Welcome to 2026!

Let’s pretend I didn’t disappear for over half a year. Sometimes life gets in the way! A reminder: even if I run out of time to write these newsletters as frequently as I would like, you can always find me on LinkedIn where I share shorter analyses and mini case studies.

To kick us off for a new Formula 1 season full of new teams, new regulations and new drivers, I thought it would be a good idea to explore the current state of fan clubs on the grid. In 2024 I did a deep dive on the Formula 1 fan club landscape, and in 2025 I wrote a shorter update highlighting the off-season changes across the grid. Given a lot has changed in two years, it’s once again time for a deep dive.

As a quick refresher, fan clubs - or membership programs - are primarily digital forms of fan engagement that allow fans across time zones and the socioeconomic spectrum to stay connected to an organisation without having to pay a fee. Distinct from the season ticket campaigns and portals we see in many sports, fan clubs allow fans to build a sense of community while teams can collect the kind of first-party data that social media withholds.

Ideally, they should be fully fleshed out platforms with multiple engagement touchpoints, modes of participation, and exclusive content and rewards. As we’ll see, however, this isn’t always the case.

I’ve broken down the current state of the grid into three categories: the platforms, the newsletters, and the sign-up forms.

Because I’m incapable of keeping anything short and sweet, I’ll be sharing this deep-dive in two parts so as not to overwhelm your inbox. Part one – which you’re currently reading – will look at the platforms. I’ll then be back in a few days with part two, which will explore the newsletters and sign-up forms.

Length: 3,500 words
Estimated reading time: 15mins

Aka the teams who have named a program and built out a degree of infrastructure.

The Premise:

Alpine launched their Rise+ platform at the beginning of the 2025 season. Rise+ falls into the gamified, competitive category of fan engagement platforms, with fans encouraged to earn points to prove their fandom.

Now. I have a lot to say about this approach to fan engagement. As I wrote in 2024, while I fully understand why organisations go down this path, it’s not without its issues:

Despite this, I do understand why this is a preferred approach to fan engagement for so many in the sporting world, even if I really wish it wasn’t.

The ways to participate:

Fans can earn points through a range of activities, including quizzes (10-50 points), polls (5-10 points), reading articles (1-5 points) and watching videos (1-5 points).

I have played around with the video system a bit and it seems like you need to watch at least half of the video to earn your points. Articles, however, seem to award points as soon as the page has been opened.

I don’t love that while you earn 5 points for engaging with content and videos from the team (aka actual thoughtful participation), you earn 10 for answering polls that are extremely clear data mining for their sponsors. Like, at least attempt some creativity here!

(A future report will be presented to MSC Cruises proudly proclaiming “36% of Rise+ Members have been on at least one cruise!” to help justify the partnership) (number completely made up by me).

And because every marketer needs to report on fun KPIs like “return visit” stats, fans are encouraged to regularly visit the Rise+ platform to “check in” and earn 1 point a day. Just like your favourite coffee shop, after six visits, you will get a bonus 20 points (thankfully, these visits do not have to be on consecutive days).

It’s an easy tactic that does nothing to encourage actual community building, but we all know how much execs like everything to be data-driven.

The rewards:

When I started writing this post at the beginning of February, I quickly noticed a glaring error in the rewards section of the platform. As you can see in the below screenshot (apologies that it’s so dark - I hadn’t “reached” P7 so it’s showing a “future” achievement), despite Jack Doohan being dropped as a main Alpine driver in mid-2025, and officially leaving the team in early January 2026, he was still listed as being part of a key reward that fans could achieve.

As I wrote on LinkedIn, this is less than ideal, as it gives the impression that you view your fan engagement platform as “set and forget” and aren’t committed to providing regular updates and new features and rewards for your fans.

Soon after my post, the rewards section was scrubbed clean and now simply states that new rewards are coming soon. Which, given we’re so close to the start of the new season and teams are in the middle of revealing their liveries, testing, and hyping fans, still isn’t ideal, but I guess it’s better than being completely out of date.

I’ll be watching closely to see when they update this section, and what rewards they offer for 2026.

