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Rob Statham & Jake Smith: Behind the Pit Wall - F1 And The Power Of Experiential Marketing

• W4 Podcast Studio • Season 1 • Episode 11

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Rob Statham & Jake Smith: Behind the Pit Wall - F1 And The Power Of Experiential Marketing

🚦 This week, we’re going full throttle into the world of Formula One with Rob Statham  and Jake Smith from The Events House, the creative minds behind some of the most memorable fan zone activations on the global F1 calendar. 

From setting up Giant Jenga at local events to building 4D cinemas for Aramco in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, their journey is a masterclass in how experiential marketing has become a critical player in the modern brand playbook.

🎧 Hear how these large-scale activations come together, why race days in the region are more social phenomenon than sport and how brands are shifting focus from digital noise to real-world, high-impact experiences.

Whether you're in events, marketing, motorsport - or just love a good hustle story - this episode is for you.

Production Credits:

Presented by: Ian Carless
Studio Engineer & Editor: Roy D'Monte
Executive Producers: Ian Carless & Joe Morrison
Produced by: EventNewsDXB & W4 Podcast Studio

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Ian Carless:

Welcome to Event News DXB. Before we begin, I've got a quick favour to ask. There's one simple way that you can support our show, and that's by hitting that follow or subscribe button on the app you're listening to the show on right now. It really does make a huge difference in helping to get the show out there to as many people as possible, so please give us a hand and click that button now. Thanks a bunch.

Ian Carless:

You're listening to the Event News DXB podcast. Your behind-the-scenes look into the world of events in Dubai, the UAE and the MENA region. I'm Ian Carlos and each week I'll bring you the latest news, industry trends and insider stories from the people shaping one of the world's most dynamic event markets. Jake, rob, welcome to the podcast. Hi, great to be here. Likewise, I think we'll just dive straight in. Normally, I get the guests to tell us a little bit about how they got into events, but you know what? I'm just going to jump straight into the company that you work for. Rob, do you want to just tell us a little bit about the Events House and what it is that you do?

Jake Smith:

Yeah, absolutely so. The Events House was founded 16 years ago now by our two founders, dave House and Adi Tingle. It was launched primarily as a classic events company, delivering what at the time was things like Giant Jenga into local events, and kind of grew out from there, then started to get more of a tech focus to it and we sort of started then leaning into more around the simulator world and digital world and then a few years in, got the chance of a contract with working with Formula One, and that's really led us to where we are now being a global supplier of the Formula One fan zone as one of our key sort of strings to our bow, and then, outside of that, working with a lot of partners and F1 sponsors within the motorsport world, delivering experiential and tech to partners globally. We have a uk base now in swaddling coat in the midlands and then also sort of in the process of expanding into the us and the middle east as well, and we'll come on to the middle east, obviously in the course of this podcast.

Ian Carless:

Just let's just backtrack just a little bit. Can you give us a like a really brief sort of overview of how you ended up in events? I ask most guests this because, um, there's been a few exceptions, but many people it seems that they fall into it later in life. Yeah, not many people sort of wake up in the morning, you know, you know at the age of 10 and go. I want to be an event producer no, absolutely.

Jake Smith:

I certainly when I was younger didn't have the aspirations to be in working in events been a motorsport fan since I can remember, so that's always been a kind of a constant going through it and, you know, always loved when I was a kid watching the overhead shots of seeing kind of what was going on around the track.

Jake Smith:

But yeah, I um, I very much stumbled into it. I didn't really know what I was doing in my sort of mid-20s, ended up up running a marquee company of my own locally doing the classic kind of weddings and those kind of things. And then went from there and again stumbled into becoming a partner in a structure supply company called Airclad. And then stumbled into during COVID working with an Australian-based company launching them in the UK called Space Cube. And then I've known dave and ad at events house for quite a number of years, having worked with them sort of probably 10 years ago on some of their early f1 stuff, and they just naturally became a point where for me coming on board as creative director for the business kind of made sense. So that that happened last year and that's kind of where I've got to now in the events world. I very much kind of stumbled into it not through any kind of plan when I was younger, but I mean great industry to be in.

