From F1 to football, Lenovo bets big on sport to boost global reach
The tech giant wants to make these major events more accessible and engaging for fans
[SINGAPORE] Every year, the Formula One (F1) season includes stops in almost every corner of the world – from Azerbaijan to Las Vegas, from Singapore to Monaco and elsewhere.
After each Grand Prix is done and dusted, the drivers and their teams pack up their race cars and equipment and fly to the next destination to do it all over again.
As recently as four years ago, those working in F1’s broadcast teams also followed the same punishing travel schedule, criss-crossing the globe in order to bring the images, videos and stories to more than 800 million fans.
Today, that massive media operation is centralised in one place: an unassuming industrial building in the south-east of London. There, the F1’s Media and Technology Centre (M&TC) is where more than 400 monitors are able to transmit race images in real time, and where they listen to all the drivers’ conversations.
A huge amount of data – 500 terabytes to be precise – is processed over a typical race weekend. And these are sent from the event technical centre down on the tracks to the M&TC with a delay of just 180 to 250 milliseconds, no matter where the Grand Prix is held.
One company that is playing a big role in making all this possible is the US-based tech giant Lenovo. Its hardware – everything from laptops, work stations, desktop computers, monitors and tablets to Motorola smartphones – is being deployed on the ground and at the M&TC.
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Lenovo became an official partner of F1 in 2022. In January this year, under an extension of the partnership, Lenovo was made a global partner; Motorola, a subsidiary of Lenovo Group, is now F1’s global smartphone partner.
Lenovo will also serve as the title sponsor for two races each season, which brings increased trackside branding for both Lenovo and Motorola at these events.
More sustainable races
Fan Ho, the company’s executive director and general manager of its Asia-Pacific solutions and services group, told The Business Times that the move to centralise the media operations in a single venue, rather than have the full team travel to all 24 Grand Prix locations, also helps make F1 a more sustainable event.
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“F1 is a sport that has quite an impact on the environment. So F1 is always looking at how it can commit to the targets (to reduce emissions and reach net-zero by 2030), while maintaining the excitement levels and delivering everything to the fans as fast as possible,” she said.
Ho, who is based in Hong Kong, was in town for the Singapore Grand Prix, together with other senior executives.
“With the advancement of technology and how effectively we can run things, we convinced the F1 management that we would be able to deliver the same quality and have the bulk of the equipment in the UK,” she added.
Ho also disclosed that Lenovo runs an asset-recovery service to ensure that retired hardware is properly recycled. Since the start of Lenovo’s partnership, F1 has managed to sustainably dispose of some 95 per cent of the obsolete hardware, which reduces costs and mitigates security risks through the reliable destruction of data.
Football fever
Other than F1, Lenovo is also going to play a major role at the 2026 Fifa World Cup to be held in North America in June and July.
Last October, football’s governing body Fifa named the tech giant as an official technology partner in a major deal that also includes the 2027 Women’s World Cup in Brazil.
The company will provide a range of technology solutions ranging from artificial intelligence to devices and data-centre infrastructure, all aimed at enhancing the global broadcasts and fans’ experience.
Lenovo and Motorola were also involved in the recent Fifa Club World Cup tournament held across the US.
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