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Tips from Airwallex x McLaren on Making the Best of a Fintech Sponsorship

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Tips from Airwallex x McLaren on Making the Best of a Fintech Sponsorship

“From a reliability standpoint, when you think about the product integration, the fact that we can power financial operations for a company of McLaren’s scale, if we can do it for them, trust me, we can do it for you too.”

Fintechs have entered the arena, literally, as they kick off sports sponsorships across leagues and geographies. From Major League Table Tennis to the Dallas Wings WNBA team, startups tackling diverse use cases (payments, wealthtech, and beyond) have identified sports-focused audiences as viable brand-development and customer-acquisition pathways. 

But few financial-technology players have as much airtime as Singapore-based Airwallex, the Series F company offering international payments and financial solutions across 60 countries for businesses like TikTok, Deel, and Navan. Through its tie-up with Formula One (F1) car racing team McLaren, which includes the company facilitating McLaren’s global payments needs, the fintech’s branding has been festooned on the league leaders’ trademark orange car, associating its corporate journey with McLaren’s engineering prowess and international outlook.

As any marketing leader who has taken a peek at sports sponsorships knows, these kinds of opportunities don’t come cheap. So what market-growth variables and evaluation metrics would make a big-budget sports sponsorship deliver ROI for a startup player, certainly less known than other McLaren brands, like Google and Mastercard? Fintech Nexus spoke with Jon Stona, VP of Marketing at Airwallex, who negotiated the company’s deal with McLaren, and who continues to drive Airwallex’s sports-focused marketing strategy — for constructive advice on best considerations for those in a similar seat. 

The following has been edited for length and clarity.

What were those conversations like two years ago to move in this direction on the marketing front? 

Marketing is one of the newer functions at Airwallex. Around two-and-a-half years ago, we started establishing the foundations. We have some fairly lofty global ambitions, and the momentum has been there, but when we think about how to further accelerate that, two things tend to be quite important with financial services: awareness and trust. And when we were looking for ways to accelerate and build awareness and trust fairly efficiently, we considered a variety of options. At the time, so much of our marketing mix was really focused on lower-funnel performance marketing, but we knew we’d have to build a brand. When we started thinking about the most efficient way to do this at scale in multiple markets, we saw sponsorships as a fairly attractive proposition for several reasons. 

The first is, we kicked off our McLaren partnership last year. When we were analyzing the opportunity in 2023, sponsorships were fairly undervalued as an asset class: during Covid, crypto companies kind of flooded into the space during one of its moments of acceleration, and then you saw a downturn, and so a lot of blockchain and crypto companies had to leave their sponsorships due to financial challenges of their own. We saw all this excess inventory that rights holders had that they were eager to rebalance into other brands. 

The sports angle also tends to be much more multi-dimensional and more lasting. You have so many more facets to tell the story. You have the human aspect of the actual drivers and the teams themselves. You have a lot of content. You have a lot of IP. You have corporate hospitality. There are so many more touchpoints that you can use. 

The third piece is that you also have an already kind of interested base of folks that you can tap into, because many folks already have that emotional affinity and resonance to a particular team or to a particular sport. Especially if you’re trying to quickly build trust and awareness, you already have this kind of primed audience that you can tap into. 

Lastly, when you deconstruct what trust is, a lot of it is credibility, reliability, and intimacy. A sports sponsorship, particularly if it’s the right sport and the right team, can really help get you that credibility fairly quickly. Take McLaren: the fact that they’re a heritage brand, and that they work with the likes of Google and Mastercard, is a signal to the market to say we’re a serious company. We can do the sponsorship to begin with, and be in this category of similar tech players. And from a reliability standpoint, when you think about the product integration, the fact that we can power financial operations for a company of McLaren’s scale, if we can do it for them, trust me, we can do it for you too. So there’s that reliability. And then the intimacy piece, because you’re connecting with folks at a human level, they’re already invested.

