Two years ago, IBM noticed a notable omission from its list of sports partnerships: Formula One.
Formula One has become one of the most popular sports in the world, especially in the United States. Netflix’s “Drive to Survive” chronicled the working lives of F1 drivers and turned them into mainstream celebrities. Tech-driven sports have become a hot ticket for technology companies like AWS, Oracle and Anthropic, who work with teams for sponsorship visibility and provide data analytics and AI tools that can provide a competitive advantage.
So when IBM looked for its next major sports partnership, it was natural that the company chose F1 and one of its most iconic teams, Scuderia Ferrari HP.
“They are the winningest team in history,” Kameryn Stanhouse, vice president of sports and entertainment partnerships at IBM, told TechCrunch.
But the key to this partnership is why other teams have begun working with the tech giant. That means access to more sophisticated technological solutions, especially those that can help you get the most out of artificial intelligence. In fact, one of the best parts about sports is how much data is available and can be used to help people become comfortable with AI, Stanhouse said.
“They actually see how it can help them,” she said of how AI is used in sports storytelling.
The IBM-Ferrari partnership focuses on the idea of storytelling and strengthens fan engagement by overhauling the technology that powers the Ferrari fan app. To help with this, Ferrari hired Stefano Pallard as ‘Head of Fan Development’. He said the challenge the team is trying to solve is not just reaching fans, but “making each fan feel like they know him.”
“It 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.
The team processes millions of data points per second during each race to capture every movement of drivers and cars. Turning this into content that fans can engage with is just one way advanced enterprise AI can help companies interact more effectively with consumers.
Of the 11 teams, Ferrari is one of the few (along with McLaren and Williams) to use a standalone fan app strategy rather than relying on social media or the official F1 platform. It shows how the sport is slowly starting to capitalize on its growing global fandom.
Some changes to the Ferrari app were as simple as making it available in Italian. Even though Ferrari is an Italian company and many of its fans are Italian, its fan app wasn’t available in Italian until it partnered with IBM.
Stanhouse said the old Ferrari fan app was the place people went to find race details. The new app includes games that fans can play with others within the app, new AI-written race summaries, more behind-the-scenes stories about the teams and drivers, where to make predictions, and an AI companion where fans can ask questions.
“Did you know that with two drivers, it takes 24 people working simultaneously to change a tire within 2 seconds?” Stanhouse added that storytelling helps fans get closer to the team.
Unlike other sports apps IBM has built, Stanhouse said the Ferrari app’s main focus is on storytelling. That’s because they want fans to engage with the app all year long, not just a few weeks a year like tournaments like the Masters. The app’s engagement data has been on the rise since IBM came on board, Stanhouse said. For example, they reported a 62% increase in participation during race weekend.
Pallard said the team uses AI to analyze the app’s engagement signals, including the content people want to read and the sentiment of messages sent by fans.
“This helps us understand what resonates most with Tifosi (Ferrari’s fan nickname) and directly informs how we shape our storytelling and how we deliver our content,” he said.
The team hopes to take a deeper approach to personalization and create more immersive fan experiences.
The app developers also took into account Ferrari’s fan base, which is much more diverse than it was five years ago. Statistics released by F1 last year showed that 75% of new fans were women, many of them Gen Z. Of particular interest to women is the F1 Academy, an all-female racing series aimed at developing the next generation of female drivers. But just like the old fans, these new fans are after one thing: more.
“They’re demanding more data, more insights, more functionality, and we have to be able to provide that,” Pallard said. “IBM’s vision for the next five years is to ensure that every fan, whether they’ve been with us for 30 years or 30 days, feels the experience was created for them. This is how we build lasting loyalty.”
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