Chinese companies have gone to European football to "throw money" again, and this time it is not a hot time

凤凰WEEKLY

2024-06-26 14:28Posted on the official account of Beijing Phoenix WEEKLY

Chinese companies have gone to European football to "throw money" again, and this time it is not a hot time

The emperor of football, Beckenbauer, once said that it is not football that rolls on the green field, but gold.

These words break the huge commercial value on the football field.

The summer of 2024, with the European Cup and the Copa America, is destined to be extraordinary. Today the German tank will blow up Scotland, and tomorrow Italy will beat Albania...... Football events can always touch the hearts of billions of people around the world in an instant.

On the green field, another event with the participation of Chinese companies - the marketing war has also quietly started.

According to the official information of the European Cup, among the 13 official global partners of this European Cup, Chinese companies occupy 5 seats, more than one-third of the sponsor seats.

These include companies such as BYD and AliExpress that are holding hands for the first time in the European Cup, as well as old acquaintances such as Alipay, Hisense and vivo.

From Wanda's sponsorship of FIFA to Hisense's slogan at the 2022 Qatar World Cup"China first, second in the world",Although the Chinese national football team has not touched the threshold of breaking out of Asia and going to the world for 20 years,But in the top international football events,Chinese commercial elements are always indispensable。

At the Euro 2024 tournament, the logos and advertising slogans of the five Chinese companies were rolled in turn, which in addition to using the huge traffic of the European Cup to promote their own companies, there was also a strategic consideration for going overseas.

Alipay and BYD want to "win", not only the European Cup.

New and old players of the European Cup

Among football events, the European Championship is known as the "World Cup without Brazil and Argentina" and is one of the most lucrative sporting events in the world.

Chinese companies that seem to have nothing to do with it also want to be familiar with this world carnival.

According to UEFA's budget report, Euro 2024 is expected to bring in 2.4 billion euros. These revenues primarily include broadcast rights revenue, sponsorship revenue, ticket sales revenue, merchandise sales revenue, and digital and social media revenue.

Although the amount of sponsorship has not been disclosed, according to previous UEFA regulations, the rights and interests of becoming the top sponsor of the European Cup for 4 years need 375 million yuan.

13 official global partners for Euro 2024

Although it is a sky-high advertisement, as long as someone buys it, there is always a place that can bring returns.

Hisense, which was the first to enter the game, has been on the European Cup for three consecutive times and has become a "senior player" in the sports world.

The return is also visible to the naked eye,2016On the stage at the beginning of the year,Hisense's sales in the European market increased by nearly 35% on average that year,Among them, in France, the host of the 2016 European Cup,Hisense's local sales increased by nearly 300%.

Hisense has told the media that in the past 16 years, through the model of "global top sports events + regional localized sports IP", Hisense has embarked on a path of leveraging global brand influence through sports marketing among Chinese enterprises. In 2016~2023, Hisense's revenue will exceed 200 billion from 100 billion yuan, and Hisense's overseas revenue will increase from 23.4 billion yuan to 85.8 billion yuan, and the proportion of revenue will increase from 23% to 43%.

Alipay and vivo also followed suit and successfully "played" in the Euro 2020 Cup. One in Alipay, the number of visits to the Mini Program and the number of interactions within the terminal increased; One shipped more than 110 million smartphones globally that year, occupying 8.6% of the market share, ranking among the top 5 mobile phone manufacturers and growing against the trend.

It is worth mentioning that there are also some new faces in this European Cup.

BYD, which succeeded Volkswagen, has attracted much attention as a Chinese car brand that has joined hands with the European Cup for the first time. The reason why BYD was able to defeat the host German local car brand Volkswagen, UEFA representative Guy Laurent Epstein gave an explanation that BYD fits the vision of building a green European Cup and is optimistic about BYD's role in promoting the green transformation of the European Cup.

To this end, BYD is determined to make good use of this resource, and plans to display a number of models at the competition venues and official fan plazas during the European Championship.

At the same time, AliExpress, a cross-border e-commerce platform owned by Alibaba, also brought e-commerce into the European Cup football stadium for the first time.

In order to seize this wave of traffic, many rich ways to play have been set up in the interface of the AliExpress platform. For example, the launch of a goal moment shake free order, answer questions to win deduction coupons, etc., and at the end of May, jointly with the rookie to open the "European Cup line", in Dongguan, Guangdong Province to land an integrated European warehouse, specializing in undertaking cross-border goods sent to Europe.

In addition, TikTok, the sponsor of the last European Championship, has not left, but has become the "official entertainment partner" of the host German national football team, and the cooperation between the two sides began in March this year, as well as preparations for the European Championship and tournaments at home this summer.

TCL has taken a different path and become the official partner of the five national teams of Germany, Spain, Italy, Poland and Slovakia to help the team participate in Euro 2024.

CCTV on TV platforms, CCTV, iQiyi and Migu Video on online platforms have chosen to jointly distribute the broadcast rights of the European Cup in order to attract a large number of viewers, and then obtain advertising revenue and subscription fees.

How to revitalize the resources of the European Cup has become a compulsory course for Chinese enterprises this summer.

From "throwing money" to "flexing muscles"

Chinese companies gathered in the European Cup to come for traffic, but they can't just take advantage of a wave of heat and leave.

Take Hisense as an example,In the end, it's all about selling goods。

Lv Shenghua, deputy secretary-general of the China Household Electrical Appliances Association and editor-in-chief of China State Grid, said in an interview with the media that in the context of growth pressure in the domestic market, going overseas has become a firm choice for home appliance companies, with three purposes: first, to further enhance the awareness of independent brands in the European market; the second is to use the live broadcast of the event to drive the sales of display equipment; The third is to use the marketing spillover effect generated by the European Cup to boost the brand's sales and popularity in other regions.