Ian Carless:

Well, I'll come on to your role, Rob, as creative director. But yeah, Jake, how about yourself? How did you end up in events?

Rob Stathem:

Yeah, so I actually got into it through the simulator side. So I was a bit of a sim racer and looking for a summer job Came across Events House. Started my career with Events House, going down to Williams F1, running their sort of in-house hospitality over the race weekends. Continued that as I was studying. I was studying engineering with a view of being an engineer in Formula One and then eventually this events thing just grew and grew. I came out of university with the opportunity to go into it on more of a full-time basis and, yeah, the opportunity of traveling the world around the F1 races was a bit too good to turn down, so went for that.

Ian Carless:

And here we are. Well, look it's. It's your work on the F1 events that's obviously piqued my attention, hence this podcast. So, rob, maybe you can tell us about, and particularly, I guess, in relation to the Middle East, because I know you were obviously in the region just recently with the F1 Circus. So tell us a bit about what you do there, what you actually do.

Jake Smith:

Yeah, absolutely so, a big part of the business now and has, over the last few years, really expanded ours into not just a supplier but more of a pure agency. And that's really where Jake and I sit within the business and myself as creative director and Jake as creative director and jake as a creative lead we're working much more on experiential activations, and the one that you're referring to was out out in the middle east. It kind of kicked off there for this season. We worked with the client around co for the last two years, but this is the first year where we really put some, some really heavy experiential focus onto it in delivering at bahrain and then Saudi. Um, it's a, it's a 4D immersive cinema experience, and we've developed that, that whole concept, with some local suppliers and with the agency that we're working with. They've created a whole piece of nice immersive cinema. We've created all the tech around it and then worked with a Canadian-based company on the actual motion seats and plugged in a lot of other tech around that, which which Jake can certainly dig into more.

Jake Smith:

But yeah, as I say, we're really pushing now into this experiential world more and more and I think, as we're seeing so many partners coming on board, especially with F1 and their big push to to more and more partners.

Jake Smith:

You know, over the last couple of years we've seen some huge brands come into it in the likes of, you know, lego, which we've seen recently in some unbelievable experiential that you know, the full-size lego cars in in miami, which jake and I were lucky enough to be there to see, and then, and then think you know, other partners like kit kat have come on board, and hot wheels coming on board, and, and and several others that we kind of hear the rumblings about these big brands coming on and they've such an appetite to to lead in the sort of the experiential world around the races, um, and they're all finding really good traction there yeah sure, I wanted to ask you both actually, because where do you think this, the, the, the renewed I'm not going to say renewed interest, but I think the increased interest in brands wanting to get into the experiential space.

Ian Carless:

I ran a production company for for years and we did a lot of. I mean, I stopped that 10 years ago, but the 10 years prior to that were the sort of heydays of branded content and we were doing all kinds of video content. But what I did notice was that with the rise of social media, in particular short-form content, there was a direct correlation between the appetite for branded content, which declined, and then the increase in brands wanting to get into experiential. I don't know whether, over the course of your careers, you've sort of noticed the same, but I am curious to know where the increased interest is coming from. Jake, do you want to have a go at that one?

Rob Stathem:

from my perspective of it, as someone who's obviously grown up around around social media, I've sort of seen that like explode and explode from a branded perspective.

Rob Stathem:

You know, social media content, social media activations and then this sort of like big influencer phase that's come in over the last like five years or so.

Rob Stathem:

I feel like brands are receiving a lot of pressure now to try and cut through the noise of that and do something that really does stand out and something different from the others, others and experiential seems like a perfect vessel to do that rather than just another sort of social media campaign. And what we're seeing more and more with our clients is is these experiential activations not just being for the fan who's there in person, but also being a, a trampoline for the, for the social media content around it. I mean, we've just delivered a, a big job in in the states for ebay and that activation was sort of half content studio, half experiential space over the course of the weekend. So the opportunity for them to almost like double on their return of investment and get hands-on feel with the brand but then also be able to still use it as a vessel for social content, I think think is, in my opinion, driving it.