The premise:

The Aston Martin’s I/AM program doesn’t have the same dashboard-style layout that Alpine, Red Bull and now Williams favour, but it does have the strongest fan-first presentation.

Rather than being something you have to “prove”, under I/AM fandom is presented as something to be rewarded and that is essential to the existence of the team itself.

The ways to participate:

Unlike the points-based systems of Alpine, Red Bull and now Williams, Aston Martin focuses on creating unique experiences to engage their fans.

In 2025, Aston Martin went all in on what they describe as “I/AM DROPS”, carefully curated experiences at select Grands Prix across the year.

My favourite of these in 2025 was the TikTok-partnered FanMade Drop, launched around the Silverstone Grand Prix. This Drop had an IRL component with fans able to grab an Aston Martin-themed Matcha and fan-zine in London. They could also win a VIP Silverstone experience, or one of 100 Aston Martin-green nail kits (I’m still devo I didn’t get one of these!).

I was also very intrigued by the Toy Story Drop at the end of the season, but the fact it was never available as actual merch and could only be won was slightly puzzling as an overarching creative concept.

Yes, I understand exclusivity, but it just feels like so much effort for a fully-fledged campaign that you can’t actually engage with in any way. The other Drops all had at least some kind of way fans could participate, even if they were usually highly-location specific.

The rewards:

I’ve long appreciated Aston Martin’s Surprise and Delight style marketing at Grands Prix, where fans are rewarded for simply being in attendance in Aston merch.

Unlike the teams who tie rewards to point collection, Aston are big on celebrating all of their fans. Most of their prizes are available via global lottery-based giveaways, and then fans who attend Grands Prix have the additional chance to be surprised should they encounter a member of the marketing team at the right moment. This creates a much greater sense of community, where anyone could be included and thanked for showing their support.

The premise:

Mercedes are the biggest fan club movers and shakers on the grid, evolving from sending a sales newsletter in 2024, to now having a fully-fledged fan section on their website, complete with mission statement.

I was a bit of a vocal critic of Mercedes’ fan engagement approach prior to 2025, but I’m happy to give credit where credit is due and praise the effort they’re now putting in to connecting with their fans.

The ways to participate:

While there is a leaderboard feature in the fan zone section of the Mercedes website, Mercedes fall more in line with Aston Martin than the teams who want fans to compete for points. While collecting points does unlock the ability to earn additional prizes, it’s an extra rather than central part of the participation experience.

At the moment, registration is mostly to give you access to competitions and giveaways than to unlock other exclusive forms of participation. However, the Mercedes platform is definitely still evolving, and I’ll be watching closely to see what they roll out across 2026.

The rewards:

Mercedes don’t have “official” rewards in the same way that Alpine, Red Bull and Williams do, but they regularly run competitions and giveaways, and towards the end of 2025 they held their first virtual driver Q&A (more of this from the grid in 2026, please!).

Mercedes also have some wallpapers and virtual driver cards available for download, for fans who want an official look and feel on their devices.

The premise:

Red Bull’s “My Paddock” is the longest-standing of the three points-based fan engagement platforms on the grid.

Much like Alpine, fans can collect points by participating in a range of activities. Points can then be “spent” on prizes and exclusive opportunities.

When I wrote about the fan club landscape back in 2024, I discussed the issues I had with the layout of Red Bull’s platform (which was then called The Paddock instead of My Paddock). These issues remain: the overwhelming friction of seeing your lack of progress upon logging in as a new fan is a barrier that doesn’t need to exist.

As a user, it also annoys me that I’m listed as being a “Rising Star”, but there’s no information on what other categories there are, and how many points I would need to make them. Both Alpine and Williams clearly outline what you need to do to level up, and it feels like a big missing piece of the Red Bull platform.

The ways to participate:

Red Bull have a section of My Paddock deemed the “Activity Hub”, where fans can participate in various ways to earn points.

The easiest of these when you first join is to simply visit their social media profiles for 25 points a pop.

