Yan Lefort

Why organisations work with Yan Lefort

• He has done the work commercial teams are usually only theorising about: replacing a category that funded an entire industry, in his case tobacco in Formula 1, with sponsors that pass modern scrutiny.
• As Commercial & Marketing Director of Sauber Motorsport from 2018 to 2022, he sat on the management board and was directly responsible for landing the long-term Alfa Romeo partnership and the Orlen title sponsorship that anchored the team’s finances.
• He has run the partner side and the rights-holder side of the same deal. At IWC Schaffhausen he built the Mercedes-AMG Petronas F1 partnership during the Hamilton era; at Sauber he sold the property. Few speakers can credibly describe both seats.
• His operating context is one of the most commercially exposed environments in business, where every quarter the product performs in public and sponsors decide whether to renew. That discipline transfers to any organisation whose revenue depends on relationship renewals under pressure.

Biography highlights

• Commercial & Marketing Director, Sauber Motorsport AG, 2018 to 2022, and member of the Alfa Romeo Racing F1 management board
• Global Head of Partnerships, PR and CSR at IWC Schaffhausen, leading the IWC partnership with the Mercedes-AMG Petronas F1 team
• Global PR Manager for the Lucky Strike F1 programme with BAR Honda
• Six years at Rothmans managing the sponsorship of the Williams F1 team
• Ran an independent commercial and sponsorship consultancy serving OEM automotive clients including Toyota’s F1 team, sponsors, rights holders and F1 drivers
• Speaker, International Sports Convention, Geneva

Biography

When tobacco sponsorship was banned from Formula 1 in 2005, the sport lost the category that had paid most of its bills for thirty years. Teams, rights holders and agencies had to rebuild their commercial books from scratch. Yan Lefort had spent the previous decade inside that commercial machine, six years at Rothmans on the Williams F1 sponsorship and seven as Global PR Manager of the Lucky Strike F1 programme with BAR Honda. He set up his own consultancy and spent the next five years rewiring sponsorship strategies for OEM clients including Toyota’s F1 team, plus a range of sponsors, rights holders and drivers.

In 2011 he joined IWC Schaffhausen as Global Head of Partnerships, PR and CSR, where he ran the luxury watchmaker’s partnership with the Mercedes-AMG Petronas F1 team through the period of Lewis Hamilton’s dominance. That gave him the brand-side view of the most demanding partner relationship in motorsport.

At the start of 2018 he moved to Sauber Motorsport as Commercial & Marketing Director and joined the team’s management board. The team had no title sponsor and a weak commercial position. By the time he left in 2022 he had landed the long-term Alfa Romeo partnership that rebranded the team and the title sponsorship from the Polish energy company Orlen. During those years he worked closely with World Champion Kimi Raikkonen and ten-time Grand Prix winner Valtteri Bottas.

That sequence, rights-holder to sponsor to rights-holder, agency to brand to team, gives him a practical reading of how partnership revenue is actually built and defended. He speaks to that work directly, drawing on named deals and named counterparts rather than abstractions about engagement or storytelling.

Key speaking topics

• Sponsorship and partnership strategy
• Commercial leadership in Formula 1
• Sports marketing and brand activation
• Rebuilding revenue after category disruption
• Luxury brand partnerships in regulated environments
• High-performance team commercial operations

Ideal for

• CCOs, CMOs and heads of partnerships at sponsors and rights holders
• Boards of sports properties, federations and motorsport teams
• Brand and partnership leaders inside luxury, automotive and energy companies
• Commercial leadership teams whose revenue model relies on long-cycle partner renewals

Audience outcomes

• A working view of how a modern F1 team builds and defends its sponsorship book
• A specific account of how a banned-category sport rebuilt its commercial model, with lessons for any industry facing regulatory or reputational disruption to its revenue base
• The brand-side and rights-holder-side perspectives on the same partnership, drawn from IWC’s relationship with Mercedes-AMG F1 and Sauber’s relationship with Alfa Romeo and Orlen
• A clearer test for whether a partnership is commercial substance or marketing decoration