BAT Italy Backs Barcolana Regatta with glo and VELO Branded Receiving Spaces

British American Tobacco's Italian operation has taken a two-brand, two-partner sponsorship of the Barcolana, the Adriatic Sea's most recognised international sailing race, pairing its glo heated-tobacco franchise with VELO, one of the company's modern-oral lines, under a single deal that is also tied to the ARCA SGR sailing team.

The agreement makes glo the regatta's "gold" sponsor and gives it front-of-race visibility at a venue that is Trieste's principal showpiece. The Barcolana draws the largest fleet of privately entered yachts in Europe each autumn and is a core public event in Friuli-Venezia Giulia, one of the Italian regions where BAT has concentrated its Italian business.

For VELO, the partnership is a first step into a high-end sponsorship in the Italy market. The pouch-format brand has built a position in European nicotine pouches in recent years and is being positioned in the Barcolana's hospitality zones alongside glo, giving it a channel in front of affluent, urban, older consumers that is a target audience for the pouch category.

The physical footprint is built around the regatta village. BAT Italy is establishing a "multi-level, modern space" in the Barcolana hub, with a terrace that overlooks the harbour and is designed as a premium receiving area for adult nicotine consumers, with a hospitality zone, a screening zone and event-specific programmes that run alongside the regatta.

BAT Italy's market deployment head, Antonino Grosso, said the Barcolana is a "key partnership moment" for the group and that the Trieste operation ties to the company's "A Better Tomorrow Innovation Hub" in the city, which serves as a strategic centre for the group's Italian transition work. He framed the partnership around a "excellence, innovation and long-term value" principle that he said aligns with the region's own positioning goals.

For ARCA SGR, the Italian sailing programme, the deal extends a rolling relationship with glo and adds a second partner in VELO. Furio Benussi, the programme's project manager and team skipper, said the partnership gives the team a sponsor that invests in the sport over a multi-year window, and that the 2026 regatta is a chance to push both the team and the brand's profile among an international audience.

The arrangement reflects how tobacco and nicotine companies are recalibrating their marketing as direct advertising to minors is heavily restricted in many European markets. Sponsorship of a major international sporting event in a European port city, combined with a hospitality experience that targets adults, gives the brands the kind of third-party visibility that direct advertising channels no longer offer, without crossing age-related promotional boundaries.

For Trieste, the sponsorship extends a pattern of corporate partnerships around the city's major nautical events, and it adds nicotine brands to a line-up of partners that has historically been dominated by boat builders, financial institutions and apparel companies.

The next test for the partnership will be whether the Barcolana's international spectator base and the regatta's broadcast reach translate into the kind of third-party coverage that sponsors of a European sailing event are paid for.