However, once you’ve hit up all of their socials, My Paddock is currently a bit lacking in other things to do. You could send Isack Hadjar a good luck message for ten points, but it’s otherwise been pretty quiet on the activity front. There have been three quizzes this month, but unlike Alpine and Williams there haven’t been any videos or articles to read for easy points (or just to stay engaged).

Interestingly, Red Bull are currently the only team who don’t give participation points. Alpine and Williams reward fans for the simple act of attempting a quiz, while Red Bull sets a score minimum in order to collect. As a non-fan and someone who isn’t super up-to-date on the minutiae of the team, I have scored a grand total of 0 points from the three attempted quizzes. Whoops.

The rewards:

Red Bull have a clear section of their website that allegedly is regularly updated with new rewards. However, in the two years I’ve been monitoring the platform, it’s been very hit and miss.

Take right now, for example, with a completely empty prize draw section (I did enter a giveaway earlier in the month, but surely you should keep giveaways up with an “already entered” sign to avoid looking like there’s nothing happening).

Giveaways also require fans to “spend” points, which again, isn’t my favourite system, especially when you’re not super consistent in giving fans ways to actually earn them. While fans can spend points, Red Bull distinguishes between “available points” and “lifetime points”, with the latter counting towards your overarching rank. This means that spending points won’t drop you down categories.

There is also a section for “instant redemptions”, but the points required are quite steep. If you’re really good at quizzes, I suppose you would only need to do 60 of them to earn enough for the merch currently on offer, and that would take you a casual…year and a bit. Easy.

This goes back to my earlier points around friction. If you look in the rewards section and see that nothing (other than virtual downloads) are available to you for under 3,000 points, it becomes a very real barrier to participation for all but a select section of your fans. Yes, you can’t offer free merch to every fan, but at what point does “exclusivity” become more important than actual community and thoughtful engagement? What happens when fans feel like it’s too much work to even try?

The premise:

If you’ve followed me for a while, you would know I’m a big fan of what Williams do on the fan engagement front. However, their recently-launched “W Club” makes me nervous.

Just like Alpine and Red Bull, Williams are moving to a points-based system for 2026. Fans begin on the “Grid”, and are challenged to earn points and rise through to “Legend” status (which requires 1500 points).

Now. Returning to my overarching issues with points-based systems, 1500 is a lot of points for a fan to collect. If a fan checks in every week and updates their driver card (10 points per week), that’s ~450 points, and if they collect every race weekend badge (expected to be 10 points per badge), that’s another 240 points. That would take us to just around 700 points, which may seem like a decent amount for relatively little effort, but you’re only just a Champion and you have to remember that this will be your status at the end of the season (and year), right before the points are reset to zero. To become a Legend, you would need another 750+ points, which equals ~150 activities. Again, vaguely manageable if you don’t miss a single opportunity to earn points between now and Abu Dhabi in 42 weeks, but it feels almost impossible to achieve earlier in the season.

While there are lots of other ways to earn points (take quizzes, vote in polls, answer challenges…), what really makes me uneasy is the fact that you also earn 0.5 points per pound spent in their online store. And that this is the clear path to Legend status.

What I have always loved about Williams is their extremely inclusive approach to fan engagement. Until this point, everything in their strategy has been based on lottery systems and simple, free-to-access engagement that doesn’t discriminate against location or socioeconomic status. By adding a pay-to-play option, you’re immediately rewarding fans with disposable income, and who live in the UK (do not talk to me about merch shipping rates to Australia or I’ll cry). This is nothing new, but it is sad to see from a team who have until this point resisted such obvious forms of “spend to show your love” messaging.

By making one of the only mathematical ways for fans to actually rise through their ranks at a reasonable point in the season spending money on merch, they’ve suddenly created a huge system of inequality for fans.

I fully understand that in reality, most fans aren’t going to actually care about their rank, or really notice if they’re making their way through the categories. But as someone who wrote a PhD on fandom, consumption and the myth of the “biggest” fan, it’s obviously going to be on my mind. Williams are currently the only team who tie spend to point accumulation (Alpine offer fans a discount, the other three teams with platforms don’t currently have any form of reward or offer tied to merch), and it feels like a move in the wrong direction, especially given the global cost-of-living crisis. While I can understand the desire to reward fans who are buying through your store, it’s a narrow view that misses the bigger picture, and the system of unequal access it’s encouraging. Rather than such an obvious reward, why not have a stash of signed driver cards (even the digitally signed ones on offer at Fan Zones) that you throw in with random merch orders? Or QR codes that raise your chances of winning a virtual M&G? These don’t need to be advertised, and still do the job of showing your appreciation with spend without letting fans buy their way to status.

