There is no question that large, global sporting events can help change the image of a city. Governments use the spectacles as a means to redevelop or invest further in a city’s infrastructure. South Africa proposed a nine billion rand — or about 1.7 billion USD — budget on city infrastructure projects for next year’s World Cup. According to the Beijing Organizing Committee, the 2008 Olympic Games saw about 60 billion USD invested in city-wide infrastructure projects, which included new stadium venues for the sporting events.

Last week, the article “Sloppy Services Bode Ill for Guangzhou’s Asian Games,” which appeared on the Global Times and was reported by China Sport’s Review’s David Yang, noted that Guangzhou would spend approximately 29 billion on infrastructure throughout the city, and an additional 900 million USD on stadium construction and renovations, in preparation for the athletic events in 2010.

China continues to show willingness to play host to several international sporting events, as well as increasingly popular national athletic endeavors. As mentioned, there are the 16th Annual Asian Games in Guangzhou. The 2009 East Asian Games are currently taking place in Hong Kong until Dec. 13.

Nanjing, which bid and was eventually eliminated for consideration as the host city for the 2012 Youth Winter Olympic Games, is currently in the bidding process for the 2014 Youth Summer Olympic Games. Even animatronics is getting into the mix, as 2010 will also see Harbin play host to the Robot Games, where androids designed from more than 100 universities worldwide will compete.

Apparent in the infrastructure bubble that takes place in cities around China that are vying for the chance to host a major sporting competition is that chinks are beginning to arise in just how productive and profitable a host city can be in the years after the athletics have moved on. Just recently, China Daily reported the city of Harbin gave up on its plan to bid for the 2018 Winter Olympics, saying that a push by the People’s Republic to host a winter Olympic Games event was “premature.”

Beijing’s crown jewel of sporting events, the 2008 Olympic Games, cost a reported 400 billion RMB, with 12 venues constructed for the two-week event. A 2006 New York Times article titled “The China Syndrome” noted the original budget for the National Stadium was about 500 billion USD, yet the Bird’s Nest currently sits toiling just north of the city center.

Long-term use of Olympic venues has always been the Achilles heel of hosting the event, but in China’s case, where the country is taking on larger sporting events, when infrastructure includes new stadiums and sporting venues, what is happening to these places after the games have finished?

In January, USA Today reported the Bird’s Nest is still searching for a permanent tenant, has yet to hold a major sporting event, and there are doubts the stadium will ever recoup the 450 million USD the government spent to construct the architectural wonder.

According to an Oct. 2005 Reuters article, the budget for the 2005 China National Games held in Jiangsu province was roughly one-third of the 2008 Olympic Games spending, and the Nanjing Olympic Sports Stadium —constructed in 2002 and an integral part of the 2005 China National Games — according to the stadium’s official Web site is now used almost exclusively for local events.

chinaSMACK, which translates “hot topics” on Chinese Internet forums and Chinese news reports, reported that in addition to the myriad of scandals at the 11th National Games held in Shandong during the month of October, the total cost and construction for the event totaled 200 billion RMB, including the Jinan Olympic Sports Center, a 60,000-seat stadium that was the centerpiece of the National Games.

China Daily reported in 2008 that Harbin needed three more stadiums built — at a price tag of 370 million USD — for the 24 Winter Universiade, which featured 4,000 athletes from 50 countries. And the East Asia Games, according to the secretary of home affairs’ home page, saw renovations on the three stadiums in Hong Kong, costing about 240 million USD.

The question surrounding all these monumental athletic venues is who plays in them going forward? The China Basketball Association, the country’s most visible sport, lost 17 million USD overall during the last season, according to an Economist Intelligence Report released in October. The People’s Republic currently has no homegrown athletic teams in any sport that can fill stadiums to capacity on a weekly basis.

Both the National Basketball Association, Premier League and the National Football League have made attempts to bring games to China, but the results have been marginal: a few preseason NBA and Major League Baseball games, an outright rejection to ship Premier League games outside of Europe, and two cancellations by the NFL.

China’s sports powerhouse ambitions, while praiseworthy on the field, have yielded few positive results for long-term sporting events. Yes, major international competitions take time and planning, but China has the infrastructure in place to do more with its sporting venues,  and tying its infrastructure plans to major sporting events should draw continued usage for years after.

— Zachary Franklin

Team China has been coached by Terry Collins, who had previously managed the Houston Astros, the Anaheim Angels of MLB and the Las Vegas 51s of the Pacific Coast League, after the Beijing Games. And the country now has two players at the New York Yankees and one at Pittsburgh Pirates of MLB.  Zhu Dawei (朱大卫), a promising 20-year-old pitcher, is playing for Saitama Seibu Lions (埼玉西武狮队), who crowned the Japan Championship Series in 2008.

