Modern Sports Partnerships: What Charles Leclerc and Chivas Regal Understand About Collaboration
Chivas Regal and Charles Leclerc’s new 16-year-old blend shows how modern sports partnerships are shifting from endorsement into genuine collaboration.
Contact here for Advertising & Partnerships // Support the newsletter here.
Written by David Skilling
Charles Leclerc went to Scotland and challenged Chivas Regal’s Master Blender to build a whisky around the number that has followed him through his entire career.
Most athlete partnerships still operate inside a safer system, where the product already exists, the campaign language is pre-approved, and the athlete arrives near the end to amplify something largely decided without them. Chivas Regal 16 sits differently, partly because the project was built around process rather than just visibility.
The launch is built around Leclerc’s racing number and personal connection to the number sixteen, with the final blend combining sixteen whiskies aged for at least sixteen years. On paper, that could easily have become an over-designed campaign logic, but instead, the detail holds together because the structure came from Leclerc himself, not from a marketing department reverse-engineering meaning after the fact.
Oyin Akiniyi, Global Brand Director at Chivas Regal, acknowledged how fragile that balance has become across modern marketing, explaining that audiences now “know when something has been reverse-engineered for a campaign”, while arguing the Leclerc collaboration avoided that because “this wasn’t that, it was a challenge set.” That detail is important, specifically in Formula 1, because the sport carries such a high density of luxury partnerships that audiences have become unusually fluent at spotting what feels manufactured and what feels earned.
Ten years ago, many Formula 1 sponsorships revolved primarily around engineering credibility, corporate networking, and trackside hospitality. Those elements still matter, but Formula 1 now operates inside a much broader cultural ecosystem shaped by streaming platforms, fashion, celebrity, creators, and social distribution cycles that continue between races. Brands no longer just want visibility inside the sport; they want proximity to the culture around it.
Akiniyi addressed that directly when discussing why Chivas Regal has leaned deeper into Formula 1, arguing that “performance and precision are not unique” anymore because every major partner in the sport talks about those qualities already. What interested Chivas Regal instead was “the human story underneath. The craft, the character, the dynamic, the mindset.”
Visibility alone isn’t enough anymore. What cuts through now is visible involvement, which is why the details about Leclerc working directly with Master Blender Sandy Hyslop matter as much as the celebrity endorsement. Hyslop described Leclerc as “very inquisitive, always wanting to properly immerse himself in the process”, adding that “he wasn’t there just to put his name to something, he was there to challenge me and collaborate building it.”
That quote probably explains the project's wider appeal better than any campaign slogan could, because audiences increasingly trust visible process over polished messaging. Modern sports culture places huge value on behind-the-scenes access and seeing athletes with a genuine interest in the brands they work with.
Importantly, Chivas Regal also avoided one of the more common traps in athlete collaborations, where the athlete's identity overwhelms the brand itself. That balance is difficult because brands increasingly want the cultural credibility athletes bring, while still needing the final product to feel connected to their own long-term positioning.
Akiniyi suggested that’s why Chivas Regal approaches partnerships as part of a wider narrative rather than isolated campaign moments, explaining that “all activity needs to be connected” and that partnerships only matter if they’re “pulling in the same direction as the other spaces Chivas Regal is showing up in.”
That point stands out because sports audiences are exposed to so many disconnected activations every season that they can no longer emotionally invest in temporary brand appearances. Formula 1, especially, has become crowded with launches, capsule collections, hospitality campaigns and limited-edition products attached to race weekends, many of which disappear from memory almost immediately because they feel structurally disposable.
The wider alcohol category’s return to aggressive sports positioning also sits underneath this launch. Akiniyi shared that sport itself has expanded beyond the live event into “the documentary, the creator, the conversation happening after the game”, creating a broader cultural environment attractive to brands that previously may have viewed sport as too narrow.
Formula 1 is at the centre of that shift because few sports currently combine global scale, luxury positioning, celebrity access, and year-round narrative momentum as effectively. A race weekend now produces fashion content, creator clips, interviews, hospitality storytelling, and celebrity photography simultaneously, giving brands more ways to stay culturally present between product launches.
That doesn’t automatically make every partnership meaningful, and informed audiences can still sense when collaborations are designed mainly for surface-level relevance. What Chivas Regal seems to understand, though, is that audiences increasingly value collaboration over endorsement, especially inside modern sports culture where authenticity has become harder, and therefore more commercially valuable, to manufacture convincingly.
Below is the full Q&A with Oyin Akiniyi, Global Brand Director at Chivas Regal, discussing the thinking behind Chivas Regal 16, Formula 1 culture, athlete partnerships, and why the brand believes visible process matters more than polished storytelling in modern sport.
Q&A with Oyin Akiniyi, Global Brand Director, Chivas Regal
The Chivas Regal 16 project with Charles Leclerc is positioned as a genuine co-creation rather than a typical ambassador campaign. From your perspective, what has to be in place internally for something like this to feel authentic rather than just well-produced storytelling?
You actually have to mean it. A lot of brands talk about “co-creation” and then hand someone a product to promote when everything has already been finalised. What we’ve done here with Charles is different, he wanted to be involved in the creation and not just put his name to the product.
