The future of sports marketing in China sounds different

By 6am, runners are already gathering along Shanghai’s Bund, jogging the Huangpu River with headphones in, their footsteps folding into a city just waking up. What’s in their ears may not be a workout playlist but a podcast — on urban architecture, running routes, the feeling of being inside their own body. For a growing number of them, running, yoga, commuting and training now come paired with audio: the body in motion, the mind kept company by a longer narrative. That pairing helps explain why sports brands have started treating podcasts as a content frontier rather than an afterthought. Short video and podcasts pull on different kinds of attention. The former is built for instant stimulation — a clip can grab, satisfy and vanish in seconds — while podcasts run on a slower clock, building familiarity and trust over time. For sports brands the math is concrete: a 40- to 50-minute episode runs about the length of a 5km run or a full yoga session, holding a listener who would otherwise scroll past. Putting the conversation on camera Lululemon offered the clearest case in June, launching a video podcast called Conversations on the Mat. It pairs brand ambassador Zhu Yilong, figure skater Zhu Yi and former table tennis player Niu Jianfeng with guests to talk through breath, focus and recovery, in a register closer to a conversation about the body than a brand interview. Most brand podcasts stay audio-only, built on companionship and long-tail value. Going video-first changes the production logic: viewers watch expression, posture and body language, and read the ease an outdoor setting creates. The throughline is that yoga doesn’t live only on the mat — it runs through different sports, different bodies and everyday life. Audio came first. In October 2024, Lululemon introduced Dialogue on Good State on Xiaoyuzhou, one of China’s larger podcast platforms, inviting athletes, cultural figures and others to discuss movement and self-perception. The video series doesn’t replace it so much as extend it, making the same conversation more visual and more situated. Where brand podcasts get hard Sports brands have been at this for a few years. Nike’s Nei Ting, launched in 2022, is now in its fifth season with 41,546 subscribers on Xiaoyuzhou. Its subjects run well past sneaker culture, athlete interviews and trend talk — where Nike already holds authority — into parent-child workouts, outdoor camping and everyday training, recasting sport as something to take up rather than only to watch or buy. Staying on air is the harder part. The last Nei Ting episode was published on May 16, 2025, leaving the show quiet for more than a year. That silence captures the pattern: a podcast is easy to launch and difficult to keep going. A marketing professional who has worked across several sports brands, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Jing Daily: “Sports brands making podcasts generally face a problem of content sustainability.” In his telling, brands have easy access to athletes, events and community stories, but converting those into a steady, engaging show is the hard part. Sport leans on the body, movement and place; audio carries only sound, which makes the rhythm, force and atmosphere of a sport difficult to convey by listening alone. Giving sound a sense of place On took a different tack. Its podcast, launched in November 2025, is one the brand tells listeners to open only while running. The first season features runner Jiang Sida and urban researchers exploring city space, bodily sensation and the feel of moving through streets and crowds. Rather than a straight interview show, it layers in the sounds of the route itself, pulling listeners toward something close to a real run rather than a conversation about one. Beyond the audio, On has mapped running routes in cities including Shanghai and Shenzhen, turning the podcast’s idea of urban exploration into something runners can trace on foot — sound building the setting, routes returning it to the street. Patagonia’s Batake plays differently again: an audio outdoor magazine spanning mountains and oceans, surf lessons for autistic children, and a sit-down with the brand’s philosophy director, all carrying its environmental, anti-consumerist stance to listeners. Across the four, the temperaments diverge — Lululemon chasing a body-mind resonance, Nike cultivating communities, On reshaping how running feels, Patagonia preaching belief. What unites them is a read on podcasts not as one-off campaigns but as a base for building brand values, community and a longer lifestyle story. The numbers are hard to ignore. The CPA Chinese Podcast White Paper 2026 put China’s podcast listeners above 150 million in 2025, up 25% from 2023, and a separate Fudan University and Xiaoyuzhou report found that 18- to 35-year-olds make up more than 83% of them — the very cohort any brand courting young consumers has to reach. Podcasts are not a cure-all Audience growth doesn’t mean listeners want to be sold to. Many come to podcasts because they feel private and less commercial than short video, and they catch repackaged ad copy or event plugs fast. For sports brands there’s a further trap: breath, focus, the outdoors and mind-body talk are useful entry points that harden into cliché once overused. What gives a podcast value is not riding the trend but telling a story only that brand can tell. This is why the format suits brands that already know what they stand for. For Nike, On and Patagonia, the product needs little explanation; what’s left is why they exist and who they want beside them. A name still working out its own identity may find a podcast a distraction. Slow work suits a slow aim. These shows aren’t built for instant conversion but for a longer relationship — the kind where a listener catches a line on a morning run and feels, briefly, understood. That trust builds episode by episode, not in one viral hit, which is why the format rewards brands with something to say and leaves the rest with airtime to fill.

The future of sports marketing in China sounds different

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The future of sports marketing in China sounds different

How Bottega Veneta weaved China’s forever it bag