Formula E, an all-electric racing championship built around advanced technology, sustainability, and the future of mobility, has challenged conventions about what motorsport can be from the start. That forward-looking identity has made it a natural partner for Lenovo in exploring how technology can meet the changing expectations of the next generation of sports fans.
Fans increasingly engage with sport across venues, broadcasts and digital channels, and younger audiences in particular expect more than passive viewing. They want experiences that feel immediate, immersive, personalized, and participatory—bringing them closer to the competition and giving them more ways to engage with it.
That shift is reshaping the commercial opportunity for sports organizations. Research from Morgan Stanley indicates that closing sport’s digital gap could represent a 25% annual revenue opportunity for the industry, while 67% of sports leaders expect digital products to be their fastest-growing revenue stream over the next five years. For leagues, teams, venues, and broadcasters, the opportunity is to use technology not simply as an attraction, but as a way to deepen fan relationships and create new value around content, live events, sponsors, partners, and premium audiences.
Against that backdrop, Formula E chose Lenovo, its Official AR and Digital Content Provider, for its ability to combine edge AI innovation with deep technical expertise embedded in Formula E’s business and a focus on practical outcomes. Across AI Video Optimization, AI Fan Experience Guide, and AR broadcast graphics, the partnership is addressing different parts of the fan journey, including the quality of the onboard view, how fans explore Formula E, and how they encounter race data. Together, the projects show how AI can make sport more engaging while creating new possibilities for Formula E and its commercial partners.
“Formula E sets a new benchmark for speed, sustainability, and innovation in motorsport. As our global fan base grows, we want to create experiences that make people feel like active participants in the race-day story, not just spectators,” said Dan Cherowbrier, Chief Technology Officer, Formula E. “Our partnership with Lenovo gives us a practical way to explore and test how AI can bring fans closer to the sport while creating meaningful value.”
A clearer view from inside the race
Few perspectives put viewers closer to the speed and intensity of Formula E than the cameras mounted onboard the cars. Producing that view consistently, however, is difficult. Glare, haze, rapidly changing light, tunnels, and weather transitions can reduce visibility or create unnatural color casts, disrupting the visual continuity of the race. Correcting glare, haze, exposure, and color inconsistencies can require manual intervention from broadcast teams, adding time and effort to an already demanding live-production workflow.
Lenovo and Formula E explored whether AI could make that process faster and more consistent. Using actual onboard footage from night racing in Jeddah and daytime racing in Monaco, AI dynamically adapted image quality to changing visual conditions, correcting color and improving clarity before comparing the enhanced footage with the originals.
In a pilot tested and validated by Formula E, the system completed image enhancement in under three seconds, supporting near-real-time correction without disrupting the at-home viewing experience. The AI also produced more natural-looking footage, bringing the color balance of green-tinted night footage to 3.4x its original level while significantly reducing the heavy yellow tint in footage from the Monaco tunnel. A separate test improved clarity in hazy daytime footage.
For fans watching at home, a higher-quality, more consistent broadcast preserves one of motorsport’s most visceral views, keeping them immersed in the race as cars move between dramatically different environments. For Formula E and its broadcast partners, the technology can improve visual continuity, reduce some of the manual correction required behind the broadcast, and enhance premium broadcast and digital content. Designed to extend across different circuits, weather conditions and racing environments, the approach can give Formula E a differentiated, AI-powered broadcast capability that scales across the Championship.
Turning Formula E knowledge into a personal experience
Part of becoming a fan is following your curiosity. Learning about the drivers, cars, circuits, rules and history creates a stronger connection to the sport and gives every race more meaning. And for fans accustomed to interactive digital experiences, the way they discover that knowledge can be part of what draws them in. Formula E, meanwhile, has a deep body of information across all of those areas, but it traditionally sits across different sources. Finding the right information can require fans to know where to look, navigate static content, or wait for assistance.
The AI Fan Experience Guide turns that search into an immediate, personal conversation with a lifelike digital human, allowing fans to ask naturally about the Championship, a driver, circuit, or technical rule. The same experience could also help racegoers find practical venue and crowd guidance, giving them one intuitive way to explore both the sport and the event around them.
Lenovo xIQ handled Formula E knowledge retrieval and response generation behind the digital-human experience. The teams prepared and structured Formula E content for AI retrieval, refined how the system located and grounded information, and tested hundreds of questions to improve accuracy, reliability, and speed.
Developed in under 30 days, the experience achieved more than 95% answer accuracy across the connected knowledge base and delivered responses in under one second. It gives fans immediate access to Formula E knowledge while allowing each person to follow the subjects that interest them most.
New fans can become familiar with the sport more quickly, while experienced fans can go deeper into its stories, technology, and competition. The same foundation can be replicated across races and venues, provide scalable digital support for routine information and guidance requests, and reduce pressure on event staff.
The opportunity also extends beyond answering questions. By creating a path for fan registration and data capture, the experience can support more personalized engagement over time and help Formula E build stronger direct relationships with its audience. Those registered relationships can provide a foundation for future commercial activation, relevant offers, and new revenue opportunities—turning a moment of curiosity into an ongoing connection with the sport.
Turning race data into part of the action
Formula E generates enormous amounts of vehicle and race data. Speed, energy strategy, ATTACK MODE, G-force, position and the gap between cars can all shape how the competition unfolds, but viewers cannot always experience that dimension of the race through the broadcast alone.
Bringing selected data into the visual story can heighten the drama of decisive moments and give fans more to follow, discuss and anticipate. By making live race dynamics easier to understand, it can enrich the at-home viewing experience and help audiences become more invested in what is happening on the track.
Formula E and Lenovo developed an AR broadcast concept centered on a selected car and a key race moment. The heads-up display is designed to surface more than 10 real-time data points directly within the in-car broadcast view, with less than one second between live vehicle data and the information appearing on screen. The design can incorporate speed, energy, ATTACK MODE status, laps, G-force, position, gap and trajectory while remaining readable and avoiding obstruction of sponsor content. Formula E contributes the source data, broadcast workflows, sporting context and standards, while Lenovo brings data processing, AI, HUD design and integration expertise.
Greater visibility into vehicle performance and energy strategy can help newer audiences follow the race while giving experienced fans more context behind each decision on the track. The same format can also create new sponsorship inventory by associating brands with individual data points, graphics or broadcast segments, enabling branded AR experiences and data-led commercial activation.
Bringing the future of sport closer
A clearer onboard image can preserve the intensity of the race. A natural conversation can turn curiosity into a deeper connection with the sport. A well-timed data overlay can reveal the strategy and tension within a decisive moment. Each project gives fans another way into the action and makes the experience richer, closer and more personal, whether they are at the circuit or watching from home.
For Formula E, this can mean a stronger broadcast product, more valuable content, deeper fan relationships and new opportunities for sponsors and partners. The work also captures Lenovo’s broader ambition across global sport. By combining AI, data, infrastructure, devices and services, Lenovo can help turn promising ideas into experiences that work in real venues, broadcasts and digital channels.
“What makes Formula E such an exciting innovation partner is the opportunity to explore how AI can bring people closer to the sport across the entire fan journey,” said Santi Manso, Global Head of Sports & Entertainment, Lenovo. “Together, we’re turning technology into experiences that feel more immediate, immersive and personal, while building the foundation to deliver them at scale and create new value for the sport and its partners.”
Taken together, these initiatives offer a glimpse of what comes next for sport, with experiences that give fans more to explore, more ways to participate and more reasons to remember the action.
