The club now has more than one million fans on Weibo and has also gained followers by launching channels on new platforms in Asia.
Paris Saint-Germain is a global sporting franchise with a rapidly growing online fanbase around the world. The club recently completed a tour of Asia with International Champions Cup games in Singapore. This weekend the club also played in the Trophee des Champions, with a match in Shenzhen, China. Several of the club’s top players joined the squad in China following a brief break after their World Cup exploits, including Neymar Jr. and Angel di Maria.
The team’s presence in Asia has led to a huge increase in the club’s social following in that region over the past few days. On Weibo, the Parisian club is now followed by over 1.3 million Chinese fans with a further 15k keeping up with the team on WeChat.
At the beginning of the tour in July, the club launched an official account on Dongqiudi, the largest football media and online community app in China. Paris Saint-Germain is one of the first European clubs to have a channel on this platform and the first French team to do so.
On the Douyin platform it boasts over 44,000 fans. The latter currently has more than 150 million active users and is widely viewed as one of the most on-trend digital channels, featuring video content exclusively. It is no surprise that Paris Saint-Germain is developing a strong presence on this platform given its strength in creating entertaining and engaging video content that offers fans a glimpse behind the scenes at the club. Indeed, on this channel a video featuring German winger Julian Draxler had 991,000 views, while content featuring Angel di Maria had over half a million views in less than 24 hours.
Russell Stopford, Chief Digital Officer at Paris Saint-Germain, remarked, “To help make our Asian tour a success, we knew we had to embark on a major marketing offensive when it came to social media. With 911 million active users in China, digital platforms are a huge opportunity for the club to engage directly with our fanbase in this region. “
“We have had platforms on the likes of Weibo and WeChat for several years now, this year we launched entirely new social accounts including Donqiudi in order to reach even more of our Asian fanbase.”
