Pot the Reds: Cue Sports in China
Friday, 4th December 2009 ~ Sam ~ Link ~ Comments (0)
Ding Junhui
A number of factors add up to give cue sports an edge in China. The increasingly popular sports have a rare combination of Chinese world beaters, government support, affordability, a fashionable image and excellent domestic TV coverage.
The most recent example of Chinese success came just two weeks ago (November 22nd) at the Kappa Cup Women's World 9-ball Championship, held in Shenyang. The title was claimed by 16-year-old, Liu Shasha, who beat China's popular "Queen of 9-ball" Pan Xiaoting in an all-China final. Liu's rise in the sport has been meteoric, from the time she started playing 9-ball a mere two years ago.
Four years ago another stick prodigy, Ding Junhui (丁俊晖), exploded onto the world snooker scene at the 2005 China Open by defeating then top-ranked Stephen Hendry in front of a television audience of 110 million, according to a report from China Daily. Ding followed that up later that year by beating another snooker legend, Steve Davis, to win the UK championship. Currently, however, Ding is in a slump and has dropped to 13th in the world (having been ranked as high as ninth). Perhaps he needs to learn some more lessons from Xiao Hui (Little Hui), the world-beating star of cartoon series "Dragon Ball No. 1," inspired by Ding.
In the last two years, Ding has inspired a new generation of snooker stars including Liang Wenbo, who now challenges Ding for the position as China's number one. Other players to have followed in Ding's footsteps, literally, are Xiao Guodong, Tian Pengfei and Liu Song--who now all live and train with him in Sheffield, England.
As one of China's biggest sports stars, Ding Junhui is the inspiration for a new cartoon series, "Dragon Ball No. 1."
Zhang Xiaodong, snooker director of the Multi-ball Administrative Center, the sport's governing body in China, is full of encouragement for the latest stars, saying to China Daily: "They give us a lot more to talk about other than Ding. They are trailblazers. They show millions of Chinese families that professional dreams are accessible, and tell sponsors there is a huge market behind them."
The millions of Chinese families and sponsors Zhang mentions haven't gone unnoticed by World Snooker, the sport's global governing body, which just last week (November 26th) announced that it will partner with IMG to launch a World Tour to "capitalize on the burgeoning interest in professional snooker in many countries around the world, and develop snooker's professional circuit in a way similar to that of global sports such as tennis and golf." A few of those world tour stops will surely be in China since Beijing was the site of World Snooker's first office outside of the United Kingdom and, according to World Snooker, approximately 50 million Chinese now play snooker.
The affordability of cue sports and their easy-to-understand rules are both factors in the sport's popularity in China. It fits well into the government's approved category of a "can play" sport and in addition, the sport has benefited from a "beautiful hustler" image of the women's players mentioned above. Thanks to that image it is now considered a cool sport, particularly amongst the fashion-sensitive youth demographic.
For non-traditional sports in China, the importance of exposure on CCTV-5 (the national sports channel) cannot be emphasized enough. With Chinese stars performing well on the world stage, CCTV has been steadily increasing broadcasts of snooker and 9-ball, in turn leading to more young talent coming through the ranks in what has become an extremely virtuous cycle for the sport.
With seemingly every aspect of China's support behind it, cue sports are flourishing in China and great leaps forward are being achieved breathtakingly fast. For evidence of this you need look no further than 16-year-old 9-ball world champion Liu Shasha, or veteran Ding Junhui, by far the most experienced Chinese snooker player, who earlier this year celebrated his 22nd birthday.
Ding Junhui image: Baike.baidu.com
Ding Junhui cartoon image: Sports.sohu.com
Tags: 9-ball, CCTV5, cue sports, Ding Junhui, governing body, Liang Wenbo, Liu Shasha, pool, Snooker, women's sports, World Snooker
2009 National Games smashes sponsorship revenue record
Thursday, 29th October 2009 ~ Sam ~ Link ~ Comments (0)
A runner from Inner Mongolia wearing a bib sponsored by petroleum company Sinopec
The last National Games in 2005 (the event is organized once every four years by the State General Administration of Sports) managed to attract deals worth more than 360 million RMB ($52 million USD) from a number of domestic and foreign companies. However at this year's Games in Jinan, Shandong province, the Organizing Committee has come close to doubling that amount. They successfully signed 18 official partners, six official sponsors, eight exclusive suppliers and 27 suppliers, combining for the event's largest sponsorship revenue in history of 700 million RMB ($102 million USD).
The combination of the participation of many Olympic champions from the Beijing Games, the promise of improved government goodwill as well as guaranteed extensive coverage on CCTV5 (the major Chinese sports channel) meant that sponsors were clamoring to have their brands associated with the event known as the Chinese Olympic Games. This is all consistent with a trend in the sponsorship market in China, whereby sponsors tend to flock to big events and favor TV exposure compared to other countries.
