Since July 21, 2020, when P. LEAGUE+ CEO Blackie Chen (Chen Jianzhou) announced the four teams for the inaugural season, the league has been constantly dominating domestic sports media headlines for the past six months despite the pandemic’s impact on global sports viewership. With preseason games selling out nearly every time and online streams consistently exceeding 10,000 concurrent viewers, it’s clear that the new league and its teams have put significant effort into generating buzz and marketing.

The Hsinchu Lioneers were officially established in 2020. (Photo credit: Han Chuang Sports Marketing)

Setting aside win-loss records, if you ask me which team had the most successful marketing in the first half of the season, I would without a doubt cast my vote for the Hsinchu Lioneers.

As of February 19, 2021, on Google Trends, the Hsinchu Lioneers and Fubon Braves have consistently occupied the top two spots among P. LEAGUE+‘s four teams. In terms of actual gate attendance, the Hsinchu Lioneers attracted a total of 40,234 fans across 6 home games, with an attendance rate ranking second in the league. Considering that the other three teams all had existing fan bases from previous years, and the Fubon Braves already had remarkably high sellout rates during their ABL participation in 2019, these results from the Hsinchu Lioneers — a brand-new team built entirely from scratch — are nothing short of incredible.

The Hsinchu Lioneers (red line) and Fubon Braves (blue line) have consistently dominated trending topics. I recently came across the article “Scoring From the Start! Three Brand Management Strategies from the Hsinchu Lioneers That Ignite Your Basketball Dreams” by Liu Yicheng and found it very insightful. Beyond brand management strategies, I believe the Lioneers have executed several other interesting marketing tactics worth writing about, which is why I put together this piece.

Having previously been involved in domestic sports marketing, I was also fortunate enough to witness the Lioneers’ management and marketing efforts during this period. Through this article, I hope to provide a brief overview of five areas where the Lioneers’ marketing has excelled, from a purely marketing perspective. My hope is that this sharing will help more people recognize the Lioneers organization’s efforts and be willing to support the team by attending games in person. More importantly, there’s a high probability that P. LEAGUE+ will expand next season, and the CPBL’s Wei Chuan Dragons will also return to the top division. I look forward to seeing more fresh ideas in domestic sports marketing come to fruition.

The Hsinchu Lioneers, as an expansion team, achieving the second-best attendance in their first year is a remarkable accomplishment. (Photo: ET Today)

Below, I’ll share four key points about what I personally believe the Hsinchu Lioneers have done right in their marketing:

1. Players’ physical, localized, offline community engagement:

Starting in 2014, when the CPBL’s Lamigo Monkeys announced their adoption of a “full home-field system,” Taiwan’s professional sports landscape entered an era of localized, territory-based operations. The Hsinchu Lioneers took their first step in localized engagement by building around the “Engineers” identity — a nod to Hsinchu’s status as Taiwan’s tech hub.

Since the team’s formation, the Lioneers organization has conducted numerous visits to local businesses. This approach — having players visit companies and even host small meet-and-greet events on-site — ensures that even employees who are completely unfamiliar with the players walk away with a much deeper impression than a fleeting glimpse on TV. Hsinchu is home to many major tech companies, and these companies offer some of the best employee benefits in Taiwan. By distributing game tickets as employee perks, the organization created an excellent strategy for boosting attendance.

At the same time, the players’ active campus visits during off-days serve as another brilliant move for building group fan bases. Visiting local middle and high schools creates a ripple effect through students’ school districts, encouraging parents to bring their children to games. College campus tours tap into student communities, spreading the word to out-of-town university students who are more likely to organize group outings. Unlike movies, sporting events are hard to attend alone, and they’re also more susceptible to the bandwagon effect.

These localized, in-person promotional efforts are a cheaper and more effective market conquest strategy than running online ads or buying keywords. The fact that the Lioneers achieved such impressive results in less than a year of operating in Hsinchu is largely attributable to the players’ active participation in these types of events.

Lioneers players visiting Elan Microelectronics, increasing local companies’ willingness to book group outings. (Photo: udn)

2. Free full online streaming generating UGC content:

Beyond broadcasting on cable and broadcast TV, P. LEAGUE+‘s smartest strategy was adopting free YouTube live streaming. In the CPBL, the original CPBL TV’s effectiveness was very limited, but the emergence of free streaming on LINE TV and Yahoo TV in recent years successfully reached potential fan demographics. However, the true magic of free streaming lies in releasing video clips that attract more YouTube users to create secondary UGC content, amplifying the overall audience reach.

UGC stands for “User Generated Content,” referring to original content created and shared by users — such as user-edited player highlights, tactical breakdowns, and personal predictions. While the production quality may not match professional TV stations or official team channels, the output volume is enormous, the perspectives are diverse, and engagement rates are high, making it the best medium for spreading team information. Due to broadcast rights restrictions, the number of creators willing to make videos about the NBA, MLB, NPB, or CPBL on YouTube has always been limited. But P. LEAGUE+‘s free online streaming model effectively encouraged massive numbers of fans to create and distribute their own content. Beyond videos, fans even proactively created Hsinchu Lioneers arenas and player profiles in the globally popular basketball video game NBA2K — these are all manifestations of UGC’s value.