You’ve anchored the blend around Charles’ identity with the number 16. When you build around something that personal, what impact does that have on the campaign message?
It takes the pressure off, in the best way. You’re not constructing meaning, it’s already there. Sixteen is where Charles’ story starts, his birthday, his iconic number. And that logic ran all the way into the liquid itself - sixteen whiskies, each one a deliberate choice. When that level of specificity is real rather than engineered, you don’t have to explain the connection. It just holds. Audiences are getting smarter and smarter they know when something has been reverse-engineered for a campaign. This wasn’t that, it was a challenge set.
In Formula 1, so many major brands attach themselves to performance and precision. What lane is Chivas carving within that environment?
In the growing F1 environment performance and precision are not unique and are needed attributes in the sport, every brand talks about that. What Chivas Regal is interested in is the human story underneath. The craft, the character, the dynamic, the mindset. That’s the space we want to own - and it’s also how we reach people who wouldn’t have come to Chivas Regal through a traditional whisky route. F1 has opened up a completely new audience in the last few years - more global, more culturally engaged. That’s exactly who we want to be talking to.
There’s a clear emphasis on “mastery” in how this has been framed, both from Charles and from Chivas. How deliberate is that as a long-term positioning, rather than just a campaign idea?
Very deliberate. It’s something we believe in as a brand. It’s not just language we landed on for a campaign and moved away from, it is rooted in the heritage of Chivas Regal. What resonated so strongly in our partnership with Charles is that his mindset mirrors ours exactly: every bottle, every blend is an opportunity to go further. The idea that you’re constantly challenging yourself - that’s not a tagline, that’s how we operate.
When Charles goes to Scotland, works with Sandy, and helps shape the blend, that’s a deeper level of involvement than most partnerships. What does that unlock for the brand that a traditional campaign doesn’t?
Access to the behind the scenes, allowing for a real relationship and real process, is what enabled Chivas Regal 16 to be. Watching Charles and Sandy Hyslop, our Master Blender, work together was something else. Two people at the top of completely different crafts, genuinely pushing each other. That dynamic is what the product carries, and it’s not something you can recreate on a shoot. And when you’re trying to cut through in a world where people are incredibly good at spotting what’s manufactured and fake, having something that genuinely happened where two people sat together and figured it out, that’s an asset. No amount of production value replaces it.
Looking at the wider approach to sport, are you building a series of individual moments like this, or is there a more connected narrative you’re trying to develop over time?
All activity needs to be connected. For us, the question with every partnership is whether it’s pulling in the same direction as the other spaces Chivas Regal is showing up in. Does it reflect the same values, the same ambition, the same type of story we want to be telling? Chivas Regal 16 isn’t a standalone activation. It sits within part of a partnership that has been developing for years with both Charles Leclerc in a global brand ambassador capacity and Scuderia Ferrari HP. Brand partnerships form a longer conversation about what Chivas stands for and the kind of culture we want to be part of. The moments matter, but only because of what they’re building toward.
Alcohol partnerships in sport culture have accelerated again recently. What do you think is driving that shift, and where does Chivas want to sit within it?
The sporting world has expanded. It’s not just the live event anymore - it’s the documentary, the creator, the conversation happening after the game. That broader cultural universe is genuinely interesting to a lot of brands who would have found sport too narrow before. For us, the shift is an opportunity but also a responsibility. We’re not interested in being present everywhere. We’re interested in being present where there’s real alignment where the partnership reflects something true about Chivas Regal rather than just putting us in front of a big audience. That’s a more selective approach, but it’s the one that actually builds something.
With something like this, how do you actually judge whether it’s landed in the way you intended, beyond the obvious metrics?
I look at whether the story travelled on its own terms. Did people who weren’t targeted by the campaign end up talking about it? Did the story take on a life beyond what we put out? Those signals are harder to measure but they’re much more meaningful. The metric I really trust is whether it opened a door - whether someone encountered this and walked away with a different sense of who Chivas Regal are. That’s the lasting value.
From the outside, this sits at the intersection of product, storytelling, and cultural positioning. Internally, which of those tends to lead when you’re making decisions?
Honestly, they’re not as separate as you think. The product informs the story, the story shapes how it lands culturally, it’s circular. With Chivas Regal 16, we had something new to talk about. A first of its kind. The culture piece only works if the product or campaign can hold the weight of it.
And going forward, what is the overall Chivas approach to sport collaborations? Where does the brand go from here?
The criteria stay the same. We want partners who share our values, who can genuinely support the business in the markets that matter to us, and who bring real ambition to the table. Our partnership with Arsenal football team is a good example of that, huge cultural footprint, genuinely global, and a fanbase that cares as much about identity and belonging as they do about what happens on the pitch. In Formula 1, our partnerships with Scuderia Ferrari HP and Charles Leclerc gives us something different again - craft, precision, the pursuit of better. What connects all of it is that we’re not trying to be everywhere. We’re trying to be somewhere meaningful, with people and platforms that reflect something true about who we are.
A huge thank you to Oyin Akiniyi for taking the time to answer these questions. It’s a great partnership, and I look forward to what comes next.
Thanks for reading. If you hit the like button, it’s a big help to the newsletter.