Close to 11,000 athletes participated in this year's Games, the most in the event's history, meaning that the Organizing Committee certainly needed the financial support. They even accepted money from the tobacco industry but had to return it following an official complaint which cited the fact that China is committed to a ban on tobacco advertising, promotion and sponsorship at domestic and international events since 2006 due to China's membership in the World Health Organization's Framework Convention on Tobacco Control. Money was given as donations by at least nine domestic tobacco companies, some with links to the Shandong Tobacco Group which reportedly donated 20 million RMB ($2.93 million USD), all of which had to be returned.
Additionally, the record sponsorship revenue haul of 700 million RMB does not include corporate sponsorships given to individual provincial teams such as Mizuno China's sponsorship of the Tianjin and Shanghai teams estimated at around 32 million RMB ($475,000 USD) per team.
Sports sponsorship in China continues to grow strongly despite the financial crisis and it will come as no surprise if the next National Games in 2013 breaks the sponsorship revenue record again--hopefully without having to resort to calling themselves the "Lenovo National Games."
Image of sponsored athlete: Sports.sdnews.com
Tags: marketing, National Games, revenue record, sponsorship, tobacco
Gold medals and golf: What Olympic inclusion means for the game in China
Thursday, 15th October 2009 ~ Sam ~ Link ~ Comments (0)
2016 gold medalists? Young golfers practice their tee shots on the driving range at Lakeview Golf Club, Kunming
In a country where the Olympics are seen as the summit of sport, the ramifications of last Friday's International Olympic Committee (IOC) announcement that golf and rugby sevens are to be included in the 2016 and 2020 Games will be huge.
Golf, in particular, has had a short and startlingly fast development path in China. From the first golf club, Zhongshan Hot Spring Golf Club, which opened in China in 1984 to Mission Hills, home to the World Cup of Golf with its 12 courses designed by the top industry names such as Nick Faldo, José Maria Olazabal, Greg Norman and Ernie Els, golf in China has mimicked the economy in its rapid growth. The re-admittance of golf into the Olympics could speed up the game's growth in China even more by attracting money, government support and popular interest.
Asian golf in general is booming right now and most recently it was South Korean Y.E. Yang's PGA victory over Tiger Woods in the States that shocked the world. Mirroring Yang's career path many Chinese "first generation" golfers are also from under-privileged family backgrounds and are self-taught, picking up the game in their late teens just as Yang did. Chinese golfer Wu Ashun is an example of this phenomenon; determination and luck have enabled him to work his way up from a 19-year-old first-timer to the top amateur national player and now to a top three ranking on the Omega China Tour.
Wu, whose talent was discovered by a Hong Kong charity fund, is not satisfied yet however and says "I would rather be a small fish in a big pond than a big fish in a small pond." Describing the China Tour as a small tour is no understatement. Most of the golfers outside its top 20 struggle to break even on their travel and accommodation expenses.
It is a situation that Dan Washburn, author of the as yet unpublished book "Par for China," has likened the situation of China's pros to that of the early 20th century in America where professional golfers, who were mostly immigrants, were socially ranked somewhere between traveling salesmen and itinerant farmhands. Of course, the US PGA Tour has since grown to become the largest golf competition in the world and it will be interesting to see how the IOC's latest decision affects the growth of golf in the world's most populous nation.
"Par for China" is more than just a description of golf in China; it also uses the metaphor of the development of golf epitomizing the country's development as a whole. Washburn describes "golf as a barometer of economic growth" and certainly golf has only existed since Deng Xiaoping opened the country in the 1980's. A key issue for the rapidly developing China, both politically and within golf, is land usage rights. The official stance is that golf courses built on farmland are illegal, but on the outskirts of the wealthiest Chinese cities--where the rich of the city meet the poor of the country--the farmland is often obtained through backdoor connections and bribes to local officials. The property is then listed as housing estates and turned into a golf course.
Another aspect of golf that reflects a topical issue in contemporary China is the question of "accessibility for all" versus elitism. As promoted by the IOC, the decision to include golf in the Olympics will certainly bring added funding to the sport in countries such as China and India, but the question remains whether this money will go towards the development of the sport at the grassroots level where it is needed the most or if it will stretch the gap between China's rich and poor even more. The reality, though, is that golf will struggle to ever become the people's game due to exorbitant greens fees (an average round costs $152 USD, the most expensive in the world) exacerbated by the government's well-intentioned efforts to curb construction which decrease supply and put further upward pressure on prices.
China has seemingly been the fastest to rebound from the economic slowdown and the golf industry will likewise continue to flourish, with the China Golf Association predicting that by 2020 China will have 20 million golfers. Tiger Woods has stated that he intends to participate in the 2016 Games in Rio de Janeiro and having witnessed last year what China can do when they focus their efforts on the Olympics, it would be no surprise to see a Chinese golfer challenging him for the gold.
Tags: Dan Washburn, golf, Mission Hills, Olympics, Omega China Tour, Y.E. Yang, Zhongshan Hot Spring Golf Club