Total Sports Asia uses Twitter to announce Lotus deal
Total Sports Asia, one of the continent's leading sponsorship and marketing agencies, will assist the Malaysian-financed Lotus F1 Team with its sponsorship acquisition. The news was broken by the company's founder Marcus Luer on his Twitter site. He tweeted: "We agreed to work with the new Lotus F1 team on sponsorship sales. Exciting times ahead in Formula One."
On a day dominated by news of Michael Schumacher's full-time return to Formula One, Luer added: "Very happy to see Schumi return to F1, can’t want to see him race again and this time in a Mercedes. How great is that."
Total Sports Asia has its headquarters in the Malaysian capital, Kuala Lumpur. It previously worked on finding sponsors for the Toro Rosso team, though that partnership yielded did not offer as much as Lotus in the way of returns due to the dominance of the Red Bull branding on the car.
The Lotus name is returning to Formula One in 2010 thanks to a group of Malaysian investors, led by Air Asia founder Tony Fernandes. The team, whose technical operation is being run by the experienced Mike Gascoyne, announced earlier in December that it had signed Jarno Trulli and Heikki Kovalainen as drivers for its first season. Though the team is primarily based in Norfolk, England – close to the old Lotus factory – it has an office in Malaysia. There are vague plans for the entire team to eventually be run from the country, once it has been fully established.
The partnership with Total Sports Asia is likely to be even more important to the team after it was announced earlier in the week that Malaysia's most prominent Formula One sponsor, Petronas, was to become title sponsor of the Mercedes team. It had been thought the company would invest in the Lotus project. Fernandes used his own Twitter account to say that he "understood" Petronas' decision and that he "wished them well". In a separate Twitter post earlier in the week, Fernandes announced he had chosen the colours for the Lotus team, saying he was "damn excited about the car" and "excited to show the world."blog comments powered by Disqus
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