Spotlight on: Competitions and Giveaways

Hello my Formula 1 Friends!

After my unintentional break and the brief ticketing interlude last week (you’ll be pleased to hear that I did manage to get tickets so I will be in Albert Park in March!), we’re back to our regularly scheduled programming!

And what’s better to bring us back into fan engagement tracking than looking at something we all love: competitions.

I am a competition addict. And I’m an addict for a very good reason: back in 2014, I won an all-expenses paid trip to Paris (plus shopping money!), and this opened my eyes to the fact that people do in fact win cool giveaways. Despite the fact I’m pretty sure I used up all of my competition luck with that win, I still happily share all of my data whenever something crosses my feed just in case this is the time when I once again win big.

Jump ahead

• Competitions as Fan Engagement

• Competitions in the F1 World

  • Experiences

  • Sponsor tie-ins

  • Gamification

  • The basics

• Conclusion

Competitions as Fan Engagement

So. Let’s get this out of the way up top: competitions are not fan engagement in and of themselves. They make up part of your overarching fan engagement strategy, but they are ultimately a one-way mode of data collection rather than communication. Yes, your fans are engaging with a form/game/etc. you created, however, this is not a reciprocal connection. If you’re simply offering competitions but not nurturing the relationship in any other ways, you’re not actually connecting with your fans. Competitions are a tool, but they are not a solution.

Brief Aside: The fine print

I spent a number of years working in a role that involved assisting with a lot of giveaways, both through our own channels and as partners to other organisations. This means I’ve also drafted my fair share of competition T&Cs over the years. So, I know that (especially as an Aussie) the first step in any competition is checking to see if you’re actually eligible to enter because a lot of giveaways are limited to certain regions. Step two is checking the number of entries you’re allowed to make, as I frequently see fans entering multiple times on “comment to win” social media giveaways only for the fine print to say that multiple entries mean an automatic disqualification. Don’t lose your chance!

Competitions in the F1 World

We can broadly divide competitions in the F1 world into four categories:

1. Experiences

2. Sponsor tie-ins

3. Gamification

4. The basics

Each of these serves a slightly different purpose (are you wanting to boost your mailing list vs. build a sponsor’s list vs. increase website visits vs. rewarding loyal fans vs. getting attention vs. etc. etc. etc.), so let’s dive in to see what they look like in practice.

Experiences

Much like the trip I won to Paris, experiences are the gold tier giveaway offering. The rate at which they are offered by each team varies, but most will have at least one Big Fancy Prize per year.

There are a few levels of experience offered through these competitions.

The most basic is the factory tour, as offered by McLaren. The factory tour is also one of the most restricted forms of prize, as they are reliant on the prize winner making their own way to the location in England.

On a similar level, we have this recent Austin experience from Aston Martin. Depending on your interest in the sport, a watch party with a chance to meet team personnel could be seen as a step above a factory tour. It’s also a chance for non-European fans to have a factory-adjacent experience. Teams throw similar events for their sponsors and VIP guests all of the time, so opening one up to fans isn’t too much effort for them, but can make a huge difference in ongoing loyalty and connection for the fans who get to attend.

The VIPs

Moving on to the bigger ticket items, teams will occasionally offer major prizes that include trips to a race. The biggest one I’ve spotted from a team this year is the Williams Las Vegas VIP Package which includes flights, accommodation, paddock passes, and the potential for driver meet and greets.

Also offering a VIP Vegas competition is Mercedes, which I spotted on my LinkedIn of all places. Slightly less flashy than Williams, you won’t get into the paddock with this prize, but you will get into their hospitality suite. And with the going rate for Vegas tickets being what it is, this is definitely an experience that most of us couldn’t buy!

In a slight contrast to the flashiness of Vegas, VCARB offered an Austin Grand Prix giveaway. It’s a little less luxurious with grand stand tickets the primary offer vs. hospitality or Paddock, but while it’s not as big and exclusive, it’s still a prize fans would be thrilled to win.

Sponsor tie-ins

Quite often, competitions shared by teams are actually just a way to try and get data for their sponsors. As I mentioned earlier, I’m happy to give away all of my data for the chance to win, so yes, in the example below from McLaren and SunGod my inbox is now flooded with emails advertising sunglasses I will never buy because I wanted the chance to win one of these teammate portraits (alas, I was not the lucky winner. Maybe next time).

This was a super clever activation by SunGod as they went above the base level of just offering their product as a prize. That may sound like a bare minimum expectation, but you would be surprised at how often an organisation thinks the very act of sponsorship association is enough to gain - and keep - fan attention.