Operationally, how did you make the sponsorship work with McLaren? And, was F1 the no-brainer sport you considered out the gate?

It was a fairly lean team. I ended up negotiating the deal with a lot of my own time. There wasn’t really a big sponsorship team. And then we worked with an agency, Sportfive, who was our partner to facilitate all of that discussion as well. They were a good kind of middle person to help broker the deal. On our side, it was very lean, and we worked closely with our legal teams to get the deal done quickly. 

We surveyed a lot of different sports, and we surveyed a lot of different teams as well. We liked F1 because the global nature of the sport really aligns with Airwallex’s kind of global ethos. The global facets of F1 include international drivers, international teams, international fan bases — we’re talking about tens of millions of people tuning into the races — and there’s this international road show for corporate hospitality across 24-odd cities throughout the year, and so that really aligned with our expansion plans. Looking at the success of the Netflix show Drive to Survive, as well as the movie with Brad Pitt, we saw continued momentum, especially in the Americas. Last but not least is the engineering prowess in F1, which aligned with Airwallex’s ethos around precision and a really strong focus on engineering. 

McLaren’s winning record right now probably helps. 

There’s more air time than when we entered the sponsorship: They weren’t number one, right? (I jokingly tell McLaren that they weren’t number one until we sponsored them.) When we started negotiating with them, they were, I think, fifth, and then at the end of the season, fourth. But we saw the momentum and we saw the opportunity because of their technology prowess. So it was very much a momentum story, and that’s, again, the type of story that we’re telling at Airwallex as well.

What processes do you have in place to gauge the efficacy of Airwallex’s sponsorships?

We do a semi-annual brand survey across all of our core markets. We started introducing questions specifically around the McLaren partnership, asking questions around added trust and added consideration. We’ll continue to kind of add questions into that survey. The second piece is looking at it from a pipeline perspective: strong commercial opportunities for our sales and partnership teams. How much new pipeline is being sourced? How much new pipeline is being influenced, both from a customer and partner angle? You’d be surprised how many frozen conversations tend to get unlocked when you can start to actually engage in corporate hospitality with folks, especially for a sport that they intimately follow. 

The third piece, which we don’t meticulously track, is we’ve anecdotally seen the impact on employee sentiment. Some of this comes out in our semi-annual engagement surveys as well, but especially when F1 rolls into particular countries where we have offices, there’s pride when an employee’s mom sees our logo on the TV.

What would expanding sponsorships look like? What sports are you looking at in addition to F1?

We’re actually exploring both, but I think, realistically, it would likely mean new sports, but also geographic coverage, because we might want to go deep in certain markets. And so while McLaren is a global sponsorship, we’re also exploring, let’s say in Australia, let’s say in the US, what might be a more region-specific sport. We’re looking at music and arts as well. And if you think about a lot of how we’ve activated our McLaren partnership, it actually has been few trying to fuse art and culture and sport together. 

I think there’s definitely opportunity in terms of football or “soccer”, especially with the World Cup right around the corner. But as we enter and continue to push into markets like Canada, that’s where hockey starts to become interesting. When we think about Australia, that’s where the Australian Football League becomes interesting. Then there are properties like Premier League teams in England, which might have a push into Europe, but it still have global appeal.

Are there any mistakes you’ve made over the past two years on the sponsorship front that you would encourage others to avoid? Lessons learned?

Definitely lessons learned. Off the bat, it’s important to really go in knowing why you want to do this and what you hope to achieve. Be very clear around your objectives, because that will also determine the quantum of investment you make and the types of partnerships that you enter. I think the biggest mistake we’ve made is that there’s a lot more we could have done to amplify the partnership, particularly through our social channels. When you have such rich IP and when you have teams and drivers and athletes that are so beloved, we spent a lot of time building out a great platform — called “Shifted Perspectives” — to tell the story, but I think there’s just a lot more that we can be doing through our social media channels to bring it to life. So I think that’s probably where we’re trying to put more emphasis this year.