Jake Smith:

Rob, yeah, I think Jake's made some really great points there and absolutely valid. Adding to that, your question around where we're seeing this, whether that's in the West or out in the Middle East, I think we're seeing it globally, certainly the Middle East. There's a huge appetite in the middle east for not necessarily even middle east based brands, but global brands wanting to activate there. It's such a key market. We're seeing that more and more and advising our clients that the middle east is a great place to be activating, especially at races. I mean we saw both saw out in, you know, bahrain and saudi, sort of why what a family friendly event they are and it's a really big day out.

Jake Smith:

I actually don't think that necessarily that there's a huge f1 fan base out there, but I think that people see it as an unbelievably fun day out, like in the uk where you see the gold cup or you know the grand national.

Jake Smith:

They're big days out for people, but it's not necessarily people that are hugely into horse racing.

Jake Smith:

It's just a day on the calendar where everybody gets together and goes out and you know, in saudi, for example, they the sunday was a national holiday there or not a national holiday, a regional holiday because of the race, and I think we're seeing you see more and more of that. But then on the flip side of it, out in you know, the us, especially what 40 of all sponsors now that are involved in f1 are us-based companies and we're seeing a lot more activation going over on and on in america and sort of which has always been interesting because, as you say, kind of content and tv advertising was a thing that was really driving there. I think that where that's really galvanizing now is that the move for brands into f1 and physical activation is now trickling down and we're starting to see it into indycar and nascar as well, where traditionally spectators were lower and the spend around activation was lower, but we're certainly seeing that more and more the middle east is an interesting market, especially in relation to sort of motorsport.

Ian Carless:

I think we used to do a lot of work for the Dubai Autodrome back in the day when I ran my production company, and I think what people realised certainly myself who wasn't into the motorsport scene before working with Dubai Autodrome I think what I quickly realised is that whilst there's a massive appetite in the Middle East for car culture, that doesn't translate to motorsport and sadly, you know no matter. I think despite the best efforts of Dubai Autodrome, certainly on a club level, we weren't able to just get the audience interested in the same way as perhaps you know there is in other parts of the world. Moving on, though, I mean both of you are involved in, obviously, the the creative aspect of of events. So for someone who's a layman, tell me what does a create an event creative director do? Rob, do you want to have a crack at that first?

Jake Smith:

yeah, I can do. Yeah, I feel like a lot of my job is really telling jake to what to do, but that's probably pretty mean. But yeah, I like a lot of my job is really telling Jake what to do, and that's probably pretty mean. But yeah, I mean a lot of what we do as a creative director is really Jake and I work very collaboratively on a lot of projects and it helps having two perspectives on it.

Jake Smith:

But my role within the Events House as creative director is really kind of there's a lot of hand-holding with clients when they come to us. A lot of the clients that we see already work with agencies creative agencies already. But where Events House gets involved is because of our knowledge of F1 and motorsports and how to engage those fans. So I think a lot of my role is how we take a client's desire to activate and translate that into sort of a motorsport or Formula One language and a language that the fans would understand rather than just your general public.

Jake Smith:

Because it is quite different and the way that experiential works at F1 is similar to the wider events world. But there are some sort of nuances and some differences of how it works and some of that is even just taken into consideration the environment that you're in or the you know the weather, or the fact that at certain times of the day it's going to be really quiet because everybody's going to be in the stands watching the races. A lot of these things are things that people aren't considering, so it's it's how we take, yeah, sort of the creative ideas that clients are coming to is, or creative wishes, and then translate that into experiential that really works within f1, and how we can like, how we can gather the data and give them the output that they really need and manage their expectations as to what that might look like so, jake, how many of the clients that you deal with, how many of them have done experiential before?

Ian Carless:

I mean, how much of it is handholding and how much of it is there? Obviously an experience level already there.

