Barça recognised as the most popular club on Douyin in 2020

FC Barcelona is constantly looking to create new, original content to connect with its fans around the world across different channels using innovative formats that are adapted to the language and audiences of different platforms and regions. As a result of these efforts, the club has been recognised as ‘The Most Popular Football Club 2020’ on Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok, the main site for short-format mobile videos and that is hugely popular among Chinese audiences, with 400 million active users a day.

Barça has been recognised for its activity on the platform, where it has 3.1 million followers and has registered over 74 million engagements since its official launch in January 2019. Just in 2020, Barça has created 180 short-format videos that have generated over 31 million engagements. This places the club top for followers, ahead of big international teams like Real Madrid, Chelsea, Juventus and París Saint-Germain, who complete the top five. In terms of engagement, it leads Real Madrid, Chelsea, PSG and Borussia Dortmund.

The award was announced at the ECOTIME x Douyin Annual Conference on December 23 in Beijing, titled ‘Light’ to stress how despite the difficulties caused by the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, the sports industry has managed to press onwards. The event was held by ECOTIME, one of China’s leading sports media companies, in association with Douyin and distinguished key creators of sports content and their contributions to the digital realm in China over the last year.

This recognition has boosted FC Barcelona’s leadership in the digital ecosystem of social media, while also evidencing its dedication to the creation of content adapted to its different markets. One of Barça’s biggest goals in China has been to not only increase its number of followers, but also its fan engagement, by creating content especially geared towards the Chinese audience. Since last year it has been supported in this endeavour by two communication and marketing agencies based in Shanghai that work exclusively in this market.

These specific actions have included a video celebrating Chinese New Year that combined Barça stars Leo Messi and Lieke Martens with elements taken from the country’s traditions, and the creation of vblogs in Chinese at key moments of the season. The club has continued to develop specific content for the Chinese market that combine its own style, philosophy and values with those inherent to the Chinese culture.

The club was also recognised earlier this year as the best digital club in China at the Red Card award. Announced in January 2020, these awards are presented annually by the sports and marketing consultancy Mailman.