BNN Tech launches three football microsites in China

Chinese technology, content and services company BNN Technology confirmed on Tuesday that it had successfully launched three microsites through the Xinhua News mobile app for Manchester City FC, Arsenal FC and FC Barcelona.

The AIM-traded firm said the microsites offered a combination of exclusive club content and unique promotions targeted at football fans across China, and were supported by promotional activity around the company’s first two soccer training camps that were held earlier in May.

BNN said the microsites formed part of its wider data strategy, using unique content and offerings to attract users to register with the group's sites and apps, creating a broad marketing platform based on high-quality user data.

Specifically, the board said the sites and camps were driving “significant” customer acquisition for the group to utilise across all its sales platforms, which could support new B2C channels across its product and service range.

Since the launches earlier in the month and promotional activity around the two camps, BNN said it had collected “considerable and valuable” consumer data from registered users of the microsites.

The board explained it was “extremely encouraged” by the early results, which significantly exceeded its targeted expectations in terms of both the quality of the data generated and the quantity of customer acquisition.

BNN said the training camps in May achieved widespread media coverage in China across print, television, internet video and other online channels.

Eight further camps in June, relating to Manchester City and Arsenal, followed by two Barcelona camps in July and continued promotional activity around the initiatives, gave the board confidence that user numbers would continue to grow and deliver “deep, segmented data” on Chinese football fans, which would be highly valuable in supporting the company’s sales platforms.

“As our services continue to roll out across China, the acquisition and retention of users is vital,” said BNN chief executive Darren Mercer.

“We believe this launch demonstrates that our unique football content gives us a leading edge in this regard.”

Mercer said the “impressive” initial results delivered over the last few weeks had already established one of the largest football-related databases in China.

“As a result we are very hopeful that the opportunities to promote products and payment services to this user group, based on the data being acquired, should drive revenue generation in the latter half of 2017 and beyond.”