December 1 – The Asian Football Confederation’s (AFC) who last week announced a landmark broadcast partnership with telecoms giant China Mobile Migu, has further expanded its content commitment in the country with the launch of new accounts on Toutiao and Douyin.
The new accounts are tagged as the AFC Asian Cup China 2023 (China is hosting the confederation’s blue riband national team tournament in 2023) and AFC Champions League, and are in addition to the already existing accounts on Weibo.
Launched as Chinese clubs Shanghai SIPG, Shanghai Shenhua, Beijing Guoan and Guangzhou Evergrande recommenced their East Zone qualifying campaigns in Doha, Qatar, the AFC reports viewership already exceeding more than 26 million.
Those numbers are a powerful start but are a mere drop compared to the ambition for the Asian Cup in China in 2023 where the AFC, and the Local Organising Committee have set a target of 10 billion engagements. That would be more than 10 times as many as achieved during the AFC Asian Cup UAE 2019, a tournament that set a media, commercial and performance benchmark for the expanded competition.
Dato’ Windsor John, the AFC General Secretary, said: “Keeping our fans engaged with Asian football as the AFC Champions League (East) returned was vital and the platforms in China PR will now provide unrivalled coverage of the latter stages of the 2020 AFC Champions League, with four Chinese teams competing.
“We believe that the mix of live content alongside the very popular fan focused content in 2020, when we have seen record engagement, will drive the continued expansion of the AFC’s digital properties and we are committed to working with our commercial and strategic partners across the Continent to promote the AFC’s world-class competitions.”
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