The turning point for China sports industry

If discovering the next Yao Ming is the eternal Holy Grail for Chinese sports, then emulating the success of the NBA in China is the equivalent for foreign sports properties.

It's unlikely that any league will come close to matching the success of basketball in the short term, but that doesn't mean they won't try.

Soccer leagues, collectively, attract a similar level of interest from Chinese sports lovers, but it's a crowded field, with the English, Spanish, German and Italian leagues all vying for attention from Chinese fans. Individual clubs are also stepping up their marketing efforts, with Manchester City set to cement their influence with an official presence in China. But the NBA still leads the pack, thanks in large part to the springboard provided by Yao in his glory years.

Other US sports have small, but growing, presences in China. Major League Baseball has three development centers in Jiangsu Province, which it hopes will produce China's first homegrown superstar in the next four to five years, the NHL recently upped its campaign to promote ice hockey in China with extensive coverage on CCTV, while this month the NFL saw enough potential in China to appoint sports industry veteran Peter Griffiths to oversee growth opportunities abroad, with China singled out as a specific target.

The NFL has seen steady growth in China over the past few years, but Mark Waller, Executive VP of NFL International, said on a recent trip in China that the league is looking for a "step change," in other words a revolution that could dramatically expand the sport's presence in China.

On the surface, it seems an overly ambitious goal, with many of the same hurdles to the sport's growth here still in place, but globalization is opening up some intriguing possibilities that could prove to be a genuine game changer. So far, the sports world has seen this mostly in soccer, with Wanda's 20 percent stake in Atletico Madrid and Huawei's global sports sponsorship campaign.

Given those, and other, events, Chinese ownership is not beyond the realms of possibility for the NFL, a move that would undoubtedly create more attention for the league in China. Chinese tech firms, like Alibaba, Tencent or LeTV, have tried revolutionary moves in their own industries, and also sought to expand into other sectors, including sports.

No one knows when the next game changing moment will occur for the sports industry, but everyone is in China trying to find out.

Original title on Global Times:China seen as key for next game changing sports moment