JD.com wins Spring Festival Gala partnership, following ByteDance, Tencent, and Alibaba, in sign of political approval
- JD.com is CCTV’s official partner for the most-watched television broadcast in the country, when it will give away cash as virtual red packets
- The partnership has become a sign of both financial power and political approval, which the company has maintained amid China’s crackdown on Big Tech
Chinese e-commerce giant JD.com has secured a deal to serve as the exclusive partner of state broadcaster China Central Television (CCTV) to give away cash as virtual red packets at this year’s Spring Festival Gala, the country’s most-watched television broadcast.
The latest sign of this goodwill is JD.com’s participation in the gala that has been a Lunar New Year’s Eve tradition for millions of Chinese families since it started in 1983. Last year, it was viewed by more than 1.27 billion people on TV and streamed online in more than 170 countries, according to People’s Daily, the official newspaper of the Communist Party.
This year’s show will mark the fifth consecutive year that CCTV has partnered with a major Chinese internet company to give away red packets.