Company

Formula E is the world’s first all-electric FIA World Championship. It races on street circuits in cities around the world, so fans can watch the action right where they live.

Allianz has been Formula E’s official insurance partner since 2017, and its name is on the fan zone at every race: the Allianz E-Village. On a normal race weekend, it welcomes up to 40,000 fans a day, who come to watch on big screens and meet the drivers.

For Allianz, the E-Village is the heart of the sponsorship. It’s where the brand stops being a logo on the car and becomes part of the day fans remember. It’s also where Allianz meets fans face to face, the people it wants to know and stay in touch with long after the race.

But in 2020, fans couldn’t attend races at all.

Challenge

The pandemic stopped Formula E’s 2019/20 season after five races. To finish it, Formula E planned six races in nine days at Berlin’s Tempelhof Airport, all behind closed doors.

That kept the racing going, but it left a big gap. Race day is built around fans: the noise, the flags, the reactions the cameras cut to. Without them, Formula E had to keep a global fanbase watching from home, and make them feel part of it.

Those fans needed somewhere to go, too. Teams, drivers, partners and Formula E would all be posting race weekend content on their own channels. Left to social media alone, the story of the finale would be scattered across feeds, and Formula E’s own channels would miss out.

And for Allianz, closed doors meant no E-Village. The heart of its sponsorship was gone, along with its chance to meet fans in person. Allianz needed a new way to reach them, and something real to show for the partnership at the end.

Solution

So Formula E partnered with Amondo to bring the fans back to the race, wherever they were watching. It started with the Berlin finale and carried on through the 2020/21 season, across Formula E’s website, official app, big screens and broadcast studio.

Fans back on the broadcast

With no crowd for the cameras to cut to, Formula E brought the fans into the coverage instead.

Amondo’s screen solution, which puts curated content live on any screen, went into the broadcast studio. The best fan posts played on the studio’s big screen, and presenters picked them out and talked about them live on air, in front of viewers around the world.

Fans at home could post about the race, then see their own posts on the broadcast. Instead of just watching, they became part of the show. It gave the coverage the buzz an empty grandstand couldn’t.

The studio screen stayed part of the broadcast through the 2020/21 season.

The whole race weekend in one place

Every race got its own Gallery in the Race Hub on Formula E’s website and app. Posts from teams, drivers, partners and fans sat side by side, so fans had one place to follow everything instead of hopping between feeds.

Amondo’s Click-Through Tiles turned that attention into action. Sitting right inside the Gallery, they let fans take part in fan voting, download content, jump to partner promotions and race reports, and, later in the season, shop the Formula E store.

Every tap was a fan choosing to go further, not an ad getting in the way. And because the Gallery lived on Formula E’s own channels, the traffic and the data were Formula E’s to keep.

“We’ve been able to use the race Gallery as a one-stop shop for all Formula E content — creating a simple user journey.”

Emily Hirth

Digital Products, Formula E

An E-Village fans could visit from the sofa

With the real E-Village closed, Formula E built a virtual one. A second Gallery, branded with Allianz, let fans share their race-day moments from home, right next to Allianz’s messages and promotions.

That put Allianz inside the fan experience, not around it. And because every click on a partner promotion was tracked, Allianz could see exactly what the partnership delivered.

“It’s great that we can deliver something really valuable to our partners, with no additional time and effort required from them.”

Emily Hirth

Digital Products, Formula E

Back in the E-Village for Season 8

By Season 8 in 2022, the crowds were back, and Formula E brought Amondo with them. This time its events team took the idea into the real Allianz E-Village, at every E-Prix from Diriyah onwards.

Fans scanned a QR code on the screens and sent in their photos and videos through Amondo’s Form Tile, in a few taps on their phone. Their posts went up on Allianz-branded screens around the village, so a fan’s race-day selfie became part of the show, with Allianz right beside it.

Every submission came with the rights to use it and the fan’s consent to hear from Formula E and Allianz. Allianz was back to meeting fans face to face, and this time it could stay in touch with them afterwards. Anonymous faces in the crowd became known contacts for both. And Formula E built up a library of real fan content to use across its social and marketing long after race day.

Fans who couldn’t make it weren’t left out. The virtual E-Village stayed live online, so fans at home could add their own posts alongside the crowd’s. Allianz promotions sat right beside them, reaching fans at home as well as in the village.

Results

In Berlin and through the 2020/21 season, fans who couldn’t be at the track came to the race anyway, on Formula E’s own channels. For Allianz, the partner promotion click-through rate was more than 17 times the roughly 0.5% average for display ads. Fans were happy to go from the race straight to the sponsor.

• The average session length in the race Galleries was 1 minute 42 seconds, meaning fans weren’t just checking a result. They stayed to explore the whole race weekend.

“It was great to be able to integrate our fans into the Formula E experience while racing behind closed doors. Using Amondo has helped increase traffic to the website and various other digital products with its simple user journey.”

Emily Hirth

Digital Products, Formula E

In Season 8, with the crowds back, the E-Village became a steady source of fan content and known contacts for Formula E and Allianz.

• The interaction rate was 107%, meaning that on average, every visitor tapped into the content more than once.

• The average session length was 1 minute 17 seconds, meaning fans gave the experience well over a minute, not a passing glance.

What started as a way to keep fans close behind closed doors became how Formula E brings fans and sponsors together at every race: on the broadcast, online and in the E-Village. And because all of it was measured, Allianz never had to take the value of its partnership on trust.