If you go on to a lot of brands’ YouTube channels, you see these talking head videos, sometimes including cheesy sports analogies. These videos get maybe 25 viewers. We wanted to take a different approach. So “Shifted Perspectives” goes back to the ethos of McLaren, and thinking about entrepreneurial success stories, which often involve taking a personal frustration or professional frustration, shifting your perspective, and turning it into an opportunity. Canva’s founders, for example, were frustrated with how slow design was; Airwallex started ten years ago as a coffee shop in Melbourne whose founders were frustrated with international payments. 

We’ve worked with a couple artists so far, including Michael Murphy, who made a statue where from one angle, it’s [McLaren driver] Lando Norris, and then, as you walk around and shift the perspective, it ends up morphing into the Airwallex logo. The point being, we have this platform, but we’re trying to activate it not through talking heads, but through culture, and through art topics that resonate with people at a human level. I’d rather send someone a video of “Shifted Perspectives” sculptures than a 40-page case study on fintech infrastructure, which I know no one’s gonna read. 

Trying to keep the creativity going even after you’ve signed the deal. 

Signing the deal is 10%. Ninety percent is actually what you do with it afterwards. Sometimes folks forget that it doesn’t really matter if your logo is on a car, but it’s how you tell that story. It’s where the real richness is: how you use that IP, how you fuse that IP and sports sponsorship into everything that you do, because it’s a wasted investment if you approach it in a silo. We have to use it as a creative multiplier. We have to take that very prominent IP and weave it into our performance marketing, weave it into our content generation, weave it into Airwallex on socials. That’s how you get the leverage. I think the audience really appreciates that: They can tell when you’re just writing a check, as opposed to really investing in another partner. 

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Texas A&M tops Kentucky for first NCAA volleyball championship: ‘We sent a warning shot out to the world’

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With Texas A&M up 24-20 in the third set of the NCAA women’s volleyball title match, Maddie Waak set the ball for Ifenna Cos-Okpalla. Though Logan Lednicky and Kyndal Stowers had played bigger games for the Aggies, it was Cos-Okpalla who got the call for the championship point.

She elevated and slammed the ball in between Kentucky’s defenders at the T-Mobile Center in Kansas City. With that kill, Texas A&M won an improbable national title, 3-0 (26-24, 25-15, 25-20).

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“They’re putting on t-shirts behind me. I can’t believe it. I’m still a little bit in disbelief,” Aggies coach Jamie Morrison said to ABC after the game. “We sent a warning shot out to the world about what we’re about.”

Kentucky, the No. 1 seed, started out strong in the first set. They built a lead as big as six points before Texas A&M started chipping away, eventually winning the set, 26-24. With that momentum, the Aggies owned the next two sets. Lednicky was the star of the match with 7 kills, 11 digs and 2 blocks. With every point won, Texas A&M’s confidence grew.

Kentucky was the third No. 1 seed that Texas A&M — a third seed — beat on the way to the national title, and every win from the Sweet 16 on was shocking. First, the Aggies came back from 2-0 to pull the reverse sweep against Louisville. Next, Texas A&M had to face undefeated, No. 1 overall seed Nebraska in Lincoln. In what was the best game of the tournament, the Aggies beat Nebraska in five sets.

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But their magic didn’t stop once the Aggies got to Kansas City. In the national semifinal, they swept No. 1 seed Pittsburgh, the first time the Panthers had been swept all season. And then in the first-ever All-SEC final, the Aggies came out victorious.

Unlike Kentucky, which won the national title in 2020 and has been one of the top teams in women’s volleyball for years, Texas A&M is a newcomer to volleyball’s elite. Though it had some good teams over the years that made it to the Elite Eight, this was the program’s first Final Four and their first national title.