Rob Stathem:

Ooh, I couldn't put a percentage on how many we've got that have done experiential before. I can think of a few examples. I think it's probably easier when people have done it before, purely because there's a there's an opinion of what works and what doesn't already. And if they've if they've come to us for an f1 activation it might be because they've done something before and it hasn't sort of hit the mark. Um, what we're trying to do now is is everything that we we put out needs to be creatively aligned and also relevant to the sport like it's.

Rob Stathem:

I've seen so many brands sort of pop up in fan zones, pop up around formula one and not quite hit the mark and get it right. So what we're trying to do internally is is make sure that, yeah, we are, we are on the money every single time. I think, yeah, as I said, probably a little bit easier when there's a little bit of background experience, but it's also an exciting challenge to start from scratch and and really sort of like forge out a new path with it and have creative freedom to, to be able to sort of apply new tech to it, apply new experiential to it and and really start to think about things in a different way and and almost push the boundaries of what you could do with these brands, which is one of my favorite bits about.

Ian Carless:

So when you meet a client, if I think back to when I was doing branded content, a lot of my role at that point in time was fairly educational in the sense that obviously clients, they want to sell, so there's an expectation from them to certainly have a ton of branding and preferably their product in just about every single shot. And that was one of the tough things we found with trying to pitch branded content back in the early days was that a lot of clients were fairly alarmed at the idea that their product wouldn't be in shot at all, or the idea that some of the best branded content didn't feature the client at all. Yes, there might have been some branding here and there, but obviously it was the adage that you know if the audience feels as though they're being sold to, then they tune out. So I wonder whether that was something that you have to build into your sort of approach with clients, particularly obviously the ones that haven't done experiential before, or whether your experience has been different. Rob, do you want to have a crack at that?

Jake Smith:

yeah, it's interesting, um, several of the clients that we work with that they're not selling a physical product, especially a ramco. Nobody that's going to an f1 race is buying oil specifically. You know, none of us are going out buying a barrel of oil, but it was very important for them to have their you know their brand there and and putting their brand message out and obviously all very protective of their brand. And you know at the races out there that their logos are plastered across everything. So, yeah, I think we are still finding it very important but trying to sort of guide clients in ways to be subtle with branding or clever with branding.

Jake Smith:

I mean, it was the same with the ebay out in in miami. Ebay themselves are not a product that you can buy, it's just a platform where you can buy other people's products. So they were quite clever in the way that they did that. But yeah, I think that I think that, going back to the point before around the social media element of it and how those two things combine, there's still a big want and need for brands to have a presence there, because it then translates into sort of their online presence through social media and that, that, that sort of instagram moment that everybody's looking for. So, yeah, it is still very important, absolutely feeding the beast.

Ian Carless:

I wanted to ask you then, what's the first thing that you look for then when you get in a creative brief, when a client new client comes in and rob, I'll ask you this first, but I'll obviously also ask jake, because I know you guys work together very closely, as you said.

Jake Smith:

As you said, the first thing I look for is a budget, but now, after we've had a skim through to see if they've given us a budget yeah, it's really looking to see that. I think the first thing really is is whether they've got any steer on it as to how it can be motorsport related or how we translate it to a to a motorsport or an f1 fan. You know, we'll see briefs where we look at them and think it's it's going to be quite difficult to translate that into a language which works or works in the environment which we're working in. So I guess that's that's the first thing and that will really guide us down the direction that we're going to go creatively. You know, for both jake and I, jake, do you want to add to that?

Rob Stathem:

yeah, I think, not dissimilar, maybe not quite so so fixated on the motorsport. But what's the story like? What's the why? Why are we doing this? What are we? What are we trying to convey to people and what are we trying to make them understand and, ultimately, what's the desired end result in terms of a fan? What? What do they need to leave this experience with? Obviously, a smile on their face, but what needs to be in their memory? And, yeah, what do they need to take away from it?

Ian Carless:

that brings me on to a good point. I mean, we talk a lot about storytelling in events, don't we? I mean, how important is it? I know this is going to sound like a dumb question, but hey, how in just how important is it? Can do you find that you just can't stress this enough to clients rob yeah, absolutely.

