May 28, at the launch event of Geely Galaxy's new model Star Wish, Geely Galaxy officially announced:
Geely Galaxy has become the broadcasting partner of the 2026 World Cup in North America organized by China National Radio and Television, and has exclusively sponsored CCTV-5 flagship sports program "Elite Feast".
Geely relevant personnel revealed exclusively to Global Auto at the signing scene of the strategic agreement with the station before the launch event that this cross-boundary partnership took less than seven or eight days from initial contact to final signing.
The Party Committee Secretary of the General Manager's Office of China National Radio, Television and Broadcasting, Ren Xuean, stated at the launch event site that this cooperation is "a strong alliance between a national platform and a national brand, as well as a perfect fusion of sports spirit and Chinese manufacturing".
Geely Automobile Group CEO Gan Jiayue
Geely Automobile Group CEO Gan Jiayue attributed this rapid two-way engagement to both parties' "shared longing for beauty and happiness". From his perspective, by using the station as a "bridge built for Chinese audiences to connect directly to the World Cup", Geely Galaxy is speeding up to push the high-quality intelligent travel experience representing Chinese manufacturing onto the global arena.
According to incomplete statistics, this is the first Chinese brand to interact with this North American World Cup.
As everyone knows, due to the impact of the initial stagnation in negotiations between the station and FIFA on copyright, the commercial value and expectations of this North American World Cup in China were continuously undervalued by the market.
On May 15, when the station and FIFA reached a broadcast agreement at the last minute, the extremely compressed sponsorship window period caused some enterprises to face a dead end due to too long decision chains and inability to react quickly, leading to many brewing commercial cooperation projects to be unfortunately aborted.
On the contrary, Geely Galaxy, within less than half a month after the station completed copyright signing, successfully completed the sponsorship lock and in-depth participation of this World Cup prime program. Under the extremely tight time window, this is not only a grab for scarce marketing resources, but also a test of corporate decision-making mechanisms.
This determination to quickly bet on core assets in uncertainty reflects the system efficiency and industrial confidence of Geely Galaxy in the breakthrough of new energy strategy.
To be honest, car marketing today is becoming increasingly homogeneous, making good resources that can truly penetrate circles extremely scarce. Such a super event held every four years that can attract global attention, like the World Cup, is more of a lucky encounter.
Multiple sports marketing professionals told Global Auto that regarding this World Cup resource of the station, due to the earlier minor episode, the reaction time left for major brands was not much. "Overall, for resources at this level, it's about speed and decisiveness."
When many enterprises were hesitating and watching due to the short negotiation window period, even missing good opportunities, Geely Galaxy did not hesitate and locked the golden resources of the World Cup before everyone else.
Of course, for Geely, the reason for daring to bet heavily on the World Cup at this time is because they deeply understand the connection between car manufacturing and sports.
Beyond the surface noise of marketing, competitive sports and car manufacturing are essentially the same thing. A high-level sports competition is backed by long-term systematic training, requiring athletes to repeatedly hone and strive, just to win the championship or break through themselves in the end. Car manufacturing also has no shortcuts; this trait of strictly following objective laws and practicing core skills step by step is exactly the foundational tone that the current auto industry should uphold.
Geely previously sponsored high-standard sports events such as Hangzhou Asian Games, Harbin Asian Winter Games, Chengdu World Games, Hangzhou Marathon, etc.
△ One of the venues for the 2026 World Cup: Mexico City Aztec Stadium (Reference Photo)
In the first quarter of this year, Geely Automobile Group's sales volume broke through 700,000 units strongly, topping the Chinese independent brand sales champion. On the new energy track representing the future, Geely Galaxy became the "new energy brand that reached 2 million cumulative sales in the fastest time" in only 37 months, achieving a phenomenal "Galaxy Speed".
Long-term technical deep cultivation proves that today's Chinese auto industry is fully capable of connecting with the world's top level and has formed significant leading advantages in some key technology fields.
If holding the "Elite Feast" exclusively is a grand breakout for Geely Galaxy in the public awareness level, then its overseas achievements shown at the product and service end completely verify the great ambition of Chinese car companies to seek full-chain discourse power in the international market. When the domestic market is still stuck in the share of a single track, Geely's new products have already completed substantive positioning on the international track first.
Gan Jiayue announced a set of data with great industrial insight at the launch event:
In the just passed quarter, Geely "Star Wish" won the sales champion of pure electric hatchbacks in countries such as Mexico, Indonesia, Costa Rica, Brazil, etc., and ranked in the top three in the global new energy vehicle sales list, becoming the Chinese new energy model with the highest ranking. This represents that Chinese new energy products are truly competing in the "final round" of the global auto industry.
Along with the product going overseas is the comprehensive extension of the ecosystem. To welcome the North American World Cup, Geely's Mexico subsidiary launched a measure with great strategic significance: providing free airport pickup service for Geely car owners going to Mexico to watch the game. This precisely echoes the strong momentum of Geely Group's exports breaking through 200,000 units in the first quarter of the year, with a year-on-year increase of 126%, marking that the enterprise is steadily realizing the strategic transformation from single product output to "product, service, ecosystem" full value chain output.
Beyond the World Cup carnival at the public level, Geely has also not relaxed its exploration of the high-barrier professional car sports field. With Ma Qinghua winning the station champion at the Italy round of the TCR World Tour, the strength of Chinese brands on the international professional track was verified again.
Geely Holding Group Senior Vice President Yang Xueliang
But this is not the endgame. Geely Holding Group Senior Vice President Yang Xueliang told Global Auto that Geely not only needs to consolidate the mass foundation in the field of car sports but also explore higher, currently actively responding and contacting to introduce top international events such as WSBK (World Superbike Championship) into China.
From exclusively sponsoring CCTV's football benchmark program, to defining new heights of going overseas with global sales champions, to deeply competing for professional top events, Geely has transcended the simple following stage, and is now playing its full value chain leading strategic trump card first on the global competition table with indisputable system determination.
