Works team

A works team, sometimes also referred to as factory team and company team, is a sports team that is financed and run by a manufacturer or other business, institution, or organization in a broad sense. Works teams have very close ties with their main sponsor and owner, and usually incorporate its logo, its name, or both, in the sport club or team logo. Sometimes, works teams contain or are entirely made up of employees of the supporting company.^[1][2] In motorsport, a works team or factory team is a manufacturer that builds its own car or motorbike including the engine.^[3]

Company teams are owned, sponsored and managed by companies in order to raise awareness about those companies' brands, being usually named after those companies and brands as part and parcel of those companies' marketing strategy.^[4][5][6] Sometimes a single company (e.g. Red Bull GmbH)^[7] owns more than one team named after it competing in different sports or even in the same sport.^[8][9][10]

When they meet certain criteria, college and university teams, also known sometimes as student teams, competing in semi-professional or professional leagues and championships, instead of exclusively competing in university/college level sport, have been considered works teams as well. In some regions of the world like Europe and Latin America, university/college sports teams are in many instances fully-integrated in the same national sports league or championship system where amateur, semi-professional and professional teams and athletes compete in one of many divisions of the system's pyramid.^[11][12]

Many works teams, factory teams or student teams were started to give staff or students some exercise and entertainment and eventually became professional teams without actually having workers, factory workers or students in their squads, but retained their original names to reflect their historical background.^[13]