Ferrari uses IBM’s AI to create unique Formula 1 fans

Two years ago, IBM realized there was one glaring omission in its list of sports partnerships: Formula One.

Formula 1 has become one of the most popular sports in the world, especially in the United States, where the Netflix film “Drive to Survive” documented the working lives of Formula 1 drivers and turned them into mainstream celebrities. The technology-focused sport has also become a hot ticket for technology companies like AWS, Oracle and Anthropic, which are collaborating with teams to vision sponsorships 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 no surprise that the company chose the F1 team and one of its most famous teams, Scuderia Ferrari HP.

“They are the winningest team in history,” Camryn Stanhouse, IBM’s vice president of sports and entertainment partnerships, told TechCrunch.

However, at the heart of this partnership is what has prompted other teams to start working with tech giants: access to more advanced technical solutions that can help them get the most out of AI, especially… In fact, Stanhouse said one of the best aspects of sports is the amount of data available that can be used to help people get comfortable with AI.

“They actually see how it serves them,” she said of how AI is being used to tell sports stories.

The partnership between IBM and Ferrari focuses on the idea of ​​storytelling, enhancing fan engagement by overhauling the technology that powers the Ferrari Fan App. To help with this, Ferrari appointed Stefano Ballard to the newly titled role of ‘Head of Fan Development’, who said the challenge the team wanted to address was not just to reach fans, but to ‘make every one of them feel like we know them’.

“That starts with taking the data we get from the funnel and turning it into content that is 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 interact with is just one way advanced enterprise AI can help businesses better engage with their customers.

Of the 11 teams, Ferrari is one of the few (along with the likes of McLaren and Williams) to have an independent strategy for fan apps rather than relying on social media or official Formula 1 platforms instead, demonstrating how the sport is slowly starting to capitalize on its growing global fan base.

Some of the changes to the Ferrari app were simple, such as offering it in Italian. Although Ferrari is an Italian company and many of their fans are Italian, their fan app was not available in Italian until the partnership with IBM.

The old Ferrari fan app was a place where people would go to find race details and then leave, Stanhouse said. This new app features games where fans can play with others in the app, new AI-written race recaps, more behind-the-scenes stories about the team and drivers, a place for predictions, and an AI-powered companion for fans to ask questions.

“There are two drivers, but did you know that 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 created by IBM, Stanhouse said the main focus of Ferrari’s app is storytelling because he wants fans to stay engaged all year, not just a few weeks a year, as is the case with tournaments like the Masters. Engagement data for the app has been trending upward since IBM came on the scene, Stanhouse said, citing a 62% increase in engagement during race weekends as an example.

The team then uses AI to analyze engagement signals in the app, such as the content people want to read and the sentiment of messages sent by fans, Ballard said.

“This helps us understand what resonates most with tifosi [the fan nickname for Ferrari] It directly tells us how to shape our story and how to deliver content.

The team hopes to delve deeper into customization and create more immersive experiences for fans.

The app developers also took into account Ferrari’s fanbase, which is more diverse than it was five years ago. Formula 1 released statistics last year showing that 75% of new fans were women, many of them from Generation Z. A particular attraction for women is the Formula 1 Academy, an all-female racing series aimed at developing 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 knowledge, more features, and we have to be able to deliver that,” Ballard said. “With IBM, the vision for the next five years 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 build loyalty that lasts.”