people in the Australian F1 Grand Prix hospitality suites as I did on Sunday. Coming from all walks of life, Albert Park was packed to the brim with journalists, influencers, ex-racers, CEOs, and more. There was no hope of getting a seat up on the balcony above the Podium Club, and finding your spot in the grandstands and patches of grass around the track was even more difficult. It was a direct reflection of the sport’s popularity, and it’s easy to see why brands want to be part of the show.
This was the premise of my chat with Matt Baxby, CEO of Revolut Australia, and Antoine Le Nel, Chief Growth and Marketing Officer at Revolut. It’s easy to understand why they’re the title sponsor of the Audi Formula 1 team, but I wanted to understand the process, the meaning behind the partnership, and how it will help the Revolut brand in its global takeover.
Revolut and the ‘Drive to Survive’ Economy
Before we sat down for our interview, I spent time with Antoine Le Nel in the Paddock Club. He explained that if you want to understand why a fintech giant is taking on Formula 1 to spearhead its global takeover, you just have to look at the money. The fact is that F1 is no longer a niche club for gearheads. It has been rebranded by Netflix’s “Drive to Survive” series, and the sport’s demographics have shifted dramatically.
“I’m sure there’s a core fan that knows the 1.6-litre engine turbo with the battery,” Le Nel points out. “Then you have the others that are watching ‘Drive to Survive,’ and are more into what Revolut represents… that’s what Revolut wants to be.”
Newly released data from Revolut shows that consumer spending across Melbourne surged 19.1% year-on-year during the race weekend. But it’s who was spending that proves Revolut’s strategy is spot-on:
- Customers aged 18–34 accounted for a massive 65% of all spending during the GP weekend.
- International visitors accounted for more than 55% of all spending, led by the UK, France, and Italy.
- Taxis and rideshare spending exploded by 133.1%, while restaurants (+13.1%) saw massive bumps.
It’s the exact event that a borderless financial platform that thrives on multi-currency utility and targets tech-savvy early adopters would want to get involved in. Put your brand name down the side of an F1 car, and you’ll have the ultimate highly targeted billboard. My words, not his.
Audi is the ‘Premium But Achievable’ Sweet Spot
Revolut’s plan to sponsor an F1 team came together more quickly than expected when new entrant Audi Formula 1 announced its intention to join the grid. It’s difficult to enter a sport dominated by historic heavyweights like Ferrari, McLaren, and Aston Martin. However, it works in Revolut’s favour, as tying your brand to a new entrant (with one of the most attractive liveries on the grid) is a calculated psychological play.
The Revolut and Audi Formula 1 deal was secured in a record-breaking four months, driven by a shared “builder” DNA between the brands. But more importantly, Audi perfectly mirrors Revolut’s brand position as a premium but relatable entity.
“Audi is a premium brand, but it’s a relatable brand,” Le Nel points out. “Aston Martin, Ferrari, and McLaren are very premium, but not relatable. How many people have an Aston Martin in the garage? While an Audi is premium, it’s achievable. You can get there. And that’s the exact position we want for Revolut.”
To Le Nel, it’s about elevating the fintech space to a level of luxury. “We want to build a premiumness on our brand, which I don’t think any bank, any fintech has ever done,” he adds. “It’s not good to look premium for a bank necessarily, because they struggle with that premiumness compared to other brands, but we want to do that.” Unironically, it’s the exact same recipe that Formula 1 has built its image on.
Physical Cards Aren’t Dead, They’re a Fashion Accessory
We also spoke about Revolut’s physical cards, and as someone who was tired of using their phone to pay for coffee in the morning and bought a designer card holder for a few hundred dollars, only to never use it again, the idea was somewhat lost on me. Still, in an age where Apple Pay and digital wallets dominate, it’s easy to assume the physical bank card is headed for extinction, but Le Nel strongly disagrees.
“Lots of people are saying now with Apple Pay, etc., that cards are disappearing. That’s actually very wrong,” Le Nel asserts. “Cards are actually a fashion item that people really enjoy.”
He points to the massive success of their 24-karat gold cards, the new Official Audi Revolut F1 Team Card, and upcoming collaborations. “The moment you pay with your card and you have your mates around and you show your card, it’s just a little feel-good moment. Of course, it’s very futile. I’m not going to say it’s the most important thing that you need in your life, but I’m saying this is a feel-good moment. And people need feel-good moments in their lives.”
Hacking the F1 Budget Cap
The important thing to remember here is that the partnership is more than a logo on the side of the car. The Audi Formula 1 team runs on Revolut, meaning the title sponsor actually serves as a financial strategy to make the car faster. “Revolut is fundamentally embedded in the team,” Le Nel revealed to me. “The team is operating on Revolut. So the banking system of the team is Revolut.”
“It’s a lot of FX (foreign exchange) in this business,” Le Nel explains. “But then, when suddenly you save a few bips here or there in FX, well, that’s money you can actually put in the development. Instead of putting it in the bank… suddenly you gain in performance. When you look at the difference between the team performance, it’s actually percentage points. So you can actually make a difference.”
The Australian Blueprint: Subscriptions, eSIMs, and the AFL
I then spoke with Matt Baxby, CEO of Revolut Australia, who notes that the brand’s success stems from completely rewriting the banking rulebook. Revolut’s global vision is immense, and the local execution is equally aggressive. Australia was Revolut’s first expansion market outside of Europe, and they’ve just cracked the 1 million customer milestone domestically.
“That central idea of putting all of the problems people have to solve in one place is a key to it,” Baxby says. “Challenging what people expect from their bank… people wouldn’t expect their bank to serve up a subscription to Duolingo or Tinder Gold or all the other things that we’ve bundled in.”
That local ambition is why Revolut isn’t just relying on the F1. They’ve wrapped Melbourne trams, I couldn’t avoid their signage in the airbridge on the way to the plane, and signed a major sponsorship deal with the Hawthorn Hawks (who Baxby describes perfectly). “It’s a bit of a disruptor, it’s on the up. It’s got some personalities in the team.”
“I remember sitting down with our founder Nick (Storonsky) when I first joined Revolut six years ago,” Baxby recalls. “He said, ‘All I want you to be is number one in the market.’ Not in a constrained sense of best digital bank… ‘I expect you to be the market leader.’”
What Does the Future of Revolut Look Like?
Ultimately, Revolut’s F1 expansion and future success boil down to a specific psychological reaction. Le Nel describes it as a double hit, with a “wow and wow” effect. Meanwhile, for Baxby, it’s about creating tribal loyalty among users. “It’s people being proud to be associated with the brand,” he notes. “Being able to say, ‘I’m with Revolut,’ because it stands for something.”
What does the future of Revolut look like? Well, Le Nel calls it the end of the beginning. “It probably means the end of the beginning,” Antoine Le Nel tells me. “We’ve spent the first 10 years beginning something. Now, I think that’s it, we’re done with the beginning.”
For a company that has already amassed 70 million customers globally (including over 1 million in Australia), it’s a bold statement. “We’ve built something amazing… we’ve achieved a scale that all our competitors would dream of,” he explains. “And now we’re in a place with this F1 deal where we’re just preparing the second phase… We should reach hundreds of millions. Very quickly, honestly, in the next 5 to 10 years, we’re gonna count in hundreds of millions. I think this is the turning point where suddenly, from being a European company, we’re becoming a truly global company.”
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