As Euro 2024 nears its grand finale in Germany on Sunday, it is not just soccer players who are involved in pitched battles of the sporting kind - advertisers, sponsors, marketing whizzes and brands, including several Chinese labels, are all vying to create maximum impact. According to UEFA's official website, there are 13 global partners for this year's tournament and, remarkably, five of them are Chinese companies: BYD, VIVO, Hisense, Alipay and AliExpress. "For Chinese companies with global strategies, sports marketing is a vital accelerator for enhancing brand influence and international development," said Jiang Han, a senior researcher at the Beijing-based think tank Pangoal Institution.