🇨🇳 China's $1bn Football Sponsorship Strategy

What a brilliant Champions League Final for Paris… and for Qatar!

Not many had Inter or Paris making it to Munich when the tournament started back in August. Many, including myself were skeptical of the new UCL format too!

As first editions go, I think UEFA pulled this off, so hats off to them. Shoutout to Arsenal Women too! Soon, I will be making a video about Womens' football and before it comes out I want to get your perspective.

Please vote on the poll below before you dive into todays article on Chinese Football. I’ll be including the results in the final product.

Yesterday I released a video on my YouTube channel detailing how China famously tried to buy football several years ago. One thing I didn’t reveal in that video was their approach to sponsorships during this time. There was an entire strategy to that too and you guys get that piece of the pie today!

In 2018 when France won the World Cup in Moscow, most of us were watching Pogba, Griezmann and a young Kylian Mbappé light up the tournament on the pitch. But if you looked around at the LED boards and the official backdrops, you saw a different story.

Vivo. Wanda. Hisense. Mengniu.

Unfamiliar names to many Western viewers. But at that point, Chinese companies were the biggest sponsors of the World Cup, outspending American companies and even the host nation Russia.

It wasn’t a coincidence either. It was strategy. And for a while, it looked like it was working.

From 2015 to 2018, Chinese firms launched a full-scale sponsorship offensive on global football. Spending big on getting players to the Chinese Super League wasn’t enough. Visibility, soft power, and political favour were what they also wanted, and this was their way in.

Wanda Group, owned by real estate tycoon Wang Jianlin, became a Tier 1 FIFA partner in 2016. It was a 15-year deal reportedly worth $200 million. This gave Wanda exclusive rights in the real estate and cinema sectors, and direct access to the World Cup until 2030.

Vivo, the smartphone brand, signed a $450–500 million sponsorship deal with FIFA in 2017. It covered both the 2018 and 2022 World Cups and later extended to include the upcoming 2026 tournament. Vivo’s branding was everywhere at Russia 2018.

Hisense, a major appliance maker, spent around €20 million to become an official World Cup sponsor in 2018. I don’t know how they measure this, but the company claimed the campaign boosted global brand awareness by more than 12% year-on-year.

Mengniu, China’s largest dairy producer, reportedly paid €25 million to become an official sponsor in 2018. They even co-sponsored Argentina’s Lionel Messi, branding his image onto milk cartons across Asia.

By the time the 2018 tournament kicked off, Chinese brands accounted for over one-third of all FIFA sponsor revenue, despite China not even qualifying!

It was a bold soft-power move: if China couldn’t compete on the pitch, it would dominate off of it.

These brands didn’t just show up every four years. They embedded themselves across European football too.

My video told the stories of chinese investors buying football clubs across Europe. Alongside these acquisitions were a series of sponsorship deals too!

Wanda acquired 20% of Atlético Madrid in 2015 and subsequently “bought” the naming rights to the club’s new stadium, the Wanda Metropolitano.

Suning Holdings, owners of Chinese Super League (CSL) side Jiangsu FC, bought 70% of Inter Milan in 2016 for $307 million. It launched a flurry of joint marketing campaigns between the club and its e-commerce empire.

K8 Group, a Chinese betting company, signed a record £5 million shirt deal with West Bromwich Albion for the 2016–17 season.

Yanjing Beer, a state-owned brewer, became the official beer sponsor of Bayern Munich, despite having no significant distribution footprint in Germany.

Even Portugal’s second division was renamed the “Ledman LigaPro” in 2016, after a Shenzhen-based LED display company.

This wasn’t performance marketing. These were political billboards, part of a broader push to support Xi Jinping’s declared ambition to make China a “world football superpower.”

By 2020 though, it had all gone quiet.

Wanda sold its stake in Atlético. Suning shut down Jiangsu FC just months after they won the CSL. Sponsorships weren’t renewed. FIFA’s Chinese sponsor pipeline dried up.

Why?

The macroeconomic climate shifted. Capital controls tightened, the yuan weakened, and Chinese regulators cracked down on what they called “irrational” overseas investment.

A real estate crisis hit backers like Wanda and Evergrande, who had been bankrolling both clubs and sponsorships.

The central government changed priorities. Football was no longer a pet project for soft power. Prestige spending became a liability.

Between 2016 and 2020, Chinese companies spent over $1.5 billion on football sponsorships globally. By 2022, nearly all of it had been unwound.

These deals weren’t designed to sell more smartphones or or to sell Chinese beer. They were about political positioning, visibility, and relevance. And when those political winds changed direction, the money stopped. Instantly.

For a brief window, Chinese brands were the biggest sponsors in world football. They bought access, visibility, and legitimacy. Just a few years later, it all disappared.

If you want to more, watch this video below!

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See you next week.