Italian football giants Juventus has launched yet another first for a European football side in China with a specially designed social network aimed at increasing engagement with the side’s Chinese fans.

The platform, which is called the Juventus Chinese Digital Fan Community, has been launched in conjunction with Chinese technology firm Luvfans. It underlines the recent six month period in which many of the European footballing giants have looked to up their engagement in the region.

The site will offer fans official merchandise, exclusively designed activities as well as competitions that will offer lucky fans flights and tickets to a Juventus FC home game.

While Juventus FC isn’t a strange to the Chinese market in a social media sense with a presence on Weibo, Wechat and Baidu, this signals the Turin-based club’s biggest push into the region.

Juventus FC’s head of marketing and digital Frederico Palomba said that with this new network, the club can now start to regularly engage with its Chinese fans, of whom number in the millions.

“China represents an enormous catchment area. There are millions of fans who regularly follow us on social media. Until now, we’ve been lacking a tool that brings them all together and provides a single reference point”, he said.

“Now that we’ve built this official platforms, our Chinese fans will have the opportunity to join a huge community that we’ll be dedicating a great deal of time and attention to.”

As clubs look to get more creative with its fan engagement, the rapid growth of social media platforms means that they can begin to take advantage of emerging markets like China.