Morrison took over the program in 2023, and held onto Lednicky and Cos-Okpalla. The Aggies turned the program around quickly, earning a bid to the tournament in 2023 and then making it to the Sweet 16 in 2024. This year, the Aggies went 29-4 and looked like a team on the brink. But with so many seniors, they had no time to waste and adopted the mentality of “Why not us?”

Lednicky, who played with the U.S. national team over the summer, was the heart of this team’s championship run, and the player who kept asking “Why not us?” Stowers’ comeback might be one of the best sports stories of the year. While playing for Baylor, she suffered concussions and medically retired from the sport. But after being medically cleared and deciding she had more to give to the sport, Stowers signed with Texas A&M and is now a national champion.

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Morrison has built a program that is not only a national champion, but is in a great position to continue to grow volleyball in Texas. While he will lose seniors like Lednicky and Waak, he can now show off a championship ring while on the recruiting trail.

But figuring out who will play for the Aggies next season is tomorrow’s problem. Today, Texas A&M gets to celebrate how it defied the odds to win the school’s first-ever national title in women’s volleyball.



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Kentucky vs. Texas A&M NCAA Volleyball Championship: How to watch, preview

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Kentucky volleyball will look to win its second national title in five years on Sunday when it takes on Texas A&M in Kansas City.How to watchSunday’s game tips off at 3:30 p.m. at the T-Mobile Center. It will air on ABC.PreviewKentucky comes to the game on Sunday with the edge. The Cats are No. 2 overall in the NCAA ranking, and they have previously beaten the No. 6 Aggies 3-1 in October. That game, an A&M home game, saw then No. 3 Kentucky face off against No. 9 Texas A&M, but since that meet-up, the Cats have not lost a single game, and the Aggies are right behind them with a single loss to home state rival Texas. The Wildcats have won 27 straight games, 30-2 overall, with their last loss in September to Pittsburgh. Texas A&M comes in 28-4 overall, with a five-game win streak, after their loss to Texas destroyed their 11-game win streak.Kentucky is no stranger to the NCAA championship. The Cats snagged their first title in 2020 after they beat Texas 3-1 in Omaha. Texas A&M has not made an appearance at the NCAA championship but has finished in the top ten four times in the last five years, finishing in fifth place in 2024.

Kentucky volleyball will look to win its second national title in five years on Sunday when it takes on Texas A&M in Kansas City.

How to watch

Sunday’s game tips off at 3:30 p.m. at the T-Mobile Center. It will air on ABC.

Preview

Kentucky comes to the game on Sunday with the edge. The Cats are No. 2 overall in the NCAA ranking, and they have previously beaten the No. 6 Aggies 3-1 in October. That game, an A&M home game, saw then No. 3 Kentucky face off against No. 9 Texas A&M, but since that meet-up, the Cats have not lost a single game, and the Aggies are right behind them with a single loss to home state rival Texas.

The Wildcats have won 27 straight games, 30-2 overall, with their last loss in September to Pittsburgh. Texas A&M comes in 28-4 overall, with a five-game win streak, after their loss to Texas destroyed their 11-game win streak.

Kentucky is no stranger to the NCAA championship. The Cats snagged their first title in 2020 after they beat Texas 3-1 in Omaha.

Texas A&M has not made an appearance at the NCAA championship but has finished in the top ten four times in the last five years, finishing in fifth place in 2024.



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Texas A&M volleyball beats Kentucky to win national title

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NATIONAL CHAMPIONS! – Texas A&M Athletics

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KANSAS CITY, Mo. – The Texas A&M Aggies overwhelmed the Kentucky Wildcats in the final two sets of a 3-0 (26-24, 25-15, 25-18) victory to claim the school’s first-ever NCAA Division I Women’s Volleyball Championship Sunday evening inside the T-Mobile Center.

