The purpose of the thesis is to bring Portsmouth Football Club’s social media marketing efforts in China in line with other football clubs in the Premier League, the top footballing division in England. Portsmouth currently operate at a playing level below the top division, but with am-bitious owners recently installed, the clubs plans to play and compete in the top division in England. The club do not currently have any social media efforts directed towards China and to compete financially and enhance their fanbase globally they need to introduce similar and innovative strategies to maximize their potential at that level. The objective of this thesis is to provide Portsmouth Football Club with a social media marketing strategy geared towards China.

The first part of the thesis outlined the project and set the boundaries in which to work in. It provided a background of the case company and set the tone for why and how the project would be implemented.

The second part of the thesis covered the theoretical and empirical parts of this thesis. Theo-retical information was gathered from reliable and relevant sources to provide a framework of the most pertinent ideas used in the thesis. The use of literature included books and web-based sources. The theory correlated included aspects such as marketing, related to strategy and com-munication, and social media, related to marketing, China and the football industry. The market in China and football in China, where analyzed, using secondary sources, such as articles and studies. Empirical information was then recouped to obtain quantitative data from Portsmouth Football Club regarding their objectives, views on China and current strategies. This was gath-ered by implementing a semi-structured phone interview with a Marketing Manager at the club.

Recommendations on achieving a successful social media marketing strategy in China where set by correlating the literature on Chinese football fans and social media behaviors in football in China, with the interview with the club’s Marketing Manager. The interview allowed the author to define successful in relation to Portsmouth´s strategy objective and then meet this by offering valid strategic points to succeed in this strategy.