China firms aiming to win big at Euro 2020 – just like Fifa World Cup sponsorships
- Hisense, Alipay and Vivo are among the 10 major sponsors of the Uefa European Championships that kick off on Friday
- TikTok and Douyin are also part of the tournament, which runs until July 11 across the continent, as Chinese companies look to grow
They are called the Uefa European Football Championships by name but when Euro 2020 kicks off on Friday night in Rome there will be plenty of interest from outside the continent.
Interestingly for a tournament where the kick-off times fast become unwatchable for those on Beijing time – only the first two rounds of group stage fixtures start before midnight in China –there is a strong presence of Chinese sponsors.
This is not unusual. Chinese interest in major football tournaments tends to be off the pitch with the country’s companies leading the way at the Fifa World Cup in a way that their footballers can still only dream of.
These Euros, played across the continent for the first time despite a global pandemic, follow the same pattern as three of Uefa’s 10 biggest sponsors for their national team tournament are Chinese.
A reported 56 million Chinese were said to watch the last Euros final in 2016 – more than any country in Europe – while CSM Media Research said the tournament had a collective television audience of 424 million in the mainland.