 

Entering the tournament as the No. 3 seed in the Lincoln Regional, Texas A&M (29-4) completed a postseason sweep of three of the tournament’s No. 1 seeds, beating Nebraska (3-2) and Pitt (3-0) before dispatching of Kentucky (30-3). The last three teams the Maroon & White beat were a combined 93-6 before their respective seasons were ended.

 

The Aggies became the ninth team in the 45-year history of the NCAA Championship to sweep both of their Final Four matches.

 

The Maroon & White never trailed in the last two sets. The opportunistic Aggies took advantage of the Wildcats’ nine service errors and 16 attack errors.

 

Kyndal Stowers was named the NCAA Championship Most Outstanding Player. She capped off the tournament with a .304 attack percentage, 10 kills, six digs, two service aces and one block in the triumph over Kentucky. Ifenna Cos-Okpalla, Logan Lednicky and Ava Underwood joined Stowers on the All-Tournament Team.

 

Texas A&M claimed the first set despite not leading until 25-24. The Wildcats pounced on the Aggies in the first set for a 9-3 advantage. Kentucky led by six on eight more occasions, before the Maroon & White clawed back into the contest. An 8-2 run, featuring two kills each by Cos-Okpalla and Lednicky, tied the contest at 20-20. With the set seesawing, the Wildcats had its first set point at 24-23, but Stowers sandwiched two kills around a block assist by Cos-Okpalla and Maddie Waak for the smash and grab.

 

The second set was tied twice early before the Aggies broke away. Back-to-back kills by Lednicky and a service ace by Cos-Okpalla allowed Texas A&M to open a 5-2 lead. The Maroon & White suffocated the Wildcats with a 13-3 run to open its biggest lead of the set at 19-8. Kentucky would draw no closer than seven the remainder of the set.

 

After Kentucky opened the third set with a service error, Cos-Okpalla put aways two kills to start a 6-1 surge out of the gate. The Wildcats cut the deficit to 10-8, but 9-3 charge by Texas A&M widened the lead to 19-11. Big Blue was closed the gap to four at 24-20, but it was too little, too late as Cos-Okpalla uncorked a booming kill for the final point.

 

STAT LEADERS

Kills – Logan Lednicky – 11

Hitting Percentage (Min. 10 kills) – Kyndal Stowers – .304

Assists – Maddie Waak – 29

Aces – Ifenna Cos-Okpalla; Maddie Waak – 2 

Digs – Ava Underwood – 10

Blocks – Ifenna Cos-Okpalla – 4

 

GAME NOTES

  • Logan Lednicky recorded her 23nd-consecutive game with 10 or more kills.
  • Ifenna Cos-Okpalla set the Texas A&M career record for blocks, wrapping up with 566. She also inflated her single-season school record to 199.
  • Jamie Morrison joined John Dunning (first year) and Michael Sealy (second year) as one of three coaches two win an NCAA Division I Volleyball tournament in their first three years as a head coach.
  • The Aggies beat all four of the No. 1 seeds of the NCAA Championship, beating Texas (3-2) in the regular season and Nebraska (3-2), Pitt (3-0) and Kentucky (3-0).

 

FOLLOW THE AGGIES

Visit 12thMan.com for more information on Texas A&M volleyball. Fans can keep up to date with the A&M volleyball team on Facebook, Instagram and on Twitter by following @AggieVolleyball.





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Alumni Spotlight: Aviana “Avi” Goode ’20

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Aviana K. Goode ’20
Track and Field

Aviana, also known as Avi, is no stranger to success on the track. Before turning 18, Avi had already won three state championships and earned multiple bronze medals, along with a silver, while competing for her high school track team — and even added a school record in the process. Her winning nature carried over to Syracuse where she balanced being a student and an athlete, studying Communication and Rhetorical Studies at VPA and Sports Revenue Management & Operations at Falk College. This balance paid off as she earned top-six finishes at the 2019 ACC Indoor and Outdoor Championships in the high jump. She continued to add to her long list of track achievements during her graduate transfer year when she competed for The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley (UTRGV) where she previously held the indoor program record for 60m hurdles and the outdoor record for the 100m hurdles and heptathlon. Although she no longer competes on the track, she has found a new way to stay involved with the sport she loves.

