Two years ago, IBM realized that there was one thing missing from its list of sports partnerships: Formula One.
Formula One has become one of the most popular sports in the world, especially in the US, where Netflix’s “Drive to Survive” documented the lives of F1 drivers and made them mainstream celebrities. The tech-centric game has become a hot ticket for technology companies like AWS, Oracle, and Anthropic, which are partnering with teams to identify funding and provide data analysis and AI tools that can deliver a competitive edge.
So when IBM was looking for its next big sports partnership, it’s no surprise that the company chose F1 and one of its most prominent teams, Scuderia Ferrari HP.
“They’re the winningest team in history,” Kameryn Stanhouse, IBM’s Vice President of Sports and Entertainment Partnerships, told TechCrunch.
The core of this relationship, however, is what has led other groups to start working with technology giants: access to complex technology solutions that can help them make the most of, in particular, artificial intelligence. In fact, one of the best parts of the game, Stanhouse says, is how much data is available and can be used to help people get comfortable with AI.
“They’re actually seeing how it’s helping them,” he said of how AI is being used in sports storytelling.
The IBM-Ferrari partnership focuses on that storytelling concept, enhancing fan engagement by reimagining the technology that powers the Ferrari fan app. To help with this, Ferrari hired Stefano Pallard in the newly named role of “head of fan development,” who said the challenge the team wanted to face was not just reaching fans, but “making each one of them feel like we know them.”
“That starts with taking the data we get from the track and turning it into content that’s easy to follow and engage with,” he told TechCrunch.
Teams process millions of data points per second during each race, capturing every movement of driver and car. Turning this into content that fans can engage with is one of the ways advanced business AI can help businesses better connect with their consumers.
Among the 11 teams, Ferrari is one of the few (along with the likes of McLaren and Williams) to have an independent fan app strategy rather than relying on social media or official F1 social media instead, showing how the sport is starting to take advantage of its global growth.
Some of the changes to the Ferrari app were simple, like offering it in Italian. Even though Ferrari is an Italian company and most of its fans are Italian, their fan app was not available in Italian until the IBM partnership.
Stanhouse said the classic Ferrari fan program is a place where people go to get race information and then go. This new app has games where fans can play with others in the app, new AI-written race recaps, lots of 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 it takes 24 people working at the same time in two seconds to change a tire?” Stanhouse said, adding that storytelling helps fans feel closer to the team.
Unlike other sports apps developed by IBM, Stanhouse said the Ferrari app’s focus is on storytelling because it wants fans to stay engaged with it year-round, rather than just a few weeks a year, as in tournaments like the Masters. The app’s engagement data has been trending upward since IBM arrived on the scene, Stanhouse said, citing a 62% increase in engagement during race weekends as an example.
Pallard said the team then uses AI to analyze signs of engagement in the app, such as what content people like to read and the sentiment of messages sent by fans.
“That helps us to understand what affects Tifosi the most [the fan nickname for Ferrari] and it directly informs how we plan our storytelling and how we deliver content,” he said.
The team hopes to go deeper into personalization and create a more immersive fan experience.
The developers of the app also took into account Ferrari’s fan base, which is very different than it was five years ago. F1 released statistics last year showing that 75% of new fans were women, many of whom were Gen Z. A particular draw 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 the old ones, are after one thing – more.
“They’re asking for more data, more insight, more features, and we have to be able to deliver that,” Pallard said. “For IBM, the vision for the next five years is to make every fan feel like the experience was built for them, whether they’ve been with us for 30 years or 30 days. That’s how you build lasting loyalty.”
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