Manchester United has announced a new deal with China’s Alibaba Group.
It will mean that United content, including a number of first-team matches, plus highlights and localised original productions will be available to around 700m people across Alibaba’s platforms.
A dedicated channel will also be established on Alibaba’s video-streaming platform, Youku. This will show Academy, women’s and first-team tour games.
“We’re proud of our passionate and loyal following around the world and our Chinese fans are a huge part of that,” said Manchester United Group Managing Director, Richard Arnold.
“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’re looking 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.”
In the future, there will be a new store on Tmall, Alibaba’s B2C Marketplace, which will become the official online marketplace store selling Manchester United merchandise to Chinese fans.
