Major sporting events are obvious money-spinners. From the revenue created by spectators who fork out their wages in order to watch, to big-money advertising and corporate sponsorships, every sport is thinking about how to monetise the interest the public has in it.

But just as the advent of mass-media over the past few decades changed the way sport was consumed by its public, digital and social media is changing the face of sport consumption yet again.

And, according to London-based image-tracking and analytics company SnapRapid, one of the most financially-beleagured sports around, Formula1, is severely undervaluing its sponsorship rights and restricting its social media exposure.

According to Russell Glenister, SnapRapid’s CEO, Formula 1 teams could secure themselves a much-needed financial lifeline by beginning to understanding social media exposure which in turn could lead to more lucrative sponsorship deals.

With the migration of F1 rights from free-to-air TV to pay TV, teams are suffering heavy losses to sponsorship revenue. Recently, the Financial Times reported that F1 income has fallen $200m over the past 3 years, and all the while, costs in the sport continue to rise.

The way out of the downward spiral, according to Glenister, is understanding digital media and the impact it can have on sponsorship deals that F1 teams can negotiate. Yet such deals are, at the moment, based mostly on traditional broadcast media.

“When you add in the currently unmeasured sponsor value from digital media channels to social it becomes clear that commercial opportunities are slipping through the fingers of F1 teams because they have not invested in the data they need to market their product effectively in a changing world,” says Glenister.

At present, F1 teams are not taking advantage of the emerging opportunities because it is difficult to measure the extent of their social exposure and then put a value on it. However, SnapRapid’s research shows that F1 sponsors are achieving significant exposure on social media already.

Their research shows that tyre manufacturer and F1 sponsor Pirelli, for example, received $672,000 worth of social media exposure around the Spanish Grand Prix, $446,000 from Monaco and $377,000 from Canada. Pirelli reportedly invests around $100m a year in F1 and the research seems to suggest a significant boost to its return – $11-14m per year, SnapRapid estimate.

Glenister adds, “In the case of F1 the relative low levels of value achieved through Facebook and Twitter are clearly at odds with F1 and individual team strategy. At the Spanish Grand Prix over 41 per cent of exposure on Facebook originated from official F1 sources along with 13 per cent on Twitter. The figures for YouTube and Instagram, which deliver far greater value for sponsors, is far lower. This suggests that the official channels may be getting the balance of their focus wrong and, therefore, not maximising the value that can be created for sponsors.”

In an era of rising costs and falling revenue, Formula1 cannot afford to ignore an area of such growth. It’s a sport where adapting to rapidly modernising technology is critical, so why shouldn’t that also apply to digital media?