David Beckham has been signed as the global brand ambassador for AliExpress, the online retail marketplace owned by the Chinese tech group Alibaba, as it kicks off its UEFA Euro 2024 marketing campaign.
The one-year partnership was reported in The Independent as being the ecommerce giant’s most expensive endorsement so far.
It comes in the run-up to the Euro 2024, and will see Beckham working with official sponsor AliExpress to support its promotional activity for the football tournament.
The former England captain will be leading on its ‘Score More with AliExpress’ campaign, which will offer consumers a range of special deals to mark the competition. He will be featured in a series of promotional campaigns running across television, VOD, social media and traditional media.
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AliExpress signed the deal to be the exclusive ecommerce platform for Uefa, European football’s governing body, back in March. According to Reuters, it will invest “millions of dollars in discounts, deals and engagement” in order to attract shoppers.
The Euro 2024 campaign will see the ecommerce platform giving away millions of euros worth of coupons, as well as free tickets to matches.
The amount Beckham will be making from the deal – his third endorsement partnership in recent weeks, following tie-ups with both Hugo Boss and Shark Ninja – has not been revealed.
“AliExpress is helping fans get even closer to Uefa Euro 2024 this summer, by offering them great prizes as the action takes place on the pitch,” Beckham commented.
The company’s partnership with Beckham “makes a lot of sense”, according to AliExpress commercial director Gary Topp, who went on to describe him as “a global sports and lifestyle icon” who “will help AliExpress users get closer to the action throughout the tournament”.
The Beckham endorsement deal follows just months after the European Commission launched a formal investigation against AliExpress, looking at whether the platform is doing enough to crack down on illegal and harmful goods.
