Lenovo’s Charlotte West: tech can be ‘Powerful’ for sports Fans
Back in late May, ahead of this summer’s World Cup, Lenovo posted a piece to its StoryHub website wherein the company announced its support for the Football for All Leadership Program. Founded in 2018, Football for All is described by overseer Integrated Dreams as “the first international [program] specifically designed to promote employability, entrepreneurship and networking of disabled people in the sports world.”
“Today, Lenovo is supporting the advancement of the Integrated Dreams mission through the Football for All Leadership Programme, the first international programme specifically designed to promote employability, entrepreneurship and networking of people with disabilities in the sports world,” Lenovo wrote on May 26. “By funding the development of the Football for All technology programme, Lenovo is empowering people with disabilities to create a lasting positive impact for the community. But as accessibility experts know—you can’t just develop an app, share it with a community of users with disabilities, and assume it will work. That’s why Lenovo’s Head of Corporate Citizenship, Santiago Mendez, traveled to Morocco to complete user testing as part of the 2026 Football For All Leadership Program (FFALP), made possible by a grant from FIFA Foundation and the World Football Remission Fund.”
Earlier this month, I sat down via videoconference with Charlotte West, Lenovo’s vice president of global corporate communications and board director of the Lenovo Foundation. The Foundation is the company’s philanthropic arm, responsible for forging relationships with groups like Integrated Dreams and the Football For All Leadership Program. West described her roles as different but complementary halves, saying the work dovetails into Lenovo’s commitment to accessibility and furthering inclusion. “It’s all nicely aligned and complementary, I would say,” she said.
When asked how the FFALP connects to the World Cup itself, West explained Lenovo’s goal was not to approach FIFA with the idea of “[having] our logos around the side” of the pitch during the tournament’s matches. Rather, West told me Lenovo approached the opportunity with the mindset it could be a technological partnership; the company wanted to work with FIFA to “improve the fan experience,” she said, as well as for players, coaches, and other personnel. The overarching goal was to “make the World Cup accessible,” an adjective West told me she chose deliberately because it speaks well towards the ethos around democratizing the game for fans everywhere. “A lot of the technology was about doing things that allowed people to feel like they’re on the pitch and part of the match itself,” West said.
Accessibility, and inclusion, then became a double entendre for Lenovo and FIFA. It was not only about making soccer more accessible to people with disabilities, it made the sport more accessible for everyone to grok. The technologies, such as the ChatGPT-like FIFA AI Pro—which enabled fans to gain knowledge about the players from smaller countries like the African nation of Cape Verde—were deployed in a concerted effort to “[level] the playing field in terms of the kind of insights people could get access to about teams, data, performance, [and] past matches,” according to West.
For Integrated Dreams, Lenovo targeted them for a partnership “about nine months” prior to the World Cup kicking off. Lenovo, West said to me, prioritized “finding the right partners” who could help bolster not only inclusivity and philanthropy but sport as well. Lenovo hoped to find organizations who could help “do something meaningful that had longevity beyond the tournament.”
Working with FIFA is one thing, surely a big thing—but Integrated Dreams was something else.
“We’re always looking at what can be done well beyond that moment in time,” West said. “Whilst the World Cup was a moment in time this summer, we wanted to make sure it stood up for longer than that, and look at it as a long-term partnership and initiative.”
West emphasized Lenovo “didn’t start” at the outset thinking there would exist this Lenovo-FIFA-Integrated Dreams triumvirate. Indeed, the Football For All is its own entity. Nonetheless, she noted Lenovo did keep soccer’s governing body “up to date” on how things were going as they progressed with Integrated Dreams.
West said she’s gotten comments from people—who may not know the intricacies of her job—say they’re appreciative of the innovations wrought by Lenovo for the World Cup. The layering of technology onto sports makes the games more fun and engaging, and yes, more accessible to everyone. “I think anything that improves the [viewing] experience and the capabilities for us as fans is welcome,” West said. “Sometimes there is too much tech in sport, right? There’s some stuff that has been criticized in football, and other sports, where we’re giving too much over to technology. But when it comes down to improving the experience or improving access, that’s where technology can be really powerful.”
She continued: “I think this idea of focusing on improving the access and improving the experience is what people want, and we know generally from a trend perspective is people want want to be part of live experiences. If they can’t be in the physical environment, in terms of actually being in a stadium, to be able to bring a different experience if they’re viewing on their phone or at home is is only going to grow the interest and engagement in that sport. From a follow-on perspective since the World Cup, we’ve seen a lot of other sports reaching out to us as a company. Like, ‘Okay, that’s really interesting. What can you do for us?’”
Lenovo is the official technology partner for Formula 1 racing, and is looking forward to bringing technology to next year’s Women’s World Cup tournament in Brazil. Each sport, she said, has “a different vibe,” and with tech’s immutable path of progression, Lenovo is laser-focused on keeping up with trends and building the best, most accessible experiences for fans. Rest assured “the technology story doesn’t stop with the men’s World Cup,” West said.
“I’m excited for the Women’s World Cup because I think we can do different work there,” West said of Lenovo’s future work. “The men have been playing football forever. It’s the biggest sport in the world. The women’s sport is going massively, and there are some real rockstar female players in different corners of the world. I think there’s a real appetite to see women excelling at the highest level in sports like football, so I think there’s a different fact [around the women’s game]. It’s got a different energy and vibe around it versus the men’s. I think that means we can experiment more. We can do some more interesting things beyond just talking about the tech. We can talk more broadly. We can look at the partnerships that we have around the world with female-led philanthropy partners, for example, and explore opportunities there. It’s the same platform, but different because we can take it in a different direction.”
Lenovo’s efforts conjure memories of Apple’s own work in merging sports and technology. The latter has done invested heavily in Apple Immersive Video for Apple Vision Pro, first with the NBA’s Los Angeles Lakers and most recently a Yankees-Red Sox game from Fenway Park. Officially, Apple is marketing these ventures as ways to experience spatial computing and prop up the headset. From an accessibility perspective, however, these projects have tantalizing potential that I’ve written about before. Not everyone can afford a $3500 facial computer, but the salient point stands: the technology is capable of delivering engaging, more accessible experiences for sports fans who, on another financial note, may be unable to budget for the logistical considerations required for live sporting events. And that doesn’t even account for the accessibility of the venues themselves, as I’ve also covered in the not-so-distant past.
The takeaway here is Lenovo is far from alone in its quest to fuse technology with sports—as it should be.
