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Liverpool managing director Billy Hogan says China’s desire to invest heavily in football represents a “terrific opportunity” for the club.

The Reds are set to play matches in Shanghai and Hong Kong during their pre-season tour in July as part of the Premier League’s Asia Trophy.

Liverpool already have a huge fanbase in the region with around two million followers on Weibo - the Chinese microblogging website - and they are looking to extend their reach further.

There’s a boom in football investment in China as part of president Xi Jinping’s drive to build a ‘sports economy’. As well as the huge sums paid out by Chinese Super League clubs to attract players like Carlos Tevez and Oscar, online streaming service PPTV - a division of China’s Suning Holdings - has signed a three-year TV deal with the Premier League from 2019 worth £564million.

“The top line what it represents is a terrific opportunity,” Hogan told the South China Morning Post.

“Where there is growth for the sport, that’s good for everybody.

“For Liverpool, based on our data we know we have a significant fanbase in China already, the activity and interest has not just been over the last few years, but previously as well.

“We’ve done a lot of activities on the ground in China over the last several years and are looking more directly at what we can do in the marketplace.

“More generally, (China’s attention to football) is a positive thing. The Premier League has announced its new TV deal that will kick in in 2019, so it’s a focus from a league perspective and certainly from our perspective.”

To mark Chinese New Year in January, Liverpool put out a video of Jurgen Klopp teaming up with UK university champion Liu Haoyu to take on Roberto Firmino and Philippe Coutinho at table tennis at Melwood. It got over two million views on the club’s Chinese social media channels alone.

A recent report stated that Liverpool are the third most influential club online in China behind Manchester United and Bayern Munich. The Reds already has dedicated stores on Tmall and JD.com - China’s two biggest e-commerce sites.

“Generally the Asian market is very important, and China is very important as well as a significant part of Asia and one where sport and football is obviously growing and a major focus, not just from a corporate and fan perspective, but also government perspective with president Xi’s soccer reform movement now in place the last few years,” Hogan said.

“More than half of our fanbase is located in Asia. Liverpool’s fanbase is over 700 million on a global basis and a big contingent of that is based in Asia.

“Hong Kong in particular is a hotbed and that’s one of the reasons we’re focused on it. It’s also a very important market for many of our partners, especially Standard Chartered.”

Former Liverpool stars Jason McAteer, Vladimir Smicer, Patrik Berger, Luis Garcia and Sami Hyypia were in Hong Kong last week for a LFC World event to meet supporters ahead of this summer’s tour.

“We’re always focused on what we can be doing in those marketplaces,” Hogan added.

“On the ground activities like touring, obviously we are relatively limited in the number of times we can bring the first team out. We also do a number of on the ground activities in addition to LFC World.

“We also work very closely on the social media side and digital media side to activate and engage with fans. One thing we’ve been working on over the last several years is not just to expand our social and digital media offering in terms of number of outlets and channels, but to look at those channels in terms of local languages to be able to speak to fans directly.”