On-track Highlights and Brand Breakthrough: OKX Partners with McLaren to Win the F1 Title, Accelerating Crypto Brands’ Integration into the Traditional World

McLaren Wins the Championship, Ushering in a New Era on the Track

On December 7, the 2025 season of the Formula 1 World Championship (F1) concluded in Abu Dhabi, bringing exciting news from the track: British driver Lando Norris (Lando Norris) of the McLaren team outperformed his teammate Oscar Piastri (Oscar Piastri) and Red Bull’s Max Verstappen (Max Verstappen) to win this year’s Drivers’ Championship. He became the 35th world champion in F1 history, breaking the 15-year “monopoly” on the Drivers’ Championship previously held by Red Bull and Mercedes-AMG teams.

Notably, the OKX brand logo stood out prominently on the racing cars speeding across the track, witnessing the deep fusion between crypto brands and top-tier sporting events. OKX directly aligns the platform’s pursuit of “speed, reliability, and performance” with the core values of F1 racing, creating a powerful resonance in brand philosophy. This deep integration goes beyond simple logo exposure, merging brand spirit with the spirit of the sport.

Comprehensive Engagement: From the Track to Off-Track

This championship win marks another major achievement for the McLaren team since OKX, the world’s leading cryptocurrency exchange, became its official partner. As early as the 2022 Miami Grand Prix, the OKX logo appeared on multiple locations on the McLaren MCL36 race car—rear wing, front wing, nose—as well as on the racing suits and helmets of drivers Lando Norris and Daniel Ricciardo.

At the 2022 F1 Singapore and Japan Grands Prix, OKX and McLaren jointly presented a visual feast—a specially designed race car livery themed “Future Mode” for a marketing campaign.

The car, with team signature colors as the base and dazzling neon pink accents, exuded a strong cyberpunk vibe. This unique design drew inspiration from the urban fabric of Singapore and Japan, symbolizing the shared spirit of technological innovation and speed between McLaren and OKX. Building on this, OKX has also partnered with the McLaren “Shadow Project” esports team, with OKX brand elements helping McLaren reach a younger, more digital-savvy audience.

Behind this victory lies not only McLaren’s technical prowess and competitive strength, but also another successful implementation of OKX’s sports marketing strategy. In fact, the partnership between OKX and McLaren has long gone beyond the racetrack. Previously, OKX’s brand logo appeared on the big screen in popular F1-themed films, leveraging the reach of film IP to bring the crypto brand to a wider public, achieving cross-scenario exposure from the track to the cinema.

Crypto Goes Mainstream: From “Sponsorship” to “Integration”

OKX’s deep investment in sports marketing is not a short-term move but a long-term strategy for globalizing its brand and breaking industry silos. OKX doesn’t just aim to be a sponsor—it’s also committed to enhancing the fan experience using blockchain and other technologies. For example, by offering exclusive content and interactive opportunities through NFTs and other digital assets, fans are brought closer to the team. Through such innovations, OKX has successfully forged a close association between a crypto trading platform and the brand image of premier motorsports, boosting both brand awareness and credibility. The partnership between OKX and McLaren is a multi-year strategic relationship, ensuring depth and stability beyond mere short-term marketing.

Beyond F1, OKX has extended its partnerships into traditional high-end sports like golf. OKX is not only the first global crypto industry sponsor on the F1 circuit but also the first global official sponsor of the golf team Majesticks GC, the first Web3 sponsor of the LIV Golf League, and has global ambassadors such as golf star Ian James Poulter (lan James Poulter) and world snowboarding champion (Scotty James). By collaborating with various types of sports events, OKX continues to convey brand value, deeply linking crypto innovation with the fighting spirit of sports, and gradually breaking down public misconceptions about the crypto industry.

The crypto industry’s approach to sports marketing is a microcosm of its embrace of the traditional world. As OKX breaks out, exploring new possibilities in high-end sports, more crypto companies are stepping beyond internal industry communication and proactively entering sports, entertainment, and other mainstream fields, exploring new paths for brand expansion.

Crypto platforms are pushing “mainstream crossover” through collaborations in sports and esports: Crypto.com sponsors Paris Saint-Germain, secured naming rights for the Lakers’ home court, and signed a six-year jersey logo deal with the Philadelphia 76ers, whose first NFT is also available on its NFT site; Bybit has partnered with the Red Bull team and the Argentine Football Association, and sponsored several well-known esports clubs. Gate.io and OKX have similar cross-sector initiatives, all driven by the industry’s common pursuit of mainstream acceptance and reshaping public perception.

This wave of enthusiasm is just beginning. Soon, collaborations between crypto and traditional sectors will go beyond brand exposure and delve into technology, becoming more practical. Actual use cases, such as blockchain-based ticketing, fan tokens, and NFT collectibles, will bring new business models and revenue streams to sports, while crypto platforms can combine digital assets with sports consumption scenarios, advancing the digital transformation of mainstream commerce.

Connecting with the Traditional World, Reshaping Crypto Perception

From an industry development perspective, the deep integration of crypto brands with traditional sectors means far more than brand marketing. As sports events serve as a universal cultural language worldwide, embodying values of fairness, competition, and collaboration, crypto companies are entering the mainstream in a more approachable, acceptable manner, conveying the underlying logic and value of crypto technology. When elements of OKX, Gate.io, Binance, and other crypto platforms appear on F1 race cars, when more crypto brands come to the international events we know and love, and when the crypto sector begins to add potential to the esports and entertainment industries, the crypto industry is gradually shedding its air of mystery and integrating into the traditional economy and society with a more open attitude.

In the future, as crypto technology and traditional industries continue to integrate, sports marketing could be just the starting point for crypto brands to break into the mainstream. With the dual drivers of technological innovation and compliance, the crypto industry is expected to find more touchpoints in everyday scenarios, truly moving from an “intra-industry loop” to a “global ecosystem,” thus making the value of crypto technology known and accepted by a wider audience.