The official fantasy football game for the world’s largest soccer league has changed its designation for Taiwan to “Chinese Taipei.”
The English Premier League’s fantasy game has over ten million players worldwide, organized into an overall league and many smaller leagues. Players can compete against fans who support the same club team as them or against friends. But another type of smaller league is organized around individual countries — and this where a controversial new change has been made.
At the start of this season, and in previous seasons, Taiwan’s local league — which has several thousand players — was designated as “Taiwan.” However, this has now been altered, becoming “Chinese Taipei” instead.
Use of “Taiwan” is often seen by Beijing as suggesting Taiwan is a country, while “Chinese Taipei” is seen as suggesting that it is a region within China.
A large number of other organizations have also made the same adjustment in recent years, some after overt pressure from China. In sport, in particular, Taiwan often competes under “Chinese Taipei.”
At the Olympics, Taiwan has competed under the name “Chinese Taipei” since 1984 and at the games in Paris this year attempts by fans to bring in Republic of China flags — used to denote Taiwan — were tightly policed. FIFA, soccer’s governing body, also designates Taiwan as Chinese Taipei. As does the Asian Football Confederation.
Domino Theory spoke with the Premier League for this article. Although it did not offer an explanation of the precise reasoning or timing behind the change for publication, it said it was aligning with other global sporting organizations such as FIFA, Asian Football Confederation and IOC.
One further area of interest may be that the Premier League opened an international office in Beijing in October, aimed at “support[ing] the continued growth of the League and its clubs in China.” It also signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Chinese Football Association.
“This will see the two organisations collaborate on the delivery of programmes and activities to support the elite development of players, coaches and match officials, as well as training for grassroots coaches and referees,” an official statement said.
Online fantasy football players largely reacted negatively to the news of the name change when this reporter engaged them on the issue.
Speaking on the r/FantasyPL subreddit, user “beijingwizard” said: “The Premier League opened an office in Beijing this year in October. Hasn’t taken them long to make ‘important’ changes.”
User “midnight_ranter” wrote: “China is a huge market for any sport these days — the [U.S. National Basketball League] is making billions from the Chinese market and even the [Premier League] has a huge following there and they are probably trying to capitalise on it,” adding: “And when you make deals with China, you have to deal with their government which consists of some of the most insecure people on the planet especially when it comes to issues like Taiwan.”
Other users noted previous examples of major celebrities and sports brands getting into trouble with Chinese authorities because of their positioning on political issues.
In 2021, actor and wrestler John Cena apologized to “Chinese people” for saying Taiwan was a country in an interview to a Taiwanese broadcaster.
In 2019, when Daryl Morey, an executive with the Houston Rockets, shared an image supportive of pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong, Chinese state broadcaster CCTV boycotted the NBA for almost 18 months.
The Premier League and FIFA have sought to “keep politics out of football.” But even in spaces as innocuous as fantasy football leagues, politics keeps turning up.
*Note: This article was amended to reflect the fact that the Premier League did offer a partial explanation of its adjustment.
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