Haas Formula One And MoneyGram Are The ‘Home Team’ At This Weekend’s Crypto.com Miami Grand Prix

The world comes to Miami Lakes, Florida for this weekend’s Crypto.com Miami Grand Prix as the Formula One World Championship will be showcased at the Miami International Autodrome.

Haas Formula One is the home team this weekend as the only team from the United States that competes in the World Championship.

For first year sponsor MoneyGram, a United States-based financial world services company, it’s an exciting opportunity to display its impressive partnership that was announced last year.

For MoneyGram, the timing couldn’t be better.

Before the COVID-19 Pandemic shut down the world in 2020, Formula One was an acquired taste in the United States. There was a group of diehards — loyal fans who would set their alarms and watch F1 races at sunrise, but as far as mass appeal, it remained a niche sport in the USA.

But with the world locked down and shut in, people needed entertainment and discovered a docuseries on Netflix
NFLX
known as “Drive to Survive.”

Viewers couldn’t get enough of the behind-the-scenes action and storylines delivered on “Drive to Survive.” Fans who couldn’t spell “F1” before 2020, were suddenly Formula One experts.

As COVID restrictions eased and the world reopened, the biggest boom in interest in the Formula One World Championship was in the United States.

Many fans skipped right over NASCAR and IndyCar and flocked to Circuit of the Americas (COTA) in Austin, Texas, where nearly 400,000 fans over three days gave F1 a Texas-sized audience.

Last year, a temporary race course built around Hard Rock Stadium in Miami Lakes, Florida debuted to give Formula One two events on the schedule in the United States.

This year, that number grows to three as a spectacle of gigantic proportions will take over The Strip in Las Vegas for the Heineken Las Vegas GP November 17-19.

For MoneyGram, the company invested in Formula One at a very good time.

“I like the innocence with how we fell into it,” Alex Holmes, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, MoneyGram International
MGI
told me in an exclusive interview on May 3. “I’ve been a Formula One fan myself for a very long time. As a kid, I watched it with my father when it was on TV. That wasn’t every week because things were different from a television perspective. I tuned in from time to time in college and my early days.

“From Michael Schumacher and then the transition over to Lewis Hamilton, when he started racing, I got my kids to start watching. It was something we always did in our household.

“When I got this email opportunity about whether we thought about Formula One, it came at the exact time MoneyGram was in this transitional period where we were about to go private, reinvent the brand and its connection with consumers on a more digital way, more young and exciting way.

“How do you do that on a global scale?”

Holmes approached MoneyGram International Chief Marketing Officer Greg Hall to consider the idea and whether it made sense for the company.

“Formula One had this view of being stodgy, exclusive, expensive,” Holmes continued. “I was not sure it was the right fit. Plus, it could be very expensive to us.

“Greg was very innocent when it came to Formula One. He didn’t know much about it, wasn’t a fan, so there wasn’t any bias involved.

“He made the connections, came back to me and he said, ‘This could be huge.’”

Huge is an understatement.

In its first season with Haas Formula One, which includes team owner Gene Haas and Formula One team principal Guenther Steiner, along with drivers Kevin Magnussen and Niko Hulkenberg, MoneyGram found a perfect partner to showcase its company to the world.

MoneyGram International, Inc. is a global financial technology company that enables consumers and businesses to move and manage money in nearly every country around the world. Through its expansive set of fintech offerings, MoneyGram provides millions of consumers annually the ability to seamlessly send money home to family and friends, store money in mobile wallets, and buy, sell, and hold cryptocurrencies on its industry-leading app.

The Company’s innovative cross-border platform enables its customers to send funds directly into bank accounts and mobile wallets or cash-in and cash-out more than 135 currencies and numerous cryptocurrencies through one of the largest cash distribution networks in the world. Modern, mobile, and API-driven, MoneyGram’s white-labelled remittance service also provides some of the world’s top brands and organizations the ability to disburse funds directly to their consumer clients.

Based in Dallas and known for its strong corporate culture globally, MoneyGram has been named a recipient of the Top Workplaces USA award for two consecutive years, an honor based entirely on employee feedback.

“We are a US-based company, but there is tremendous overlap with our customers,” Hall told me in an exclusive interview. “When you consider a sponsorship, you have to consider the brand attributes of who you are sponsoring and if they align with what you are trying to get out of that sponsorship.

“F1 has speed, but it also has innovation, technology, safety, excellence. All of that is built in so for a financially service company, all of that made sense from those perspectives as well.

“Alex was always checking me to make sure this is what we want to do. We took a methodical approach to make sure this made sense.