Jake Smith:

I mean it's absolutely key, I think, in understanding their wider um, the wider context of what they're trying to link this into, like wider campaigns, so it doesn't feel like the the activations are just a standalone piece. Being able to tie that into their wider storytelling and some clients is easier than others. Certainly some clients don't get that or they really silo different elements of their you know their campaigns and you find that it is totally standalone. We're working with a client at the moment and they have been very forthcoming with what their wider campaign across the whole of their f1 partnership is going to be from tv to print to experiential and makes it so much easier for us to be able to like guide that story and guide the experience to something which is actually going to hit the brief, jake.

Ian Carless:

How do you manage the? There's a fine line, isn't there? I know Rob alluded to it just then. Obviously, if you've got a budget to work with, then you can manage your ideas respectively, can't you? But often clients are reluctant to give you a budget. They want to hear all the ideas first. But how do you? How do you then manage that balance between the creativity, the practicality, uh, and the clients? You know ever decreasing budgets yeah, tell us about it.

Rob Stathem:

Yeah, it's a tricky one. I I've I've had a project recently which is is the same. It's it's balancing what is the impact this is going to have versus what's the lowest we can possibly get. This budget. I'm of the feeling, I'm of the opinion, and I've been to lots of Formula One events. Brands are showing up in a big way.

Rob Stathem:

It's very easy for a partner to partner not even a partner, a brand in general to come in now and sort of be lost in the noise, purely because there is so much going on.

Rob Stathem:

That's, that's exciting and and pushing things forward, implementing new technology, like really, yeah, pushing the boundaries of what experiential can be. So, yeah, it's, it's selling that message and and allowing clients to understand that sometimes, you know, it's not a case of doubling the budget for double the result. Always it's sometimes exponential. Sometimes the difference between, you know, a medium-sized budget and a large budget will just allow us to do something that's so much better and so much tighter to the storytelling that we mentioned and allow us the creative liberty around different parts of the activation and really going in and focusing on the details as well. I think that's what rob and I can say that we've both learned from this. Aramco project is just the attention to detail on everything was another level, but we had the timelines and the finances to allow that to happen, which was great, because it allows us to put together an experience that is almost exactly how we wanted it.

Ian Carless:

You mentioned the Aramco project. You've obviously been in Saudi recently as part of the F1 tour in Bahrain. I'm always curious when I get guests on that have worked across different markets. What was your experience working in the Middle East and how different was that from, say, europe or the US?

Jake Smith:

I'll just give you a little insight. Jake was on the ground actually for both the Bahrain and saudi build, so he's probably a better place. But yeah, jake sent me a message and said it was. We had a bit of accreditation for f1 races. There's always a bit of a bit of a headache because you're accredited through the local promoter and then you're accredited through f1 and it's always, you know, you're never getting the information from the uh, from the suppliers, quite in time.

Jake Smith:

And we're working with a, with the local supplier, on the structure and normally it's the sort of sort of thing where you'd expect maybe a crew of maybe 15, 20 guys maximum to do the structure and the av and jake messaged me saying there's 60 people accredited. We've got to accredit 60 people. How on earth are they sending 60 people in? Labor's cheap. You know labor is cheap, yeah, and I thought what are all these people doing? But Jake can probably give you a much better idea of what all these people are doing because he stood and watched them all.

Jake Smith:

But yeah, certainly, I mean the quality out there was great, like what we delivered from the suppliers was fantastic. You know we were using Maestra, you know the arena company, so the attention to detail was great there. We've got really a good experience from them. So I think over the last you know, since I've been in the events world, you know really focusing on this kind of stuff for the last 10 years, you see the quality has really increased out in the Middle East. So but yeah, jay can give you a much better insight as to what it was like working boots on the ground over there.

Rob Stathem:

Yeah, absolutely. I think, going into the Saudi-Bahrain project, I was expecting it to be a bit more of a battle than it actually was in terms of the eye that we come with. The UK and Europe is good for lots of things, and our event delivery is one of those. The standard of events over here is is something else like, I think, of festival of speed at goodwood as an example. I was lucky to go to watch some wonders at the start of this year and that absolutely blew my mind in terms of the, the level of production and the level of budget that's going towards these booths.

