That’s Edutainment – F1 aiming to connect with all levels of fandom on a daily basis

The Formula 1 fanbase has boomed in recent years but alongside the many new supporters of the series, there has also been a huge increase in the ways of consuming content.

With an ever-younger demographic, F1 can no longer solely rely on providing two hours of entertainment on a Sunday, once a fortnight, to satisfy the thirst its audience has for engagement.

As F1’s director of marketing, Donna Birkett Baida is somebody tasked with ensuring that fans are provided with the sort of content they crave.

She said at the Autosport Business Exchange: London: “We think about how we engage with fans, it's about everything from these big, magical moments and all the way through to ensuring that we are connecting with our fans day in, day out.

“That's certainly both race weekend as well as all of the experiences and the content and such that we can create outside of that.

“Just to give you a few examples: those big, magical moments that we think will surprise and delight our fans will be events like what we have on February 18, which is for the first time ever, bringing 20 drivers, 10 teams together to unveil their livery at the O2 Arena - the event's called F175 and it's going to be a spectacular event.

Donna Birkett Baida, F1 director of marketing, at the Autosport Business Exchange

Photo by: Getty Images

“Alongside all of that, there's going to be some amazing entertainment. So that's one great example of ‘how do we build excitement? How do we create these magical moments, surprise and delight moments for our fans?’”

Birkett Baida also stressed the importance of new content being created by F1 not only feeding the need of new fans, but that it also remains appealing to those who have been watching races for a longer period of time.

“We need to think about that alongside the question of what's that daily connection point, both from a content standpoint, how do we create content that's going to engage our fans and also educate,” she added.

“I use the term ‘edutainment’ a lot with my team, because while we think about mature markets like this one (the United Kingdom), where we have fans that know so much, there is so much depth and history and the sport in many of our newer markets, and I will include the US as being one of our newer markets, that depth of knowledge isn’t as deep.

“So educating our fans while we are entertaining them is incredibly important because what we have learned is that the more you learn, the more you love the sport and that is what we are trying to do.”