If SunGod had offered a giveaway of their products through McLaren channels they would have received entries (and the associated data) because people love the chance to win things. But by tying their brand to a competition that is both 1) completely unique, and 2) heavily tied to the drivers, they would have increased the number of entries into the competition, and gained a reputation amongst fans for being fun and creative.

Another example of a sponsor tie-in giveaway is the offering from Marriott Bonvoy and Mercedes. The prize includes flights, accommodation (obviously), race tickets, and a M&G with Lewis. They ran a similar giveaway earlier in the year which I forgot to screenshot, but but rather than Lewis and Abu Dhabi, it was a package for the Singapore Grand Prix featuring Mick Schumacher.

McLaren have also partnered with their sponsors for experience-based prizes, including the below Hilton Silverston experience (although notably, this only included a Saturday ticket to Silverstone which feels like a bit of a cheat!).

Another McLaren example comes from their partnership with their crypto sponsor OKX where an NFT-based collectible lottery gave certain fans the chance to win a Silverstone VIP experience. As I wrote about in my post on these collectibles, I’m not a fan of tying big ticket prizes like this to crypto, especially when fans in many markets aren’t eligible to enter due to financial rules. We get it, crypto = (short term) cash, but there are better ways to offer your fans big prizes.

Gamification

Gamified giveaways are those where the casino principle is applied and rather than a random-draw approach, fans are encouraged to spin/race/compete/etc. in various ways. I follow a few of the companies behind these initiatives on LinkedIn and when they discuss their products they emphasise the spikes in repeat user activity and time on site vs. a traditional form. I’ve previously written about how these short-term spurts of engagement seen when fans play games aren’t reflective of actual engagement or connection, but rather just show that fans like spinning things/playing games. The trick is to follow up with proper engagement once you have their attention, and some organisations do that far better than others.

So, what do gamified giveaways actually look like in F1 at the moment?

Alpine have leaned heavily into the “gamified competitions are central to fan engagement” strategy in recent months, starting with their “spin to win” game that runs each race week. Fans are encouraged to enter their details, spin the wheel, and are in with a shot to win everything from a M&G (geography-locked) to merch to a 10% store discount. I’ve played a few times and have probably landed on “no prize” for half of my entries, and the 10% discount half of them (which I’ve never used because shipping to Australia is the worst).

Their latest offering combines a game with an Ultimate Experience, offering the lucky fan who reaches the highest score on their “Rush” game the chance to head to the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix in December. Rush reminds me of the dinosaur game on Chrome that you play when your internet doesn’t work, in that you’re moving through very basic obstacles, with an added option to pick up boosts.

Clearly people have a lot more patience than I do, as I lost concentration (and therefore my remaining lives) around the 3,000 points mark, only to go to the leaderboard and discover that some people had over a million. Surely some kind of automated system is involved at that point??? After noticing that six-figure difference between myself and the leaders, my interest in the game disappeared, which I have to imagine was a common experience.

A different kind of gamified experience was offered by Williams in London and Singapore, where they combined their fan app, Fan Zones, and recent foray into augmented reality (AR) to create a real-world scavenger hunt game.

I love this because it encourages:

1. Engagement with their app

2. Engagement with their Fan Zone

3. Exploration of the city

4. Community (explore with friends, or meet others playing at the same time!)

This is the kind of creative game-based giveaway that crosses over into proper fan engagement and strategy. You’re not drawing fans to a standalone webpage for the sake of an entry, but building on their existing use of your app (and their existing collectibles within the app) and their real-world interaction at the Fan Zone to create a fun and memorable experience. If the Fan Zones are back in 2025, I really hope we’ll see the game in Melbourne so I can play!

The basics

And finally, we come to the most common giveaway: the (usually signed) piece of merchandise or memorabilia.

The below are examples that primarily come from team email communications. Email is the most frequent way you’ll hear about giveaways (teams like Haas advertise exclusive competitions as a key feature of their newsletter sign-up, for example), but every now and again you’ll spot them on social media or apps/websites. I’m just bad at file management and can search my inbox for keywords with a lot more ease than I can look for the many unlabeled and unfiled screenshots that currently live on my desktop, so email will have to do for today.

In my view, there’s not really a reason teams shouldn’t be running these kinds of giveaways on a permanently rolling basis. Even if you’re only randomly giving away two signed caps a month, it’s a relatively low cost (I’m sure the most expensive part would be shipping to international winners), and a high return from fans who feel like they have an ongoing shot at winning something they will treasure.

Conclusion

Competitions are great.

But teams – and anyone else in the fan-centric marketing world - need to remember that they’re just one part of a fan engagement strategy and not something you can rely on as your complete effort.

My top tips: