Toutiao partners with Sun Yang, launches new sports project

The Chinese digital news platform, Jinri Toutiao, just announced on Sunday September 9 in Beijing that it had become the Official New Media Partner of the Chinese swimmer Sun Yang, alongside another of its digital platform, Douyin. 

They also announced the launch of a new project, Zhongguo Jianer Jihua (Chinese Athletes Plan). This project aims to invite 300 Chinese athletes and coaches to open  personal accounts on the Toutiao’s platform, which claims to have 30bn viewings from various digital products belonging to Toutiao to support these athlete accounts. 

Sun Yang becomes one of the first athletes in this project. He claims he will share his latest competition updates and life moments on Toutiao and Douyin and communicate with his fans on his account. 

Sun Yang had opened his account on Toutiao before he went to compete at the 2018 Asian Games and the account seems to have a high number of viewers and followers according to Toutiao. Within five hours of Sun Yang opening his account, it had received 5 million views and within the first 24 hours it had gained 1 million followers. He has posted 4 times on Douyin before this official announcement and these content have received 61.58 million views. 

Toutiao will not only provide media platforms for the 300 Chinese athletes, but will also have professional teams working with the athletes to build their personal brand through building content strategies, distributing content, assisting with filming, and other methods. Athletes will have chances to participate in variety shows organized by Toutiao’s subsidiary Xigua Shipin. Toutiao also plans to integrate some of its charity projects into this project to take full advantage of the influence of the athletes. 

Jinri Toutiao is a well-known news and information digital platform in China run by Beijing ByteDance Technology Co., Ltd. Established in 2012, its algorithm models pushes tailored content to users based on the content users read and their interaction patterns with the content on the platform. Douyin is a new mobile product launched in 2016 by Toutiao. It allows users to film short videos and share it with friends and has gone viral recently. 

Toutiao is a robust competitor in the industry of digital new media platform in China. Although not traditionally dedicated in setting up accounts similar to Weibo, Toutiao has had many writers/journalists/media organizations setting up accounts and distributing content on the platform. They have some rich sports content covering various forms, such as editorials, pictures and videos. It lays the groundwork for setting up athlete accounts there. 

With this new project, Toutiao aims to gather important sports influencers and athletes to strengthen its sports sector. 

Video: The Paper

Reference: PC Online

Proofread by Raymond Fitzpatrick