China currently has the largest population in the world with more than 1.2 billion people and 15.6 million of them are active social media users when it comes to European Football.
These are huge numbers and a recent study by Mailman Group on sports social media titled Red Card takes a look at the relationship between China, sports social media and European Football.
The study focuses on many different things such as: methodology, official presence, engagement, localization, team popularity and more.
The slideshow style presentation tackles a number of topics using facts and figures researched by the group.
Some of the more interesting facts included the teams with the most popularity, which included Barcelona, Manchester United and Real Madrid – some of the more popular teams in Euro football – and what motivated Chinese fans to watch football most.
You wouldn’t be surprised to see superstar players top the list, but other interesting facts such as: ranking in the league, the club’s history, friends and family and even visits to China made the cut.
Some of the other key findings include:
- 40% of fans follow a club because of a specific celebrity player, not the club’s history
- Tencent users will retweet 8 times more often than comment.
- As follower numbers grow, a page’s engagement rate decreases.
- Approximately 30% of Chinese social media football fans are female
Mailman Group has clearly put a ton of time, effort and research into this study and it makes for a very interesting read, especially with China being such a powerhouse from a population standpoint.
If a team, franchise or sport can win over the Chinese market place, they can most certainly increase their financial income greatly, which is not a bad strategy in my opinion.
European football certainly has a presence in China and it only seems to be increasing, which is a very good sign for the sport as a whole, but more so for the Euro leagues and their continued popularity dominance of the sport.
Photo Credit: www.campaignasia.com
Nice article, extremely interesting stuff. You spelled monstrous wrong though. Might want to fix that.
Surprised to not see Liverpool included in the list. I know they have a massive Asian following, with even dedicated Twitter feeds to certain east Asian countries. I know they chose to deviate from their norm and do an American pre-season tour instead of their normal Asian pre-season tour, and I wonder if that affected their standing with Chinese fans (since they appear to be focusing on the short term with club support more)