Rob Stathem:

So sort of going straight from there to to the middle east, like I've I've been out in bahrain, I've been out in saudi, I've been out in dubai working at events and the, the standard of what what is expected out there is, is definitely a few years behind what we're used to. It's. It's coming up there's no, no doubt about that and it's coming up at a fast rate. But, yeah, we were lucky that that we were working with the partners, that we were working with and and and partners from from a european background as well who who have that same sort of eye. It's. It's easy when you go out to these different markets, and especially dubai, I, I think, well, dubai and, and saudi and bahrain, the same. I remember being at an event in in last year and looking at the, the level of finish on something, flagging it to someone, and it was like they couldn't see it. It was like we were talking two completely different languages. It's like, whereas in our world you would never send something out the door looking like that it's.

Ian Carless:

It's just a yeah, there's a little bit of of quality uplift to be done, I think, but yeah, as I said, it certainly now, I know this is probably in neither of your roles business development but you know, at the time of recording we've just had, uh, mr trump visiting the middle east. So clearly the region is enjoying a a large spotlight at the moment. So how important is it for you as a business to perhaps get a foothold there, rob?

Jake Smith:

yeah, I mean it's. I mean it's huge, and the amount of money that's being spent in the middle east on sports is phenomenal, you know, and the appetite around motorsport, especially an f1, is kind of at the top of that. It's really important for us. We, we have some kind of operational base out there, we have some kit out there. I think as the business grows, it's going to be a, you know, as with all sort of european based events, businesses, it's where everyone's kind of putting their eyes.

Jake Smith:

At the moment I don't think it's going to be something that's going to change. I don't see that the tap is going to be turned off at any point in in the middle east. So it does absolutely make sense. I think it's going to be pretty key for our business over the next few years how that sort of plays out. I'm not sure the us expansion again is something we're sort of focusing on quite heavily. So, yeah, certainly two big elephants to eat there and you know you just need to take it sort of step by step. But yeah, I mean it's going to be absolutely critical and jake.

Ian Carless:

Just going back to aramco again, I wanted to ask how open are clients in the middle east to sort of taking risk and innovation? I mean, I think of aramco and I think of a very large conservative company, so how easy is it to pitch in some, you know, really innovative ideas?

Rob Stathem:

I think we can speak to that pretty well over our experience working on the project over the last sort of two and a half years. The project came to us on a Most of our projects do come to us on a pretty crazy timeline. It seems to be a pattern within the world of events, and especially in Formula One events, and a creative concept was turned around very quickly but we were quite limited by what was producible in the time and at that point going towards a model where we were building in the UK and then shipping around the world. So ultimately what we were able to achieve creatively was limited. I think the results from that after-a-two-year campaign were pretty evident.

Rob Stathem:

We had lots of other fan zone activations that are more involved, that are more tech forward and immersive, and unfortunately the previous concept just didn't stack up to that.

Rob Stathem:

So it put us in quite a nice position whereby we were able to sort of push some new ideas and and take some risks and as a company they've been super open to it and willing to to to push the boundaries and once we've got a few things through now the ideas tap is very much turned on and we're thinking about how we can continue to push that experience more and more, put more tech into it, more touch points and really stretch the messaging.

Rob Stathem:

It's a nice one. As Rob said, they're not selling product to anyone in the fan zone, so we do have a little bit of creative liberty. When it comes to the brand, we're very much focused on their synthetic fuel, which is coming into Formula One in 2026. So anything that we can do that's forward leaning, that's tech heavy, that's innovative it doesn't really matter what it is, because it all sort of still ticks the same boxes in terms of representing aramco in a way that is pioneering and doing something exciting and industry leading and just following on from that, I mean, I know obviously you guys work across the across the world, but are you seeing any, any trends in the experiential sort of field coming into play, specifically, you know, in the europe, us and even in the middle east?

