Two years ago, IBM realized that there was a glaring omission from its list of sports partnerships: Formula 1.
Formula 1 has become one of the most popular sports in the world, especially in the US, with Netflix’s Drive to Survive documenting the working lives of F1 drivers and making them mainstream celebrities. Technology-centric sports have also become one a hot ticket for tech companies AWS partners with teams such as Oracle and Anthropic to provide sponsored visibility and provide data analytics and AI tools that can provide a competitive advantage.
So when IBM went looking for its next big sports partnership, it’s no surprise that the company chose F1 and one of its most famous teams. Scuderia Ferrari HP.
“They’re the winningest team in history,” Cameryn Stenhouse, IBM’s Vice President of Sports and Entertainment Partnerships, told TechCrunch.
However, at the heart of this partnership is what has led other teams to work with the tech giants: access to more sophisticated technology solutions that can help them get the most out of AI, in particular. In fact, one of the best parts of the sport, Stanhouse said, is how much data is available and can be used to help people become comfortable with AI.
“They’re actually seeing how it serves them,” he said of how AI is being used in sports storytelling.
The IBM-Ferrari partnership is based on the idea of storytelling by enhancing fan engagement by overhauling the technology that powers the Ferrari fan app. To help with this, Ferrari hired Stefano Pallard in the newly-titled role of “head of fan development,” who said the team’s challenge was not just reaching fans, but “making each one of them feel like we know them.”
“It starts with taking the data we get from the track and turning it into easy-to-follow and engaging content,” he told TechCrunch.
Teams process millions of data points captures every movement of the driver and the car every second during every race. Turning this into content that fans can engage with is one way advanced enterprise AI can help businesses better interact with their consumers.
Of the 11 teams, Ferrari (alongside the likes of McLaren and Williams) is one of the few to have an independent fan app strategy rather than social media or official F1 platforms, showing how the sport is starting to capitalize on its slowly growing global fandom.
Some of the changes made to the Ferrari app were simple, such as offering it in Italian. Although Ferrari is an Italian company and many of its fans are Italian, their fan app was not available in Italian until the IBM partnership.
Stanhouse said the old Ferrari fan app was a place where people went to find racing details and then left. This new app features games that fans can play with others in the app, a new AI-written race recap, more behind-the-scenes stories about the team and drivers, a place to make predictions and an AI companion for fans to ask questions.
“There are two drivers, but did you know that 24 people work simultaneously in two seconds to change a tire?” Stanhouse said the storytelling helps fans feel closer to the team.
Unlike other sports programs IBM has developed, Stanhouse said the Ferrari program’s main focus is on storytelling because it wants fans to engage with it year-round, rather than just a few weeks a year, as is the case with tournaments like the Masters. Engagement data for the app has been on the rise since IBM came on the scene, Stanhouse said, citing a 62% increase in engagement during race weekends.
Pallard said the team then uses artificial intelligence to analyze engagement signals in the app, such as what content people like to read and the sentiment of messages sent by fans.
“It helps us understand what resonates with Tifosi (the fan nickname for Ferrari) and directly informs how we shape our story and how we deliver content,” he said.
The team hopes to delve deeper into personalization and create more immersive experiences for the fan.
The app developers have taken into account Ferrari’s fan base, which is far more diverse than it was even five years ago. F1 released shows last year’s statistics that 75% of new fans were women, most of whom were Gen Z. A particular attraction for women is the F1 Academy, an all-female racing series that aims to develop the next generation of female drivers. But these new fans, like their old ones, are after something – more.
“They want more data, more insight, more features, and we need to be able to deliver that,” Pallard said. “The vision for the next five years with IBM is to make every fan feel like the experience was created for them, whether they’ve been with us for 30 years or 30 days. That’s how you create lasting loyalty.”
When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. This does not affect our editorial independence.
