Adding a sponsor

A secondary sponsor in F1 25 is a brand the player can place as decals on the My Team car, and one that pays per decal and gains loyalty. You can add one with a data addon. It takes database rows in eight tables, two copies of every decal image (one for the menus and one for the car), a registry entry per menu image and the texts.

This page describes the stock data model and the order the rows must be added in. It also lists the mistakes that crash the game. Everything here comes from Sponsor Studio's exports, which pass the launcher's own database, package and texture checks. Each section says what was also seen in game.

Clone each row from a stock sponsor. Avolo (avolo) is a good template: an ordinary secondary sponsor with two start decals and four loyalty decals, its own discovery event and rows in both career data groups.

The rows

#	table	one row per	key fields you set
1	sponsors.sponsors.sponsor	brand	_metadata_ (the sponsor code), statId, display_name, texture_name (list tile)
2	customisation.custom_decal_sets.decal_groups.DecalGroup	brand	_metadata_, id, sponsor, name_loc_tag, material_name, texture_name
3	customisation.custom_decal_sets.decal_sets.DecalSet	decal design	_metadata_ (<code>_<suffix>), id, decal_group, material_name, texture_name (<code>_<suffix>_da), name_loc_tag
4	unlockable_content.unlockable_items.unlockable_item_list_<n>.folder_<m>.unlockable_decal_set	design, in every list that holds the template's design	_metadata_, customisation_item, statId
5	unlockable_content.…unlockable_decal_group	brand, likewise	_metadata_ (dg_<code>), customisation_item, statId
6	career.my_team_rewards.reward_definitions.MyTeamSponsorUnlockReward	brand	_metadata_, sponsor, statId
7	career.my_team_sponsors.MyTeamSponsorsDataGroup_<g>.my_team_sponsors.secondary_sponsor	brand and career data group (_0, _1)	_metadata_, sponsor, sponsor_id, default_decals, loyalty levels
8	discovery event (below)	brand

Decal designs are named <code>_p (primary) and <code>_n (alternate). Further start designs are <code>_d3, <code>_d4 and so on, and the loyalty designs are <code>_s1 … <code>_s4. Clone each one from the Avolo design of the same role (avolo_p, avolo_n, avolo_s1 …).

{
  "schema_version": 1,
  "fields": { /* explicit field lists, see "Clone every field" */ },
  "ops": [
    { "op": "add-row", "table": "sponsors.sponsors", "from": "sponsors.sponsors.sponsor[_metadata_=avolo]", "copy": "all",
      "set": { "_metadata_": "acme", "statId": "129", "display_name": "lng_sponsor_acme", "texture_name": "acme_n_da" } },
    { "op": "add-row", "table": "customisation.custom_decal_sets.decal_groups",
      "from": "customisation.custom_decal_sets.decal_groups.DecalGroup[_metadata_=avolo]", "copy": "all",
      "set": { "_metadata_": "acme", "id": "131", "sponsor": "acme", "name_loc_tag": "lng_sponsor_acme",
               "material_name": "acme", "texture_name": "acme_n_da" } },
    { "op": "add-row", "table": "customisation.custom_decal_sets.decal_sets",
      "from": "customisation.custom_decal_sets.decal_sets.DecalSet[_metadata_=avolo_p]", "copy": "all",
      "set": { "_metadata_": "acme_p", "id": "754", "decal_group": "acme", "material_name": "acme_p_da",
               "texture_name": "acme_p_da", "name_loc_tag": "lng_sponsor_acme_p" } },
    // … acme_n, acme_s1..s4, the unlock rows, the reward …
    { "op": "add-row", "table": "career.my_team_sponsors.MyTeamSponsorsDataGroup_1.my_team_sponsors",
      "from": "career.my_team_sponsors.MyTeamSponsorsDataGroup_1.my_team_sponsors.secondary_sponsor[_metadata_=avolo]", "copy": "all",
      "set": { "_metadata_": "acme", "sponsor": "acme", "sponsor_id": "357", "default_decals": "acme_p,acme_n" } }
  ]
}

The career sponsor row

secondary_sponsor exists once per career data group: MyTeamSponsorsDataGroup_0 and _1, the two car years. Add the brand to both. Its sponsor_id lives in its own id space, separate from sponsors.sponsor.statId. Use one value for the brand in both groups.