While free online streaming is a league-wide P. LEAGUE+ policy and not unique to the Hsinchu Lioneers, the massive volume of UGC content generated has been a major reason for the Lioneers’ rapid and widespread online reach. Similarly, if the Lioneers organization continues to encourage various UGC creators to produce Lioneers-related videos, podcasts, shows, and even fan-initiated merchandise, fan clubs, and forums, these will all represent potential fan growth opportunities for next season.

Fan-created NBA2K arena and jerseys (Photo: Fan post in the Lioneers community group)

3. Highly valuing niche fan community engagement

The power of niche marketing is discussed in Seth Godin’s book Tribes, where the author argues that the era of “mass marketing” is long gone, and the future belongs to niche marketing. This is evident in recent trends like crowdfunding, the rise of bloggers, and influencer culture. Looking at the Lioneers’ Facebook presence, fan-initiated “unofficial” community groups have posts with higher engagement rates, higher response rates, and reach more people than the official fan page. The number of fan-created LINE groups and Telegram groups is countless.

Looking back at discussions within the Lioneers fan communities, information about luxury box unboxings, Julian Wright’s team transfer news, and the “one-day GM” experience was all shared among fans before the official announcements. When I was working on fan community management for the Wei Chuan Dragons in 2019, my colleagues and I planned an interesting initiative called the “Dragon Tribe Program” (Long Zu Ji Hua). At that time, we used team resources to support niche fan community operations — through official endorsement like providing sponsorship budgets for fan-organized events, sending star players to fan events, and organizing fan community award ceremonies. Within just two weeks, we established 9 officially verified “Dragon Tribes” and reached a milestone of 17,000 verified fans.

“In a 10,000-member group, messages are announcements; in a 10-member group, messages are discussions.” In terms of community management logic, niche communities have better message clarity, higher interactivity, and greater management value than large groups. Complaints about losses, celebrations of wins, and topic discussions in fan communities are all more immediate and faster than official responses. If the Lioneers can encourage fans to create even more niche communities next season, the niche marketing effect will only amplify.

Team gift bags, luxury box unboxings, and Julian Wright’s transfer news were all first shared through fan communities.

4. The organization’s receptiveness and responsiveness to various trending topics

“Ride the Wave” was the Lioneers’ motto this year, and the organization truly practiced what they preached with professional “trend-riding” abilities.

After January 18, when Gao Guohao was slapped by Zeng Wending at the Heping Basketball Arena and a post-game altercation broke out, fans began intensely discussing the following week’s January 23 game at the Lioneers’ home court. Leveraging the Fubon Braves’ high popularity and the “slap” controversy, this game became the first sellout in Lioneers history, with over 8,000 fans packing the arena. On that very day, the official social media account posted a merchandise announcement offering 20% off with the wordplay “Landlord, we agreed no slapping (ba tou)” — a pun referencing the incident — sparking massive fan discussion. The discounted merchandise sold out that day.

The “Landlord Ba Tou” incident was an extremely successful example of riding the wave.

The biggest difference between a professional sports league and amateur sports is the power of “buzz.” In Taiwan’s generally polite and modest culture, the best way for professional teams to become part of everyday conversation is by generating buzz. In the CPBL, we’ve seen numerous player conflicts, bench-clearing brawls, and revenge games. Perhaps influenced by multiple match-fixing scandals, the media tends to categorize these incidents as “negative news.” But in reality, these events are actually methods for spreading team information to the broader public. The Lioneers organization wasn’t afraid to face these types of incidents — instead, they grabbed onto trending topics and created even bigger waves.

From Coach Lin Guanlun telling the media, “I’m a terrible coach,” to GM Gao Jingyan saying in the next game, “I’m a terrible GM,” the Lioneers organization may have intentionally or unintentionally created some of P. LEAGUE+‘s inaugural season’s hottest topics. The “chicken soup for the soul” moment, Hasheem Thabeet’s finger wag, Julian Wright’s transfer to the Astros (yes, they’d face each other the very next week) — all these topics demonstrated the organization’s commitment to “Riding the Wave.”

Of course, after the “Landlord Ba Tou” discount game, the team set a new low scoring record, which indirectly spawned another wave of buzz with a 33% off discount matching their new low. I sincerely hope that with injured players returning and the team finding better chemistry in the second half of the season, the Lioneers can ride an upward trajectory. “Marketing is like makeup — it’s bonus points layered on top of fundamentals.” After all, in Taiwan’s professional sports, the most basic marketing tool is simply “winning.” The Lioneers’ record isn’t the most impressive among P. LEAGUE+‘s four teams, but through precise judgment and smart thinking, they’ve achieved remarkable brand awareness and attendance figures. I believe this is a marketing case study very much worth sharing.

In Taiwanese professional sports, the most effective marketing is simply “winning.” I also hope the Lioneers can regain their momentum in the second half of the season.

References: PLG: Braves achieve 99.9% sellout rate; Lioneers merchandise sells like hotcakes: https://user5280.pros.is/3cs5c5 Liu Yicheng Column: Scoring From the Start! Three Brand Management Strategies from the Hsinchu Lioneers: https://user5280.pros.is/3cbbyq P League / Corporate visits and open tryouts: Lioneers strengthen local connections: https://user5280.pros.is/3aswcr Selling with niche power — Will Aspire One outsell the Eee PC?: https://user5280.pros.is/38rq2p Wei Chuan Dragons Dragon Tribe Program: Managing fan clubs with product thinking! (Part 1 — Execution): https://user5280.pros.is/3c9yrz