Jake Smith:

good question. Um, I think the quality of experiential is going through the roof. I think that everybody is trying to outdo everybody and I think, yeah, the absolute, the quality of the finish and the delivery, is just upping all the time and jake touched on there on goodwood festival of speed. The level of um delivery there is, you know, is next level. But I think we're seeing that trickle down into to everything that we do now and clients have really high expectations, maybe not always budgets quite to match them, but yeah, I think that's a big thing, that's that's happening for sure and then, very briefly, I just wanted to touch on on on a sort of logistical side of working with F1.

Ian Carless:

I mean, as you mentioned earlier, accreditation can be a complete ball ache sometimes. How have you found that? How have you found the challenges of fitting into that F1 circus as an experiential event company? What have some of the challenges been over? The last sort of what did you say? Two years, two and a half years that you've been working with them?

Jake Smith:

Yeah, I think it's an interesting question. I think and this going back to a point before this is very much where we, where we try and hold clients hands is that we try to be their sort of local knowledge on a global scale. Like I had a call the other day and an agency says I will just rent a lute and van for getting the kit from there to there during race day. I will restock the stand during the race day and you know our operations head of operations, track side operations says well, you can't do that because you can't get a Luton through that tunnel. Oh right, you know, they would have happily just rented a Luton and got to the tunnel and got stuck.

Jake Smith:

And so it's all of those little nuanced things that's working at F1 and knowing the promoters and knowing what you can do and what you can't do, where you park and all of those little things and how the accreditation works, and the fact that you know, we know f1 and we know the key people in there so we can call them and get the answers for that. That's really where we're helping out clients a lot with, with the global circus that is f1, shipping everything, it's everything. It's just a huge beast.

Ian Carless:

And then Jake. Before we wrap up, what's next for you guys?

Rob Stathem:

Ooh, lots in the pipeline. I think we're in a really exciting place, not just as a business, but in Formula One in general. Formula One, as you'll have seen, has exploded on a phenomenal scale over the last few years and it's now attracting some of the biggest brands in the world. But some of the biggest brands in the world who aren't just interested in putting a logo on the side of a car or just having their logo next to, next to formula ones in, in, in press releases it's, it's really about coming and activating and showing up for fans. They, they gain a pretty unique marketing opportunity when they sign up to a formula one partnership of being able to, you know, have a captive audience within the track. So, yeah, I think we're we're in an exciting place in terms of lots of new opportunities coming on board, a move towards doing more touring setups and, just yeah, continuing to, to pump out cool stuff and then, finally, I know you're both f1 fans.

Ian Carless:

I'm going to go out on a limb here. Not much of one, but I'm going to. I'm going to guess that you're both music fans as well, and we've been asking everybody this on the podcast. I think it's quite an oft sometimes offers an interesting insight and sometimes gets a bit of a giggle. But music then? What's on your playlist, rob? What have you got on your playlist right now?

Jake Smith:

jake's the music one in this, uh, for sure. Yeah, my mine's quite, um, mine's quite a collecting is it depends on what the day is, absolutely. But yeah, I've been listening to quite a lot of sort of ambient hip-hop type stuff at the moment just when I'm working. Uh, that's been quite like quite big on my playlist at the moment jake.

Rob Stathem:

Uh, mine's completely the other end of the spectrum. I spent my university years ding in nightclubs and festivals, so my playlist is very much sort of drum and bass, jungle, heavy, very high energy. I think some of the people in the office would be terrified at the sort of thing that's going on in the headphones while I'm still managing to get work done.

Ian Carless:

Brilliant. Well, listen, guys. Can I wish you the best of luck. Thanks for joining me on the podcast and, yeah, thank you very much. Thank of luck. Thanks for joining me on the podcast and, yeah, thank you very much. Thank you so much, appreciate your time. Thanks for having us. Event news dxb was presented by myself, ian carlos, the studio engineer and editor was roy demonte, the executive producer was myself and joe morrison, and this podcast is a co-production between warehouse 4 and w4 podcast studio dubai, and if you haven't done so already, please do click that follow or subscribe button. See you next time.