“What pushed us over the edge is F1 two or three years ago isn’t anywhere where it is today. It has skyrocketed in popularity and ‘Drive to Survive’ has attracted a younger audience. The 18-25 demographic has grown massively in the last few years. You are starting to see the older demographics grow as well. Those are the ones that are using technology and our future customers.

“All of that really combined to make this obvious decision for us.”

MoneyGram Haas F1 Team is one of only 10 teams competing in the FIA Formula 1 (F1) World Championship, the largest global motorsports series. The team, founded by industrialist Gene Haas, made its debut in in 2016 when it became the first American F1 team since 1986.

A favorite among fans, MoneyGram Haas F1 Team features drivers, Kevin Magnussen, and Niko Hülkenberg, along with Team Principal, Guenther Steiner. Both headquartered in the United States and reaching consumers in nearly every country around the world, MoneyGram and MoneyGram Haas F1 Team are mutually focused on accelerating technology and innovation, speed and safety, and customer-centricity. The team completed a strong season in 2022, finishing 8th in the F1 Constructor’s Championship and is driving for continued success in 2023.

“The American identity is important,” Holmes said. “What Haas is trying to do is build the team on the track. Guenther has a lot of racing knowledge in the sport. To build a team like that to compete against Red Bull and Mercedes is admirable and it’s a big thing to take on.

“MoneyGram is a global company. Most of the revenue comes from outside the United States, but we are an American-based company.

“We’re not that big. We have 2,200 employees around the world, and we compete globally with some big players and do a good job. There is a scrappiness to us. There is an underdog feeling at MoneyGram.

“The Haas Team reflects that. We are down-to-earth, hands-on, say it as it is people and do what is right. Most of Haas’s customers are international and most of our customers are international.

“It is a very global world. We provide touchpoints between countries. You must understand culture and diversity. For Formula One to transcend those pieces is very important.

“It’s global in that sense. What Haas is trying to do and what we are trying to do pairs up perfectly. We have helped Haas elevate and Haas helps MoneyGram.

“We are doing a nice job with it.”

MoneyGram and Haas Formula One are exciting to welcome the world to their home country.

“I’m very much looking forward to a great few days,” Holmes said. “We got a taste of it in Austin. The excitement around it, the general enthusiasm for the sport in the United States is incredible to see the change, the growth, and the energy. To be on the ground, partnered with Haas and Gunther Steiner and a couple of great drivers, the partnership grows.

“To be there and get the recognition from MoneyGram and the support from the surrounding teams is important. It’s a family sport. These guys all travel the world together. To have a solid partner like MoneyGram with Haas makes a lot of people feel very good about the team again, the stability of the sport and the direction it is going.”

“Any time you are the host country, it’s a bit of a celebration. A lot of fun for us. It’s our largest market. A lot of transactions come from outside the United States, but the largest single market is the US outbound market. It’s a phenomenal opportunity to promote the brand and the product.”

MoneyGram International is part of today’s growing global economy that has broken down borders to connect the business world.

There was no better sport to show that than Formula One, which competes all over the world and on every continent except Antarctica.

“There are three amazing connections there,” Holmes said. “MoneyGram operates in just about every country in the world except where we are restricted by law from doing so. Because of that, we think a sport like Formula One that travels the world and impacts people in every region in the world, the circuit overlaps with 70 percent of our send market revenue so the audiences fit really well.

“Formula One is also on the cutting edge of technology and innovation. We are evolving as an organization. North of 50 percent of our transactions today are digitally enabled.

“That connection to technology, innovation and forward thinking and the digital world, then throw on top of that, speed. Our consumers rely on us for trust, but speed of service, quality of service makes all the difference in the world.

“Formula One is a speed-based sport. It’s a precision sport. The message, the community, the branding, the opportunity to promote our service overlaps in a big way. It’s a perfect sport for us to be participating in.”

After falling into a bit of an international malaise a decade ago, Formula One’s resurgence has been tremendously impressive.

From F1 arriving at COTA, to Liberty Media purchasing Formula One, followed the “Drive to Survive” boom and an upcoming Formula One movie featuring Brad Pitt, it seems everything Formula One touches these days turns to Platinum.

“Everywhere Formula One shows up is that country’s Super Bowl,” Holmes said. “That fan experience, track experience and environment, it’s a massive celebration, 300,000 people and then boom, it’s gone.

“It has that Indianapolis 500 effect or Champion’s League Final effect. It’s a big event, then it moves on.

“Every race we have participated in we have learned something. This is a big learning year for us because it’s the first year of this huge sponsorship. It’s our first opportunity to showcase ourselves in the United States.

“It will be a fantastic weekend.”