It was always Aviana’s dream to earn a trip to TrackTown USA in Eugene, Oregon. For those who may not know, TrackTown is a world-class track and field facility organizing events such as the 2015, 2022, 2023 USATF Outdoor Championships and the 2016, 2020, and 2024 U.S. Olympic Team Trials. Aviana’s dream to make it to TrackTown USA, also known as Hayward Field, came true when she was selected as one of four photographers to cover the 2024 U.S. Olympic Track and Field Team Trials as park of the Black Women Photographers and TrackTown USA creative team.

Noah Lyles coming out of the blocks at U.S. Olympic Team Trials. Credit: Aviana Goode/@goode.flicks
Noah Lyles coming out of the blocks at U.S. Olympic Team Trials. Credit: Aviana Goode/@goode.flicks

“It was surreal,” Aviana said. “My goal in life, in track and field specifically, was always to make it to Hayward Field. It was supposed to be as an athlete, but I guess God had different plans for me. I ended up there with a whole new lens, literally and figuratively.”

Aviana spent over a week at TrackTown shooting world-class athletes like Olympic champion and eight-time World Champion, Noah Lyles, Olympic long jump champion, Tara Davis-Woodhall, and even Olympian and World Record breaker, Sydney McLaughlin.


 

Tara Davis-Woodhall competing in long jump at U.S. Olympic Team Trials. Credit: Aviana Goode/@goode.flicks
Tara Davis-Woodhall competing in long jump at U.S. Olympic Team Trials. Credit: Aviana Goode/@goode.flicks

The unique part about the entire situation is that Aviana was just a newbie in the sports photography world at this point. She had started sports photography just two years prior to shooting on this world-class stage and had only shot one outdoor track meet before. Despite the lack of experience, Polly Irungu, founder of Black Women Photographers, loved her photos and style.

The opportunity to shoot the Olympic Trials allowed Aviana to grow tremendously as a person but also as a photographer. While covering the Olympic Trials, she noticed that not many women of color were working as creatives although the sport is predominately black. There were only five other creatives that were black women that she saw capturing the events at TrackTown. This realization inspired Avi to be a role model and a representation for young black women and women of color who want to step into the creative world. As a freelance photographer based in NYC, she continues to refine her craft, working with athletes, brands, and events to create high-impact imagery that resonates.

“Being a photographer allows me to go out there and still feel like an athlete. I can feel the emotion. I’m capturing everything to remember the moment and to show the love and passion for the sport that I think is the hardest sport in the world, Aviana said.

 

Stay connected with Aviana on Linkedin: Aviana Goode | LinkedIn & Instagram: @goode.flicks

Raven Saunders with her medal at U.S. Olympic Team Trials. Credit: Aviana Goode/@goode.flicks
Raven Saunders with her medal at U.S. Olympic Team Trials. Credit: Aviana Goode/@goode.flicks



 

 



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Kentucky volleyball results, recap vs Texas A&M in championship match

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Updated Dec. 21, 2025, 5:16 p.m. ET

The Kentucky Wildcats volleyball team needed one more win to bring home a national championship, but the Texas A&M Aggies were the better team on Sunday afternoon, and it’s they who took home the trophy after winning the match 3-0 (26-24, 25-15, 25-20).

It looked like the Wildcats were going to take control early. They jumped out to a 6-1 lead in the first set, and led big as play progressed. However, some good Texas A&M serves, and some bad Kentucky passing led to an Aggies comeback.

After that first set, it seemed as if the life drained out of the Wildcats. The Aggies dominated the second set. They blocked nearly every Kentucky kill attempt, and dug out the rest. The Cats had no answers, and they fell behind 2-0.



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