However, it is not easy to gain recognition in the European market by simply "showing your face". Unlike in previous years, European economic growth is now under multiple pressures.

The European Commission released a report saying that it lowered its economic growth forecasts for the EU and the eurozone in 2024 from 1.4% and 1.3% to 1.3% and 1.2%, respectively. The EU's downward revision of its economic growth forecast is mainly based on factors such as high inflation, high interest rates and weak external demand.

Monks have more meat and less meat, coupled with the strength of local brands, China wants to enter the European market, in addition to paying money to board the background board several times, the most important thing is to have technical support.

Layout of the European market for many years,Fans have seen"Hisense",But where is the product quality?,Where is the innovation in technology?,The stadium has no time to explain to them。

Screenshot of the slogan of the Shanghai letter advertisement at the Euro 2024 venue

So at this year's European Cup, Hisense has changed from a simple advertisement to a 2024 European CupVAR (video assistant referee) display official partner.

The so-called VAR refers to the fact that in case of offside, red and yellow card penalties, penalty disputes and other complex situations, the referee can use video replay technology to avoid mistakes and omissions on the field and improve the accuracy of the decision. This has extremely high requirements for the strength of high-end image display.

It is reported,Hisense is the only company in China that has an all-round layout of high-endLCD、Laser and mini/microLEDThe three complementary technologies,It is also an early enterprise to lay out virtual reality and chip technology。

In order to meet the highest standards,Hisense said,This year,It launched a new ULEDXfull-scene AI computing image quality platform,Realized sensing、Core、Light、Screen full-link upgrade。

In the first match between Germany and Scotland on June 15 of the European Cup, Hisense VAR assistant referee technology accurately captured the game situation on the spot, and gave the first red card to Scottish player Portiaus.

Some industry experts believe that UEFA will open the exclusive rights and interests of VAR display to Hisense for the first time,It is a landmark event,This means that Hisense's breakthroughs and innovations in display technology have been recognized worldwide,Behind this also means that China's display technology has been tested and recognized in the most demanding scenarios。

This is also a good thing for Hisense's overseas market,According to the data released by the market research agency Ovirivo,In the first quarter of this year,Hisense TV shipments in the European market increased year-on-year35.9%,Continue to rank second in the global market。

If you don't go to sea, you're out?

It is not only Hisense that needs to expand the European market, vivo, Alipay, BYD, and AliExpress all regard "going overseas" as a "way out" to seek the growth curve of enterprises.

As far as Alibaba is concerned, Alipay and AliExpress have become official global partners of the European Cup at the same time, accounting for two-fifths of the seats among Chinese companies, which shows its desire for the international market.

In particular, the overseas version of Temu, one of the "Four Tigers Going to Sea" of Chinese e-commerce, bought two 30-second advertising spaces in the "Super Bowl", known as the Spring Festival Gala in the United States, and made a big splash overseas, which made Ali even more unable to sit still.

Screenshot of Temu's "Super Bowl" commercial

On the day of the 2023 Super Bowl, Temu's downloads surged by 45%, and daily active users jumped by about 20% from the previous day, according to SensorTower.

In 2024, the "Super Bowl" will still bring infinite reverie to Temu, according to data from mobile analytics agency Apptopia, the number of downloads of the Temu app on the day of this year's "Super Bowl" increased by 34% compared with the previous day, the highest single-day growth since November last year, and the total downloads were about 87% of the same period in last year's "Super Bowl".

Humphrey Ho, U.S. managing partner of digital advertising agency Hylink Digital, has said, "Football fans in Europe and Latin America are similar to football fans in North America, and they tend to include a lot of price-sensitive, inflation-affected consumers." Temu and, now, AliExpress, are clearly deciding to focus on the fans. ”

In order to multi-insure the company, at the end of May, AliExpress announced that the well-known star David Beckham would serve as the "global spokesperson", just to activate overseas orders on a large scale.

AliExpress announced that well-known football star David Beckham will serve as the "global spokesperson". Photo/Alibaba's official WeChat

Vivo's pace of expanding into the European market also needs to press the accelerator button. In 2014 and 2017, vivo entered the Indonesian and European markets successively.

In the Indonesian market, vivo's localized operation strategy has received positive feedback from the market. According to a report by Counterpoint, in the first quarter of 2024, vivo topped the list with a market share of 19.2%.

However, in the European market, vivo is a little weak, and the research agency Canalys recently released data on the smartphone market in Europe (excluding Russia) in the first quarter of 2024, showing that vivo is not among the top five. The two Chinese brands on the list, Xiaomi and Honor, ranked third and fifth, respectively, with market shares of 16% and 3%, respectively.

Seven years of layout, only in exchange for the result of less than 3% market share in Europe, this means that vivo must readjust its overseas market strategy.

The European market cannot be ignored for electric vehicles, which need to realize a global strategy. "If you don't go to sea, you're out" has almost become a consensus in the industry.

Back in 2021, Europe replaced Asia as China's largest export market for electric vehicles. Considering that regions such as the United States have raised trade barriers to electric vehicles, the importance of Europe absorbing China's excess production of electric vehicles is further strengthened.

In 2023, BYD will export more than 240,000 units, a year-on-year increase of 337%, and has entered 19 European countries with five models, with a total of more than 230 stores.

In January 2024, BYD also made a breakthrough in its plan to build a factory in Europe, deciding to build its first European new energy passenger car plant in Hungary. The move was seen as a move to seek "strategic protection" for itself to a certain extent, at least to avoid European import tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles.

In addition to doing your part, sponsoring influential sporting events is an effective way to reach out to overseas markets. The European Championship has begun, and the Paris Olympics will follow.

With the help of sports, it is a good way to "go to sea".

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