Ferrari's fan app saw engagement rise 62% over race weekends after the team overhauled it with IBM's AI systems, targeting a Formula One fanbase that has shifted 75% female among new converts. The Scuderia Ferrari HP app now features AI-written race summaries, predictive games, behind-the-scenes storytelling, and an AI companion that answers fan questions in real time. Ferrari hired a head of fan development to lead the effort, a newly created role that reflects how seriously the team takes fan retention in a sport that processes millions of data points per second during each race.
The partnership centers on turning telemetry and performance data into accessible content. Ferrari captures every movement of the driver and the car during a race, generating a data stream that IBM's AI systems transform into summaries, visualizations, and personalized recommendations inside the app. The old Ferrari app served as a race-details lookup tool; users arrived, checked a schedule, and left. The new version keeps fans engaged year-round with games, predictions, and sentiment-driven content curation.
“They actually see how it serves them”— Kameryn Stanhouse, IBM Vice President of Sports and Entertainment Partnerships
IBM entered Formula One two years ago after identifying the sport's growing U.S. fanbase, driven largely by Netflix's Drive to Survive documentary series. The tech-centric nature of Formula One has drawn partnerships from AWS, Oracle, and Anthropic, each providing data analytics and AI tools that teams use for competitive advantage. Ferrari is one of only three teams—alongside McLaren and Williams—to operate a standalone fan app rather than rely solely on social media or the official F1 platform.
Key facts
- 01Ferrari's IBM-powered fan app drove 62% higher engagement over race weekends compared to the pre-partnership baseline.
- 0275% of new Formula One fans are women, reshaping Ferrari's content strategy toward accessibility and personalization.
- 03Ferrari processes millions of data points per second during each race, feeding AI systems that generate summaries and engagement insights.
- 04The app now offers Italian localization, predictive games, and an AI companion for fan questions—features absent before the IBM partnership.
- 05Ferrari targets a 5-year roadmap to personalize the fan experience at scale, using AI to analyze sentiment and content preferences.
The app now offers Italian localization, a feature absent until IBM's involvement despite Ferrari being an Italian company with a heavily Italian fanbase. AI analyzes which content fans read, how long they spend on each feature, and the sentiment of messages they send through the app. Ferrari uses those signals to shape its storytelling and content delivery, tailoring what appears in the app based on engagement patterns.
“That starts with taking the data we get from the track and turning it into content that is easy to follow and engaging”— Stefano Pallard, Ferrari Head of Fan Development
The shift in Formula One's demographics has forced teams to rethink their fan strategies. Formula One released stats last year showing that 75% of new fans were women, many of them Gen Z. The F1 Academy, an all-female racing series, has accelerated that trend. Ferrari's app developers designed the new experience with that audience in mind, emphasizing accessibility and removing jargon that older fans took for granted.
Ferrari processes race data at a scale that makes manual content creation impractical. A tire change during a pit stop involves 24 people working simultaneously in under two seconds—granular details that fans want but that require AI systems to surface and contextualize. The app's AI companion fields questions about race strategy, driver performance, and team history, acting as an entry point for new fans who lack decades of background knowledge.
IBM's sports-partnership strategy treats fan apps as a proof point for enterprise AI adoption. Stanhouse, IBM's Vice President of Sports and Entertainment Partnerships, said sports offer a use case where people see AI's utility immediately because the results—race summaries, predictions, personalized feeds—are tangible and visible. The Ferrari app is a demonstration of how AI can analyze engagement signals, generate content, and personalize experiences at scale.
Ferrari's five-year vision with IBM aims to make every fan feel the experience was built specifically for them, whether they joined the fanbase 30 years ago or 30 days ago. The team is betting that personalized, AI-driven content will drive loyalty in a sport where fan acquisition has accelerated but retention remains unproven. The 62% engagement lift is early validation, but the roadmap depends on continuing to deliver more data, more insight, and more features as fan expectations rise.
The risk is that fans demanding more will outpace what AI systems can deliver without hallucination or drift. Ferrari's telemetry data is structured and verifiable, which limits some of the failure modes that plague consumer-facing AI products. But as the app scales to personalized predictions and deeper interactivity, the margin for error narrows. IBM and Ferrari are running a test case for whether AI can sustain year-round engagement in a sport where the calendar runs only 24 race weekends.
“With IBM, the vision for the next five years is to make every fan feel like the experience was built for them, whether they have been with us for 30 years or 30 days. That is how you build loyalty that lasts.”— Stefano Pallard, Ferrari Head of Fan Development
Ferrari's partnership is a vertical-integration play for IBM, positioning the company's AI stack as the infrastructure layer for fan engagement across sports. The 62% lift and the 75% demographic shift are the numbers IBM will point to when pitching other teams and leagues. For Ferrari, the stakes are loyalty—turning casual Netflix viewers into Tifosi who stay engaged between races. The next five years will reveal whether AI can deliver that at scale or whether personalization remains a promise rather than a product.
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