As football becomes increasingly popular in China, it is becoming apparent that this new audience is engaging with the sport in ways that Western audiences do not.
With the growing football league in China there is also a new kind of digitally engaged, tech savvy supporter. Football fans that don’t just watch the games but also use all manner of social media to discuss, promote, support and even ridicule their favourite aspects of football.
The use of large communal group chats for post-match discussions is very popular in China. This may have something to do with the type of social media available. For example, when using the Chinese app ‘WeChat’ (a Tencent owned social media application which has over 1Billion active users), it is common for people to join large closed group chats with up to 500 users. This is similar to a Facebook page or Twitter thread, in that users don’t necessarily know each other and will generally keep to a specified topic; in this case football.
And they truly do love to discuss football, with 43% of Chinese fans using WeChat as a method to discuss the games with others [2]. This is globally the highest amount of interaction of football related chat groups, with the UK at only 31% and the USA at even lower with 29% of fans in comparison [2].
It’s not just private messaging boards and forums that the Chinese fans are dominating. Studies show that Chinese fans are also the most likely to post content publicly; such as sharing videos, pictures and even football related memes. It is incredibly popular to engage with online sharing with around 57% of fans distributing this kind of content on public platforms [2].
Perhaps this points us to a new age in the kind of engagement fans will have with football in the near future. Most large-scale cultural events are normally documented profusely by all attendees; festivals, concerts, awards ceremonies, why should football be any different?
Young people in China are already strongly engaged with social media and the popularity of football in China continues to grow. The Chinese Super League consistently gains popularity with game attendance numbers more than doubling in the last few years [3] and an increase in big brand Chinese investors are supporting FIFA [4], the growth of football’s influence in China isn’t showing any signs of slowing down.
However, media culture is something that develops differently across nations. It may be less easy, for example, for football fans in the UK to have a friendly joke and banter online with fans from rival clubs, there’s too much bad blood between them. Chinese support works differently; fans tend to be involved more with specific players, choosing to support individual careers, rather than devote their loyalty to one team. This kind of support lends itself better to open discussion, the support is more evenly spread out and intertwined throughout different teams.
Surely uploading content, which others can react, and comment on, holding forums with open debates and polls, directly engaging with people at all levels of the sport, are all better ways to find communal enjoyment in football. It has to be better than a few slurred insults being chanted across the pitch as our only form of communication.
The digital support that China’s football fans engage in will continue to increase, it is just a matter of time to see if the rest of the world decides to catch up.
