In April, Premier League club Chelsea FC sought to engage its Chinese fan-base during the absence of football due to COVID-19 through a dedicated livestream on Weibo and Douyin (the Chinese brand for TikTok).
The engagement initiative marked the first time a non-Chinese football club had run a simultaneous livestream on both channels.
The two-hour broadcast looked back at the club’s 2004/05 Premier League title-winning season.
It was filmed at Chinese sports consultancy Mailman’s in-house high-tech studio in Shanghai and the programme featured a range of special guests and influencers, a musical performance, club-related giveaways, behind-the-scenes footage and a fan Q&A session.
Outcome:
The dedicated interactive digital show hit 7.5m views and generated 2m hashtag reads.
Comment:
The livestream was part of the club’s ongoing China Chelsea Studio Series, a country-specific initiative which is now in its second season.
The debut season, which was the first China-specific pre-match studio show, generated a cumulative 35.5m video views and helped Chelsea build its Weibo audience above 2m and total number of social followers in China to 7.49m – the third highest for Premier League club.
This is a key area of growth as European clubs seek to maintain and grow their Chinese fan-bases through the COVID-19 crisis and leverage Chinese football fan appetite to get together online and celebrate special moments and engage with the team and with one another virtually.
Other notable examples of this tactic during the coronavirus lockdown include Juventus’ ‘Gameshow’ (see case study) and Borussia Dortmund’s Cyber Party (see case study).
Links:
Chelsea
https://www.youtube.com/user/chelseafc
https://www.facebook.com/ChelseaFC/
https://www.instagram.com/chelseafc/
Mailman (Shanghai)
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