The ways to participate:

The good news first: it looks like the collectible badges are here to stay for 2026. The race week and points-scored badges have always set Williams apart on the grid, showing they understand collectible moments and repeat engagement without overwhelming fans with high stakes. I finally managed to collect every badge on offer in the 2025 season, and I’m keen to see if I can keep up my streak into 2026.

In addition to the badges, it mostly seems that, like Alpine, Williams have just added the ability to earn 5 points per activity to their existing modes of participation. They have always had polls and asked for fan input, but now taking part adds towards your rank. Unlike Alpine, as of right now, it doesn’t seem like article reads or video views count towards point accumulation, but I’m assuming that they’ll have to tie points to Team Torque views (surely, anyway).

While Alpine have their daily check-in for bonus points, to help the Williams marketing team meet their KPIs, fans are being offered a 10 point bonus if they customise their Fan ID once a week. It feels like a bit of a box-ticking exercise rather than actual authentic engagment or connection of any kind, but with only so many polls and quizzes to answer, if fans want to rise through the ranks, they’re going to have to do whatever it takes.

The rewards:

As previously outlined, the W Club splits fans into four ranks based on the number of points they have accumulated.

Rather than offering fans a specific reward for reaching a set number of points (or giving them the chance to “spend” them like Red Bull), fans are given access to increasingly exclusive opportunities the higher up the ranks they go (the most enticing of these being competitions with “better” prizes and less entrants, therefore increasing your chance of winning).

A big disappointment under the new system is that they have now locked “Ask The Team” as a reward under the Champion rank (700-1499 points). Until this point, Ask The Team-style activities have been open to all fans, and are how we were able to get the brilliance that was Sparkle in the 2025 season. By locking them behind a rank that would take an average fan a huge chunk of the season to achieve (if they do at all), who knows what kind of magic moments will be lost to barriers and friction. Maybe it’s just poor phrasing in their rewards messaging and this will be in addition to existing opportunities, but as of right now, I’m not holding my breath.

We also need to discuss that a major advertised perk under “Legend” status is “private fanzone”, as I’m a bit confused by the logistics of how that will play out. While the 2026 fan zone locations are yet to be announced, fans in Australia (where the first of the year has traditionally been held) - for example - are at a major disadvantage as short of dropping almost $6,000AUD on merch, there’s no way for them to reach Legend status prior to the Melbourne Grand Prix in the first week of March. Maybe that particular perk will carry over for fans who can only visit fan zones early in the year (i.e. fans who reach Legend Status in 2026 can access an exclusive zone in 2027), but it is yet to be clarified in any way. It also raises the question of fairness of access: what if you’re a fan who reaches Legend Status (aka a Big Deal), but you live in a country where you can’t access a fan zone? Is it just too bad, so sad? It feels like this is a perk that sounds good in theory, but hasn’t been thought through in reality. And look, maybe they won’t have to worry about it because it’ll take a while for fans to reach that level - if they ever do!

Under the Grid rank, “access to sweeps” is listed as a reward, and I really hope this will include their virtual meet and greets and Q&As. These have consistently been my favourite form of fan engagement from any team on the grid, and it would be a shame to lose them under this new system (or to see them locked behind higher fan ranks).

Okay! We’ve made it through the first five teams on the grid. I’ll be back soon with an exploration of what fan clubs are currently looking like for the remaining six teams!

‘til next time!

Georgia

ps. It’s less than three weeks until the lights go out in Melbourne! Let me know if you’ll be in town and want to catch up to chat fandom and fan engagement!

pps. Enjoy my work? You can buy me a coffee to say thanks. I’m working on setting up a paid subscription and paywalled resources, but for now, tips are always appreciated!