In the renowned Red Card study, FC Bayern was once again one of the most successful top European clubs for its fan activities in China in 2020. In the “Best Creative Campaign” category, the treble winners were awarded gold for their ‘Trophy Tour’ in five Chinese cities. FC Bayern won silver in the “Best Livestream” and “Best CSR Initiative” categories, making the German record champions the only club with three top 3 prizes out of a total of six awards. The annual Red Card study by the Shanghai-based Mailman Group has been comparing the activities of top foreign clubs in China since 2012. It is one of the most relevant awards in the industry.
In addition to the Red Card awards, FC Bayern was honoured with other accolades, including for the Audi Digital Summer Tour, which was named “Best Sports Innovation of the Year” by Sports Money, one of the most important sports business media organisations in China. FC Bayern's regional partner Viessmann won the “Marketing Award of the Year” from Lanxiong Sports, another of the most influential sports business media organisations in China. In the area of social media, the German record champions received the “Most Influential Sports Club 2020” award from the Douyin platform (the Chinese iteration of TikTok), and were also rated a “Top 10 Most Influential Football Club 2020” by Sina Weibo. In addition, the treble winners received the SPIA award “Giving back to Community”, together with Borussia Dortmund, RB Leipzig and Bayer Leverkusen, for their solidarity with German professional clubs.
Board member for internationalisation, strategy and merchandising Jörg Wacker: “These awards are a wonderful vindication of the many great activities we carried out in China last year. Despite the difficult situation due to COVID-19, we managed to bring the fans even closer to FC Bayern through various in-person and digital events. This brings the world’s biggest sports family ever closer together.”
FC Bayern Asia president Rouven Kasper: “In view of the pandemic, we have taken new, innovative paths. Be it the ‘Trophy Tour’, weekly livestreams, partner campaigns or our ‘Audi Digital Summer Tour’, FC Bayern has shown how flexibly, progressively and above all how actively we can act in unpredictable times like these. The result has been an expansion of our already strong fan base and clear added value to our partners. No other sports brand was as active in China as we were last year, and we’re very proud of that.”
Following the treble success, FC Bayern initiated ‘Trophy Tours’ between October and November in Shanghai, Beijing, Wuhan, Guangzhou and Nanjing, combined with livestreams, KOL interactions, public viewing parties and much more. In Shanghai and Guangzhou, the ‘Trophy Tours’ were implemented together with adidas. The club achieved a media reach of around 600 million on digital channels. In November, the three FC Bayern trophies were also presented on state broadcaster CCTV-5 to an audience of 3.8 million. For the Champions League final, the club organised fan viewing parties in 40 Chinese cities. In order to demonstrate its closeness to the fans and to be active in exchange with supporters, a weekly livestream show as well as a local digital fan community system have been introduced since the pandemic. Instead of a physical tour of the first team to China, FC Bayern implemented this digitally and, together with partner Audi, generated a reach of around 343 million.
FC Bayern has been named the "Most Influential Sports Club 2020" on the social media platform Douyin, known outside China as TikTok.