Here are the top China sports business news stories you need to know from this week: FIBA Lands Global Partnership with TCL FIBA, the International Basketball Federation, has announced a comprehensive global partnership with Chinese brand TCL, one of the world’s leading consumer electronic brands. The partnership comes into effect immediately and covers worldwide FIBA competitions until December 31, 2019. Read more on the FIBA Official Website (English) FIBA-BG Basketball Aca

As the Chinese Sports market is maturing, more and more athletes are getting online in China. Three recent examples include Tom Brady, Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi. As competition for attention increases, so does the importance of the management of these personal brands. At Mailman, we strive to maintain the same core values across all of our clients. We refuse to settle for the typical client-agency relationship. We go further. Every partnership we enter into is a comm

We are proud to announce the official Tottenham Hotspur FC China social network accounts.  The official voice was launched today across the two key China social networking sites Sina and Tencent Weibo and is expected to gather a significant following in China. The discussion began over 10 months ago and ended with a thorough launch strategy and planned management ensuring Spurs are given the best chance possible to drive a successful following.  Through Mailman’s unique relat

Chinese football fans – Who are they?  They are a truly fascinating species, unique in many ways which set them apart from their counterparts in the West. 1.  PASSION The most telling contribution they make to their chosen team is their passionate and vocal support which rivals even European nights on the Kop.  Last Saturday I ventured out to watch Shanghai Shenhua under the new leadership of Nicolas Anelka.  Due to the atrocious standard of football I would normally have wis

Leading Chinese digital company Mailman have just released the ‘must have’ guide to a football club wanting to make it in China’s sporting wilderness.  Whether you are Barcelona, Manchester United, Liverpool or even Stockport County, the question is the same:  How do you convince 450 million Chinese internet users to follow your club? Having managed the Chinese fan bases of major sporting organizations around the world, Mailman have reviewed the China strategies of the world’

As of this week, Liverpool FC became the most popular English football club on China’s top social media network: SINA Weibo. Manchester United were the previous holders of this title with 156,000 followers however they were overtaken on Wednesday by their fierce local rivals who have been hot on their tail over the last few months. Thanks to Mailman’s Social Media Management ability, Liverpool’s SINA fan base currently stands at 159,397. This marks a turning point in English

NBA star Jeremy Lin multiplied his Weibo followers by 13+ in just 5 days. But…who is he? Jeremy Lin, Asian-American NBA player, increased his Weibo followers from a mere 16,000 to an impressive 220,000 in the past 5 days.  How did he do it? Before the New York Knicks recruited him at the end of December, Lin was unemployed. His contract, potentially worth nearly $800,000, was not even guaranteed until last Tuesday afternoon. So for the past six weeks, Lin, 23, has been sleepi

Better late than never? This phrase does not apply to China. With interest in Sport at an all time high and with a dramatic rise in the number of Chinese Sports fans, there is no time like the present to invest in a China strategy. Now is the time to build an online presence in China or you may lose out to those clubs who took advantage of this opportunity. The Chinese love for Football runs deep.  More surprisingly their passion for top European leagues far exceeds their int

Shanghai Shenhua picked out a random fan to join negotiations for the signing of Dider Drogba. With over 5,000 comments in less than 2 hours, the campaign launched yesterday by Zhu Jun (team owner) created huge excitement amongst Chinese football fans, with social media sites buzzing with the news. With one single post, Zhu reached over 8,000 comments before the winner was chosen to accompany Shanghai Shenhua’s management team on a trip to London to negotiate Drogba’s deal. F

This is a huge milestone for the club as it shows clear reward for their decision to target China and highlights the opportunity for clubs to take advantage of the vast number of football fans in China. Just 4 months on from Liverpool FC’s partnership with Mailman, we are celebrating Christmas in style as having seen steady fan growth we are now the 2nd most followed Premier League football club on SINA Weibo, behind Manchester United.  However, with the speed of Liverpool’s

Listening to current marketing principles today; one can easily become distracted in the multitude of social media channels and where the real value lies.  One basic principle we’ve seen promoted and more often adopted is ‘crowd sourcing’ or ‘marketing to crowds’ when in fact the validity of this argument is actually very weak. The merits of a crowd – as defined by most dictionaries define it as ‘a collection of people’.  Now although the logic behind communicating to a large

It was a proud day for the Mailman Group on Sunday the 17th of October as the past 4 months of online promotion via Chinese social channels culminated in a grand performance.  Our objective was to communicate the benefits of AFL football to a local Chinese community, with our ultimate goal of having tickets purchased online via a Chinese ticketing agent.  Read below an exert from a press story featured nationally in Australia.The Video featured on ABC News tellls the story: