WhatsApp Is Bringing It's F1 Fan Engagement Strategy to the Premier League
Having massively impressed with it's partnership in F1 over the last couple of seasons, WhatsApp is now taking it's innovative approach to fan engagement to the Premier League.
Welcome back to Sunday’s Sponsors, a Formula 1 sponsorship newsletter discussing partnership announcements and activations, with a particular focus on fan engagement and meaningful impact.
Arsenal Football Club have just announced their most recent partnership, a global deal with Meta (whose platforms include WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook and Messenger) that will focus on fan engagement and cultivating community.
Having followed WhatsApp’s activity with Mercedes-AMG Petronas F1 Team over the last couple of seasons, this move into football signals the brand’s confidence in their sports sponsorship to date, and a desire to bring the strategy to more global sports through official team partnerships and collaborations. Having made their first significant move into sports sponsorship through the Mercedes F1 deal in 2023, WhatsApp has been an impressive player in what is a very busy sponsorship ecosystem. With the ability to leverage their technology platforms with fan experience, Meta are able to elevate how viewers engage with and enjoy watching sport around the world.
The acceleration of a digital-first sports strategy could in part be linked to key personnel appointments at Meta. Rob Pilgrim, Head of Sport EMEA, joined the tech giant from YouTube last year to help drive the sports expansion in the region. Having previous acted as Head of Sports and Primetime at YouTube, Pilgrim clearly brings a lot of expertise in bringing premium, video content to fans.
The Arsenal Deal
This week, Arsenal F.C. announced their new global partnership with Meta. The collaboration aims to bring the worldwide community of Gooners together by establishing various community spaces online which will allow the club to nurture it’s loyal fanbase by facilitating dialogue, while also focusing heavily on hosting digital events and activations. The partnership will not only allow for the club to host online conversations, but also allow local supporters to find and connect with each other, strengthening their connection to the club and it’s fanbase.
Chief Commercial Officer of Arsenal F.C., Juliet Slot, captured the objective of the partnership, stating “Our partnership with Meta builds on how our supporters already come together, wherever they are in the world, and will create more ways to feel closer and more connected to our club.”
In many ways, it’s interesting that Meta is only now formalising official partnership deals with international football clubs given the size, expanse and habits of the these fanbases.
Fandoms have long been an extremely important part of football’s culture. Supporter clubs form a huge part of a club’s identity and heritage. The importance of these fan communities was recognised on traditional television coverage of football reporting with segments dedicated to fan voices, such as on Soccer AM which aired on Sky Sports from 1994 to 2023 and included a ‘Fans of the Week’ feature each episode. More recently, fans have turned to podcasts for football commentary and analysis, which have now also expanded into multiple formats that allow for the inclusion of fan conversation and debate. The Overlap, a sports media business previously owned by Gary Neville and recently purchased by the global podcast platform Global, has become host to some of the biggest football podcasts and live events. It’s ‘Fan Debate’ series now becoming a staple of the platform’s content, allowing fans the opportunity to have their say in the conversation with former professional players.
What WhatsApp is doing through their activations in sport are helping to facilitate these conversations directly at the source of the excitement, frustration or controversy - the WhatsApp message to a friend during a tense match or sharing a post-match meme that circulates every work or team Facebook group chat. The online conversation is instant, before it even has time to be brought into a podcast studio or a live television pundits panel, and Meta is helping Arsenal to be right at the source.
As an aside, Arsenal’s sponsor line-up interestingly features a lot of key players from F1’s own vast sponsorship portfolio including adidas, Emirates, Airwallex, Chivas Regal and Google.
How The Mercedes Deal Lay the Groundwork
WhatsApp first entered the Formula 1 circus in 2023 when it became an Official Partner of Mercedes. The team uses WhatsApp Business Platform for secure and streamlined communication across race weekends. The brand’s logo is also very cleverly & wittily placed on the mouthpiece of the team’s headsets meaning it’s typically shown on the broadcast when radio messages are being relayed to the drivers. When you think of Mercedes comms, you think of WhatsApp.
The team have also been using a WhatsApp Channel in order to communicate with fans, something which we will definitely see replicated by Arsenal for fan communication. With such a flurry of F1 content on social media, the Mercedes WhatsApp Channel allows for curated content specifically created for loyal Merc fans. Members of the channel get exclusive access to team news, behind-the-scenes insights and updates across race weekends.
Taking fan engagement offline, WhatsApp and Mercedes have also hosted annual events at the Las Vegas Grand Prix to celebrate women in the sport. The two sides hosted Her Turn: Lighting the Way, an exclusive dinner for women working in all facets of F1. The event gathered female content creators, industry leaders and Mercedes-affiliated F1 Academy driver Doriane Pin to celebrate and encourage women’s involvement in the sport. This initiative shows that the brand also desires to make meaningful impact offline.
Other fun elements of the partnership that have driven lots of positive sentiment have been the Mercedes black car emoji on WhatsApp (if you haven’t already, send the red F1 car emoji to someone on WhatsApp and watch it turn into a mini-Mercedes car). Kimi Antonelli’s signing to the team was also announced to him via a WhatsApp call with team boss Toto Wolff, which was recorded and featured in the Netflix documentary The Seat, which showcased the role that WhatsApp communication played in announcing the young Italian’s debut at the team.
OffBall x WhatsApp Smash Hit Collaborations
WhatsApp collaborated with sports media startup OffBall a number of times last year, creating the ultimate interactive sports fan group chat. This was a sensationally innovative and fresh approach to fan engagement.
For the 2025 United States Grand Prix, the two sides hosted a live watch-along with former F1-driver Daniel Ricciardo. Using the Communities function on WhatsApp, a limited number of F1 fans were invited into a group chat (‘The Chat’) with Ricciardo live reacting to the race. As F1 continues to hone in on ways to engage it’s younger, digital-first fans, WhatsApp and Offball first-of-its-kind approach to fan engagement in this way was a very clever play.
The two sides had success with the format with basketball legend LeBron James, who participated in a group chat sharing his reactions during the 2025 NFL Draft. Since then, ’The Chat’ has covered other NBA games as well as the NFL, with Kylie Kelce reacting to an Indianapolis Colts vs. Kansas City Chiefs game last November.
This is an excellent fan engagement piece from WhatsApp for many reasons. It doesn’t even try to cut through the sponsorship noise taking place at these huge sports events, it takes it’s message online and carves out it’s own space to engage & communicate with fans. It’s an activation that is solely focused on driving the feeling of community & connection with and between fans, with a primary focus on younger, digitally-savvy fans. Fans are given exclusive access to high-profile sports stars, without an extortionate price tag.
Through their commercial partnerships, WhatsApp is elevating the fan experience of watching a sports event from anywhere in the world, disrupting the way teams and clubs can capture fan attention and approach engagement.
Content That Informed & Inspired This Post
🔗 ‘Arsenal’s New Meta Partnership Targets the Spaces Where Fandom Lives’
🔗 Arsenal & Meta partnership press release.
🔗 ‘YouTube’s Rob Pilgrim joins Meta to lead sports drive in EMEA’
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