Manchester United and Alibaba Group Announce New Partnership
December 06 2019 - 6:00AM
Business Wire
Club Channel on Youku Brings Exclusive Club
Content to Chinese Fans
Future Collaboration Agreed on E-commerce
Platform
Manchester United (NYSE: MANU) – one of the most popular and
successful sports teams in the world - today announced a new
partnership with Alibaba Group (NYSE: BABA and HKEX: 9988) that
will bring exclusive rights to club content in China to Alibaba’s
ecosystem for the first time, further extending the club’s
engagement with its massive Chinese fanbase.
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the full release here:
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Manchester United Youku channel (Photo:
Business Wire)
The partnership will see Manchester United content presented and
localised on multiple Alibaba platforms, giving fans access to
in-depth club content. This will include select first-team matches,
highlights and localised original productions, all available to
approximately 700 million consumers across Alibaba’s platforms and
promoted through different channels, including a first-of-its-kind,
dedicated Manchester United channel on Alibaba’s video-streaming
platform, Youku.
The new Manchester United Youku channel, which will be linked
prominently from the Youku Sport portal, will feature Academy,
Women’s and first team tour games, plus first team games shown
on-demand and global and China-specific content. Manchester United
had already broadcast three games from their pre-season tour on the
Youku homepage.
The partnership will also involve collaborating to establish a
future Manchester United flagship store on Tmall, Alibaba’s B2C
Marketplace, which will become the official online marketplace
store selling Manchester United merchandise to Chinese consumers.
It will be linked from the Youku channel, creating a seamless
content and ecommerce experience. Manchester United and Alibaba
will also provide business partners with robust marketing solutions
to promote their products and brands across Alibaba’s
platforms.
Manchester United Group Managing Director, Richard Arnold
comments:
“We are proud of our passionate and loyal following around the
world and our Chinese fans are a huge part of that. We are always
looking for new ways to engage with fans there and this partnership
with Alibaba enables them to connect with the club directly through
one of China’s most popular video streaming platforms. We look
forward to working with Alibaba to further grow our fan base in
China and building on other areas of the partnership in the near
future.”
Michael Evans, President, Alibaba Group said: “Manchester United
is one of the most popular and successful football teams in the
world, with a sizable and passionate fan base in China. We share
the same goal, which is to provide fans with one-of-a-kind online
content consumption and shopping that leverages the latest
technology. With this cooperation we are leveraging Alibaba’s
ecosystem to bring a unique Manchester United experience closer to
fans and consumers in China. I look forward to developing other
areas of strategic business cooperation in the future.”
This rich content offering is the latest collaboration between
premier European football clubs and Alibaba.
About Manchester United
Manchester United is one of the most popular and successful
sports teams in the world, playing one of the most popular
spectator sports on Earth. Through our 141-year heritage we have
won 66 trophies, enabling us to develop the world’s leading sports
brand and a global community of 1.1 billion fans and followers. Our
large, passionate community provides Manchester United with a
worldwide platform to generate significant revenue from multiple
sources, including sponsorship, merchandising, product licensing,
new media & mobile, broadcasting and match day.
About Alibaba Group
Alibaba Group’s mission is to make it easy to do business
anywhere. The company aims to build the future infrastructure of
commerce. It envisions that its customers will meet, work and live
at Alibaba, and that it will be a company that lasts at least 102
years.
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version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20191206005143/en/
Media Manchester United: Charlie Brooks
Charlie.brooks@manutd.co.uk +44 (0) 161 868 8216 Alibaba
Group Maja Hauke Alibaba Group +44 (0) 7534 016659
maja.hauke@alibaba-inc.com Investor contacts Manchester
United: Corinna Freedman Head of Investor Relations +44
161 868 8431 Corinna.Freedman@manutd.co.uk
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