LFC QQ Sticker Downloads Hit over 100K Downloads in 1 Day

Once again, Liverpool FC has pioneered another area in China’s social mediasphere: stickers. The club has just released their exclusive set of 19 stickers for Tencent’s other social media platform, QQ- the first football club that Tencent has officially approved. The fan reaction was immediate- after only 1 day, there were over 100,000 downloads of the set.

Stickers are large, often animated, emoticon-like images designed to express a range of emotions. Much of their popularity stems from allowing people to communicate even if they don’t speak the same language and the ease of use- many Asian languages are cumbersome to type out on a phone. Like emojis, stickers hail from Japan.

Stickers have long been popular on Asian social media platforms, but the growing popularity (and profitability– Japan’s Line generates USD $9.7 million a month) of stickers, have convinced western tech giants Facebook and Google to hop on and add their own stickers.

The club’s playful stickers feature their players expressing a variety of emotions, from excited to angry.

Fans can download them through the QQ sticker store, but they have to be members of QQ VIP (a service, which offers exclusive content for a small, monthly fee)

Chinese fans already love football and stickers, so the combination is a deadly sweet spot that Liverpool FC is tapping into quite successfully if 100,000 downloads in 1 day is anything to go by.