July 28 – As Cristiano Ronaldo and Real Madrid continue to woo Chinese fans on their pre-season tour, off the field the club has signed a deal with AliBaba’s Tmall Global to use the platform to sell Ronaldo (and Real Madrid) merchandise direct to the Chinese public.
The launch ceremony took place in Guangzhou with Real Madrid President, Florentino Perez, the President of Alibaba Group’s China retail marketplaces, Jeff Zhang, and the whole of the Real Madrid squad in attendance.
Perez said: “We are further deepening our relationship with this country with this deal with the Alibaba group, the absolute world-leader in e-commerce. This agreement with allow us to launch Real Madrid’s official online shop in China to more than 600 million Chinese consumers.”
For his part, Zhang emphasised that Alibaba wants to increase cooperation with European brands and municipalities and that Real Madrid were the second club to collaborate with Alibaba, following in the footsteps of Bayern Munich who signed up in May.
Tmall Global sells foreign brands to consumers in Mainland China but has made very little inroad with Chinese consumers (311th on Alexa Internet) , in stark contrast to Alibaba’s other platforms including Taobao (2nd) and Tmall (5th).
Whilst Alibaba hopes the new deal will give the platform a boost, recent interactions between Real Madrid players and the Chinese public suggest Ronaldo merchandise will be of far greater interest than club merchandise per se.
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