Engaging fans beyond the finish line: Lessons from F1

IN RECENT years, brands have increasingly looked to major sporting occasions as platforms to engage audiences in meaningful ways. In South-east Asia, few events reflect this better than the F1 Singapore Grand Prix, which has evolved from a night race into a global showcase of high-octane motorsport and world-class entertainment. 

The 2024 event attracted more than 269,000 fans across the race weekend, while this year’s ticket packages sold out well ahead of time. 

For businesses across industries, the race offers valuable lessons on elevating customer and fan engagement. From personalised pre-event communications to interactive onsite experiences, each touchpoint is a chance to create meaningful, data-driven interactions that build a lasting impact well beyond the event. 

Winning fans before the race

Fan engagement begins long before the first car crosses the start line. The pre-race period is a critical window in building fan loyalty. Done well, it creates anticipation; done poorly, fans may ignore promotions or abandon ticket purchases.

This is also the moment when fans’ questions spike – whether about tickets, upgrades, merchandise or hospitality packages. While traditional chatbots can handle basic queries, they often struggle with more complex, multi-step requests and nuanced questions as they rely on scripted responses. Fans can easily get frustrated by repetitive or rigid responses, abrupt handoffs, or delays in addressing specific needs.

Conversational artificial intelligence (AI) can help address these limitations by leveraging advanced natural language processing to interpret nuanced intent, including multi-step questions (a user input that contains multiple, often dependent queries), ambiguous requests, and sentiment cues. This allows brands to give accurate, context-aware responses instead of generic replies. 

For example, conversational AI can recognise a fan’s hotel booking, suggest upgrades such as suites with track views, answer follow-up questions, and even process the reservation. More complex requests can be handed off to human agents without losing context.

Revving up fan engagement

Once the race weekend commences, the challenge shifts from capturing attention to maintaining fan enthusiasm. Fans are no longer passive spectators – they expect to participate and engage in real-time. 

In Singapore and the wider Asian region, gamification has emerged as a popular strategy to cater to the new generation of sports fans. Merchandise vendors and hospitality partners around major sporting events are increasingly incorporating interactive elements into their offerings. For instance, fans might be invited to predict outcomes to earn rewards such as discounts, exclusive collectibles, or VIP experiences and upgrades.

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SMS was once the default channel for notifying fans about games and contests, but its static, text-only format falls short of today’s expectations. Without support for interactive elements like buttons, carousels or quick replies, it limits fan engagement opportunities and often forces fans to take extra steps such as visiting a website.

Instead, brands can consider Rich Communication Services (RCS), which enables the delivery of interactive, multimedia-rich messages directly to a fan’s native messaging app. A recent Futurum Research study found that brands leveraging RCS achieved 32 per cent higher customer engagement and conversion rates compared to traditional SMS. With RCS, brands can incorporate high-resolution images, graphic formats like GIFs, real-time race updates, polls, and actionable buttons, allowing fans to participate in prediction contests, purchase merchandise, or book VIP hospitality packages. 

Such an ecosystem would still rely on a deep understanding of the fanbase. Sports events and clubs around the world are already realising the value of data-driven approaches in fan engagement. 

For instance, Volleyball World – a partnership between the sport’s global governing body FIVB and CVC Capital Partners – built a “single fan view” dashboard to unify all fan interactions across channels. They can now tell exactly when a fan stops watching a live over-the-top match and use this insight to improve how they engage and communicate with fans.

Retaining the human touch in AI interactions

Of course, technology alone cannot carry the race. While AI-driven contact centres can support fan engagement during peak traffic periods of sporting events, the human element is still crucial. 

A recent Twilio study found that 75 per cent of Singapore consumers expect AI-powered brand interactions to feel human. This means AI agents should not only answer questions correctly, but also match the tone and pace of conversation. Managing back-and-forth conversations and interruptions thoughtfully makes AI-driven interactions feel more fluid, natural, and easier to follow.

Custom AI voices modelled on real support agents make the transition between AI and humans seamless. By mimicking human speech patterns and emotions, AI voices feel more like actual staff rather than generic automated responses. When a fan requests a live agent, the voice assistant can collect relevant details beforehand and pass them on, so the fan doesn’t have to repeat information. This approach reduces wait times and keeps conversations consistent and smooth.

Sports events are entering a new era where fans no longer just watch but actively shape conversations, make predictions, and engage directly with teams and players. In this new landscape, leveraging innovation to drive hyper-personalisation while managing demand surges and humanising interactions can turn fleeting fan moments into last relationships that fuel both loyalty and growth.

The writer is vice-president of marketing for Asia-Pacific and Japan, Twilio. The organisation has no commercial relationship with F1.