EPL turns the page in China with return to national broadcaster CCTV

Twelve years ago, Sun Jihai's Manchester City played Li Tie's Everton in a match that has since gone down in folklore. 

Reports circulated that hundreds of millions of fans back in China tuned in to watch their countrymen go head-to-head in the English Premier League, and while those exaggerated viewing figures were well wide of the mark, it was still a hugely significant moment.

The fact that a middle-of-the-table clash could draw a sizeable audience on Chinese national broadcaster CCTV was not lost on sports executives around the world, but that season became something of a high watermark.

Both sides - CCTV and the EPL- thought they had the upper hand in negotiations for a repeat deal, but the result was that the most watched soccer league in the world no longer had place on the world's most watched broadcaster.

In the following years, CCTV aired extensive footage of the German and Italian leagues, and their popularity soared in China as a result. Meanwhile, the English Premier League was consigned to remote corners of the satellite universe through a succession of misguided broadcasting deals, and its standing in China subsequently plummeted.

Finally, though, that once soured relationship between CCTV and the EPL appears to have been repaired with news on August 5 that the broadcaster will air one game per week this season. Although these games will not be the pick of the bunch - Everton vs Watford was its debut offering on Saturday – and will be only on CCTV 5 + instead on the most popular sports channel CCTV 5, this is a good deal for both sides just as an insider said more deepgoing cooperation would follow after the move made for this season. 

More significantly, CCTV can now include EPL highlights of all 10 games each weekend in its sports news bulletins, as well as the popular Total Soccer program. 

The reasons for this new agreement are many and varied, but the viewing environment in China has been transformed over the past decade. While CCTV has been grindingly slow to adapt to a new era of multimedia entertainment, millions of fans, especially the younger generations, now watch sports and other programs online - instead of on television - and CCTV will still have to compete with web offerings from Sina Sports, LeTV Sports and PPTV to attract fans of English soccer.

In that context, CCTV still has a mountain to climb, given that fans currently have the option of watching their choice of matches for the equivalent of less than $1, but at least they are now back in the game after more than a decade in the wilderness.

Taken from Global Times