China enters into a new era for football

‍‍China has entered into a brand new era for football that is likely to witness great development of the sport, along with relevant commercial strengths of this industry. 

This began with a series of investments into overseas football. United Vansen bought 98% shares of Dutch soccer club ADO Den Haag. Wanda Group bought 20% of Atletico Madrid in the same period. Chinese company Tech Pro then offered to buy French football club Sochaux, which was going to be sold by its owner Peugeot car company. 

These were all small deals compared with Wang Jianlin’s later deal to purchase Infront Sports & Media Group. Wang Jianlin’s Wanda Group successfully bought Infront for 10 billion Euros at the start of this year. Infront was the second biggest sports marketing company in the world, handling the rights of World Cup and has many important clients in the global sports industry. The new ownership by Wanda Group made China an important role in the world sports field, let alone the football industry. 

This period has also witnessed a warm up of the Chinese market for foreign football clubs. Last year, Bundesliga football club Wolfsburg bought Chinese player Zhang Xizhe, which was regarded by some as a marketing gag of Volkswagen, who owns the club. Several English football clubs are also preparing for summer trips to China, including Manchester United, and Schalke 04. 

Adding to this, the Chinese government also pushed the progress further. Last week, Chinese government held a meeting headed by President Xi, which focused country development in 2015. 

It was not the only situation in recent period that Chinese government announced new plans for the sport. In the second half of 2014 when the State of Council published policies on sports industry development (5-trillion-yuan goal), football was designated as one of the important sports along with two other ball games—basketball and volleyball. A series of measures followed. One of them is that the Ministry of Education listed the sport in school curriculums. 

President Xi is an avid football fan, as is mentioned by many media. He and the whole country all have a wish to develop the sport. Plus the recent active activities in the business sides of the sport both from within China and overseas, we believe that this year and the following years would see promising opportunities in China’s football industry.