Fudzilla reports that AMD has decided to end their sponsorship of Ferrari.
Henry Richard, the former Vice President of AMD and Chief Sales and Marketing Officer that went to Freescale semiconductors, was responsible for Ferrari sponsorship.
As he likes fast cars, he had decided that spending millions on Ferrari and Nascar sponsorship was worthy; and since he has gone as of September 2007, AMD is trying to get itself out of this several million heavy deal.
AMD has already canceled its Ferrari Formula 1 sponsorship and it is waiting for the contract to expire. These guys from Formula 1 are clever and they don’t let you out easily from your commitment. Once the current contract is over, AMD won’t renew it, at least not for the time being.
AMD spends more than ten but less than twenty million to be on Michael Schumacher’s retired shoulder and on the side of the helmet promotion. That is a lot of money and it’s not like AMD doesn’t know what to do with it.
The funny part is that many marketing people will say that this is a good and quite affordable deal.
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5 Comments on "AMD Ends Ferrari Sponsorship"
Sounds like they are jealous about the Microsoft involvement with the ECU.
good point Michael. I had forgot about that. Nice angle mate.
Maybe they’re off to Honda or McLaren?
I think this is deeper than MS’s involvement in the ECU or jumping to another team. The company’s hurting:
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080514-amd-tries-to-hack-its-way-back-to-the-black-with-job-cuts.html
Also, why would AMD be jealous of MS? AMD is a chip manufacturer and MS is predominantly a software company. The dip into hardware w/ peripherals and the xbox, but they buy the chips from other companies.
I think you’re right MJohn. I was reading about them in Wall Street journal the other day. They are really struggling. It’s a shame really. AMD makes good processors and has created a healthy competition to Intel. The gaming community has really embraced them. My only critique is that they had 64-bit years ago and did nothing to spur the industry to create opportunities for them with this platform. as well a dual core. Intel leapfrogged them completely.