What do we need to develop sports market in China?

It’s a big year for Chinese sports market. In this year, broadcast rights to Chinese Super League was sold for RMB 8 billion; Wanda Group and Alibaba Group announced their marching into sports market; fundraising for different kinds of sports startups is growing and a number of folk events are leading the trend for an active life. All these sports-related developments have never happened in such an explosive way. 

Sports industry is a burgeoning one with tremendous potential and treasures to be tapped. However, it needs patience, wits and practical actions to gradually dig for gold in the industry rather than fantasy for immediate effect with few efforts to be done and media hype. 

You need to think what the real needs of the current sports industry are if you want to be involved in the industry. Obviously, we have a great gap with sports powers. Those gaps are reflected in the lack of sports venues and facilities, imperfect service system and a great difficult in developing a habit for customers to pay for sports content. 

What can we do to narrow down the gap between us and the developed countries in sports industry? China is lack of the resource of high-quality events. I am afraid it’s not going to work just through paying big money for media rights to international events. The inflating prices of individual event cannot accurately reflect the real value of the event. The growing need for public fitness cannot be fully satisfied through creating lower level sports competitions. Rounds of fundraising, which may looks great, cannot bring real products for the sports industry, let alone bring returns. 

Driven by favorable reform policies, private efforts and social capitals have been involved in the sports industry, which is a necessary stage for the development of the industry after so many years’ dormancy. It is good for private efforts to play a role in the development of the industry but it also brings new challenge in the industry in terms of market regulation. The flow of social capital into sports market is absolutely necessary for the activation of the industry but an effective supervision system is needed to install. Besides, the role of government, social and market need to be well-positioned and balanced in order to function efficiently.

Source: people.cn