Time to Get Weibo Insights Before Marketing Sports in China

A couple days ago we worked with REDTORCH, a London based data-driven sports communication agency, to prepare this blog, which is to showcase how Chinese sports fans look at the most popular sports, i.e. CSL and CBA on Weibo.

A lot of interesting data has been shown, including what topics have been trending, who the fans are, how fans talk, and when fans talk. Actually certain data is open and provided by Weibo for free, you can easily access them by inputing the right terms.

1. TRENDING SPORTS TOPICS ON WEIBO

 CBA All-Star Weekend 2017  

Reads: 34.1m

 Start of the 2016-17 Chinese Super League season

Reads: 50.4m

 CBA is mentioned an average 12k times per day.

 CSL is mentioned an average 6k times per day.

Tips: Want to know if your sports is trending? Try to type the term on Weibo’s HOT WORD INDEX to get the popularity data.

2. WEIBO FANS DEMOGRAPHICS

80% of CSL mentions and 60% of CBA mentions are by males.

 80%    20%                   60%    40%

 39% of CBA mentions are by people aged 19-24.

 24% of CSL mentions are by people aged 19-24.

42% of CSL’s Weibo audience are aged 25-34 with 2x more people aged 35-50 discussing CSL than CBA.

Leverage football to engage an older Chinese audience.

Tips: Want to know more of the demographics of your sports audience, try find out in Weibo’s Fan’s Attributes Data.

3. WEIBO FANS GEOLOCATION

Geo-spread: 15% of conversations about CSL take place in Shanghai and Beijing, with 9% taking place in Guangzhou – a city with two teams.

Tips: Want to know where your fans are located, you can find the geolocation info here.

However, no matter how open and free data you can get from Weibo Datacenter, it may not be enough for sports of niche, since Weibo datacenter only provides insights of very popular terms. Hence if you want to have more detailed insights from Weibo or other China social media, a customized data needs to be collected and analyzed. Get in touch with our social team if you want to know more.