The row you cloned still names Avolo in its nested loyalty track (sponsor_loyalty_track_0.sponsor_loyalty_level_<n>.decal, .livery, .rewards). Rewrite every nested value that contains avolo. A loyalty level whose design you don't add must get an empty decal, not a name that doesn't exist (see pitfalls).

default_decals lists the designs the player owns as soon as the sponsor is discovered. The game does not cap it at two: stock sponsors simply all have two. Loyalty levels with the same required_xp unlock together, but the UI's level numbers then skip.

Discovery

A sponsor is locked until the career discovers it ("discover first" on its tile). Stock sponsors are discovered by a career department event. Each brand has its own event in career.department_events.DepartmentEvents_2 (group SponsorDiscovery):

DepartmentEvent (title, description, outcomes)
  -> Outcome (hidden_outcome_modifiers)
    -> OutcomeModifierMyTeamReward (rewards)
      -> MyTeamSponsorUnlockReward (sponsor)

The modifier table, career.department_events.DepartmentEvents_2.outcome_modifiers.OutcomeModifierMyTeamReward, is known to the launcher's key catalogue only by its hash {e938c8a7d8a1e402}. Clone Avolo's event, outcome and modifier under new labels. Point the modifier at your reward, and give the event its own title (and description) language key. Don't append your reward to Avolo's modifier: that unlocks your sponsor together with Avolo, under Avolo's title.

Available from the start

career.my_team_sponsors.MyTeamSponsorsDataGroup_<g>.initial_secondary_sponsors is a comma list of sponsor codes that a new My Team career discovers at once. Append to it with db.list-append (launcher 1.3.6 or newer); never set it:

{ "op": "list-append", "select": "career.my_team_sponsors.MyTeamSponsorsDataGroup_0", "field": "initial_secondary_sponsors", "value": "acme" }

A set writes the whole list. If two addons do this, the one that loads last silently removes the other's starting sponsors, and they stay locked in every new career. That's what happened to the engine-supplier sponsors of one addon when a sticker addon also set the list.

The game applies this list only when a career is created. A sponsor added to it later stays locked in careers that already exist. Data can't change that. The discovery is stored in the career save. See sponsors.md in re/ for the game's discover routine, which a native plugin can call at career load.

The textures

Every decal design needs two textures:

use	archive (game path)	resource	size	levels
menu (catalogue, carousel)	2025_asset_groups/ui_package/texture_arrays/customisation/sponsor_decals/<code>_<suffix>_da.erp	eaid://ui_package/art/textures/customisation/sponsor_decals/<code>_<suffix>_da.tif	340 × 244	1
car	merged into shader_package_2025/customisation_decals.nefx2.sm51.erp and …sm51_amd.erp	eaid://ego_package/decals/textures/<code>_<suffix>_da.tif	1024 × 1024	11 (resident)
brand logo	…/customisation/decals/<code>.erp	eaid://ui_package/art/textures/customisation/decals/<code>.tif	268 × 160	1

• Build each one by copying Avolo's surface and view resources (avolo_<suffix>_da, avolo) and replacing the name and pixels. The game's own sponsor textures are BC7 sRGB, and BC3 also loads. Resize with premultiplied alpha and bleed the colour into the transparent edge, or the decal gets a dark fringe on the car.
• Only the car copies carry the full mip chain. The car decal is baked from the ego_package texture, not from the menu one: an addon that ships only the menu images shows the logo in the menus and nothing on the car.
• Deliver the car textures with an erp.overlay into both shader archives (sm51 and sm51_amd). The overlay keeps the archives' shader resources.
• Register each menu archive as an asset group (group.register, template = the Avolo design's .assetgroup). Add a TextureArrays entry for it to the dynamic texture registry eaid://ui_package/art/texture_arrays/ui_dynamic_texture_loading.uidta, in every top-level ui_package archive that carries that registry (an erp.patch-pkg clone-entry of Avolo's entry in customisation.sponsor_decals, setting AssetGroupPath and ResourceId).

