On February 5, social media platform Weibo and the Chinese Olympic Committee jointly announced the formalization of their partnership. Weibo will serve as a sponsor and social media partner for the Chinese Olympic Committee throughout the new Olympic cycle, spanning from 2026 to 2029. The collaboration will cover more than ten international events, including the upcoming 2026 Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics, the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics, the 2026 Aichi-Nagoya Asian Games, and the 2026 Dakar Youth Olympic Games. This in-depth partnership will further strengthen Weibo’s platform value in connecting the public with the Olympic movement, providing significant support for the development of China’s Olympic endeavors in the digital era.
The collaboration represents a win-win scenario, combining top-tier intellectual property with the extensive reach of a social media platform. Weibo will leverage its mature operational experience from events such as the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics and the 2024 Paris Olympics to offer deeper services to the Chinese Olympic Committee.
For Weibo, the partnership not only enhances the platform’s influence in the sports domain but also introduces high-quality sports IP resources, helping to expand user coverage and enrich the content ecosystem. For the Chinese Olympic Committee, Weibo, with its 578 million monthly active users, will provide an efficient and wide-reaching communication channel, strengthening the image of Chinese sports delegations in international competitions.
Both parties will jointly organize annual brand-building and public welfare campaigns, utilizing Weibo’s platform advantages to enhance communication support, firmly curb undesirable "fan circle" phenomena in sports, and fully support the vigorous and steady development of Chinese sports in the new Olympic cycle.
Weibo has established a mature sports social ecosystem, involving diverse participants such as media, content creators, and athletes. At the media level, Weibo utilizes hot topic aggregation and media alliance mechanisms to collaborate with broadcasters and key media outlets, forming a promotional matrix expected to include 1,000 media and information platforms. Initiatives like the #WinterOlympicsCheer campaign, launched in partnership with People’s Daily, aim to achieve broad dissemination of event-related content.
Within the creator ecosystem, sports bloggers and cross-domain influencers from areas such as travel will offer diverse perspectives on the Winter Olympics. The platform encourages user-generated content through interactive features like the AI Winter Olympics photo studio, prompting users to share images and posts, thereby enhancing engagement.
In terms of the athlete ecosystem, Weibo has become the primary social platform for Chinese athletes. Currently, 122 out of the 126 athletes in China’s delegation for the Milan Winter Olympics have joined Weibo, representing a 96.8% participation rate. This includes champion athletes such as Eileen Gu (@青蛙公主爱凌), Su Yiming (@苏翊鸣), and Lin Xiaojun (@林孝埈Lin_xiaojun). Through innovative interactions like the super topic scoring system, Weibo transforms fans from passive viewers into active participants, creating a closed-loop ecosystem of "sports + social engagement."
Moving forward, Weibo will continue to deepen its collaboration with top-tier sports IP, leveraging social and scenario-based innovations to create multi-stakeholder value for the sports industry and lead a new wave of sports communication in the digital age.