Misleading data cloud China sports

Arguably the most quoted statistic about China is that it’s home to an awfull lot of people – more than 1.3 billion to be precise.

In a questionable leap of logic, many then translate that fact into thinking there are 1.3 billion potential customers in China – whether you’re in the market of selling smartphones, building e-commerce franchises or attracting sports fans.

Exaggeration is all part of the game when it comes to self-promotion and marketing, but the problems begin when those who should know better are not corrected by those that do.

A week ago, legendary boxing promoter Bob Arum told anyone who would listen that he expected more than 300 million Chinese sports fans to watch two-time Olympic champion Zou Shiming take on Thai boxer Kwanpichit Onesongchaigym in what was widely presumed to be an eliminator for a title fight early next year. Zou won a bruising encounter during which he received an accidental headbutt which left him with his left eye swollen shut.

The capacity crowd at the Venetian resort in Macao were suitably impressed, but beyond that, the news garnered little attention. The actual number of people who tuned in to watch at least one minute of the fight from the mainland turned out, according to CSM Media Research, to be well below 2 million, but Arum’s absurd prediction – somewhere between wild optimism and outright lying – was still the number that grabbed the most attention.

Entertaining a room full of gambling enthusiasts is one thing, but converting a population into boxing fans is quite another.

Unfortunately, Arum’s numbers aren’t the only ones that are faulty. Manchester United claim to have 109 million “followers” in China, and while the small print makes it clear that a “follower” is nothing like the conventional notion of a “fan,” the small print always gets lost in the noise. Never let the truth, as they say, get in the way of a good story.

Similarly, sports properties around the world often boast of their huge followings on Chinese social media, oblivious of (or choosing to ignore) that the vast majority of those following them on Weibo are essentially inactive accounts – by Sina’s own admission. These faulty numbers then form the basis for a succession of lucrative sponsorship deals.

There is no question that China possesses many millions of passionate sports fans, but optimism about the sports industry’s future needs to be tempered with a healthy dose of realism.