The sponsor list tile

sponsors.sponsor.texture_name and DecalGroup.texture_name name the image on the sponsor's tile in the My Team catalogue. The two are equal for 126 of the 128 stock sponsors. For 99 of them the image is one of the sponsor's own decal designs: 79 s1, 10 s2, 6 s3, 2 s4 and 2 n. A sponsor can also have its own tile image: add a <code>_list_da menu texture (340 × 244, registered like a decal) and point both fields at it. This works for stock sponsors as well.

The tile's logo is a fixed 3.4 × 2.44 quad inside a 4.15 × 2.32 window (tiles_team_hq/3x4_decal_catalogue.idf). A bigger texture doesn't fill the tile. Scaling the logo's eXRef uniformly by 4.15 / 3.4 (erp.patch-pkg set-value on …children[name=decal_catalogue].scale) makes it as wide as the tile. The window then shows rows 27–217 of the 244.

The texts

key	text
lng_sponsor_<code>	the brand name (sponsor display_name, decal group name_loc_tag)
lng_sponsor_<code>_<suffix>	the name of each design
the discovery event's title/description keys	the career message

Use lang.set with "language": "*" for the name in every language, then one lang.set per translated language. The game's language codes are the ones in its .lng file names, not ISO codes.

A team badge emblem

customisation.custom_player_badges.emblems.BadgeEmblem holds the emblems of the Team Badge editor:

• Clone BadgeEmblem_17 (full colour, no colour masks) and set id, loc_tag and ui_name (emblem_<code>).
• Add an unlock row to each unlockable_badge_emblem list that holds the default emblem BadgeEmblem_01 as a plain row (not one with _ItemLockServerGeneric_instancecount_).
• The texture is …/customisation/cstm_badge_large/emblem/emblem_<code>.erp (512 × 512), registered like a decal under customisation.cstm_badge_large.emblem in the texture registry.

The team badge stores the emblem by its id, not its statId.

Ids

Every row above carries an id (statId, id, sponsor_id). Saved liveries store decal design ids (DecalSet.id), so:

• Never reuse an id another addon uses. Two addons that each took "highest stock id + 1" gave the same DecalSet.id to Pirelli and Toyota. The game then showed one addon's decal in place of the other's.
• Never change an id once the addon is in use, or placed decals turn into other decals in saved careers.
• Unlock-item statIds must be unique within each unlock list (unlockable_item_list_<n>, across all its folders), not just within one folder.

Until the launcher allocates these ids, keep each addon's ids fixed once it ships, and pick new ones that avoid both the game's ids and those of every installed addon. The sponsor registry proposal moves that job into the core.

Clone every field

The launcher's key catalogue doesn't know the row shapes of unlockable_decal_group and secondary_sponsor (the nested loyalty track). With "copy": "all", list the fields of each cloned table in the op file's fields object, taken from the stock row. The build then copies them and reports the shape warnings as notes.

Some stock rows also carry numbered fields that the catalogue can't name at all. Only their hash is in the database. A DepartmentEvent Outcome row, for example, has outcome_modifier_1 … outcome_modifier_3. Find them by hashing <row>.<field><n> against the database, and copy them too (pitfalls).

Pitfalls that crash the game

All three were seen in game.

symptom	cause	rule
Crash while the game starts, in the sponsor loader	a secondary_sponsor loyalty decal (or default_decals) named a design that doesn't exist; here a comma list typed into a single-decal field	every decal name must be an existing DecalSet _metadata_; a level without a design gets ""
Crash when a My Team career starts	a cloned discovery Outcome lacked outcome_modifier_1..3; the department events reader looks each one up and uses the result without checking it	copy the hash-only numbered fields of every cloned row
One addon's decal shows in place of another's	two addons used the same DecalSet.id	unique, stable ids

What was seen in game

• Seen in game (owner's tests, 2026-10-30 to 2026-11-02): new sponsors listed in the My Team catalogue and placed on the livery, own list tiles, and the three failures above. Their causes were traced statically from the crash addresses and logs; the fixes are checked offline.
• Offline only (passes the launcher's checks, not yet seen in game): the filled tile scale, the list-append fix and an emblem in the badge editor.

Reference

• Sponsor Studio (the tool these exports come from): source and releases by JonnieDesigns.
• The engine side (what the catalogue, editor and career code do with these rows): re/research/sponsors.md.
• Database operations, ERP operations, In-game text.