The middle kingdom has its own baseball league since 2002, a year before the country signed contract with Jim Lefebvre, but without much audience. The Wukesong Baseball Field (五棵松棒球场), the best baseball field in the country where the final of Beijing Olympic baseball tournament took place, was demolished after only 44 matches were played there. Shen Wei, the secretary general of China Baseball Association submitted a letter to Development Projects Committee of the Beijing Games trying to keep the field. But it’s manifest that the developers were reluctant to keep it for a sport without market.

The WBC opener will be played at 5:30pm (Beijing Time) on Mar 5 at Tokyo Dome. For fans inside China, Shanghai Sports TV will broadcast the recorded match at 11 pm, and Guangdong Sports at 9:15 am on Mar 6. Also in Pool A are Chinese Taipei and South Korea, who will face off each other this Friday.

Photo: www.aoyunwww.com

LA Times: World Baseball Classic is a mixed bag

MLB: Classic certain to earn its name

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That might be possible from 2010. According to a latest Bloomberg article, some non-media companies may bid for the next 3-year Chinese television broadcasting rights to EPL after the contract runs out with WinTV, a pay-per-view channel run by state-owned Guangdong Provincial Television. And where to watch next? CCTV. Below are some excerpts:

A group of non-media companies may bid for Chinese television rights to English Premier League matches as the world’s richest soccer league tries to gain viewers to build its brand, an official said.

The move follows the failure of the current holder, local pay-per-view television network WinTV, to attract significant subscribers and the reluctance of state broadcaster China Central Television to pay a premium for the rights, Phil Lines, the Premier League’s head of international broadcasting and media operations, said in an interview.

“I have talked to some people who are possibly putting together a consortium of advertisers who would like to buy the product and take it to free to air (on CCTV),” Lines said.

He declined to reveal the companies involved, saying only that they were “world-wide brands” in the sporting goods, soft drinks and alcoholic beverage industries. The contract comes up in 2010. If successful, the bidders would give CCTV the rights in exchange for free advertising during matches, Lines added.

WinTV was reported to have trouble financing at the end of 2008. Song Zheng, its CEO, issued an open letter via Titan Sports, saying the company is determined to win another 3-year of EPL broadcasting rights. Below are our translation:

The Future Broadcasting Rights Will Be Ours

1. We never expect a runaway success in the sector per-per-view TV by broadcasting EPL. When we were preparing and making plans, it’s never just a 3-year plan. Even in Hong Kong, a relatively successful PPV TV market, it took six years for paid EPL games to be accepted. As we’re ready for putting a long-term effort in doing this, so with our preparation in terms of capital.

2. After two years of groping, WinTV, as an innovator of PPV TV in China, has grown a lot in this department. We tried every means to provide more valued products to Chinese football fans, but not force them to pay to watch.

3. We adapt ourselves to meet the current trends. China’s digital television viewers has jumped from 10 ml to 30 ml, and we adapted ourselves to this trend (CSR note: WinTV is a digital channel.) Besides, with the issue of 3G licenses here, we’ll have more opportunities in new media. In terms of the Internet front, we turned to partnership with carriers like China Netcom and China Mobile from only Internet portals. We believe, along with many of these tight partnerships, we have a bright future.

WinTV is determined to acquire another 3-year EPL broadcasting rights.

WinTV of course can’t force fans to pay, what they did was actually cutting the prices. Their whole-year subscription fee was adjusted to RMB 588 in 2008 from RMB 1,888 in 2007. Unfortunately, Chinese football fans now have sort of a anti-WinTV sentiment. In a poll published by Yangtse Evening News (扬子晚报) about whether or not people would welcome WinTV’s enterance in Shanghai a few days ago, 45.72% of all 5687 people said they want free EPL games only, and a impressive 40.13% percent rather not to watch WinTV even they’re offered free games by the channel. These numbers will be far from pleasing to hear for the Premier League big four. Below are David Gill, CEO of Man United’s take on their exposure from the Bloomberg article:

“There has been lessons learned this year in this contract and will be addressed going forward,” Gill said in an interview in Hong Kong earlier this week. “We, along with Chelsea, along with Liverpool, along with Arsenal, have made the point. We must have better exposure.”

Europe’s other top leagues like Italy’s Serie A and La Liga in Spain are broadcast on free television, bringing those matches to far more homes. English clubs would like to reach additional fans, Gill said.

“We would prefer to have more exposure,” Gill said. “The reality is it helps us with our own business goals and other commercial aims.”

But wait a minute. Does the fans’ strong response in the poll look a bit unreasonable? Maybe not if they’re offered some alternatives. “I don’t want to pay them now that there’s free lunch everywhere,” said Mr.Zhao to China Sports Review, “Don’t you think the games are supposed to be free?” Zhao makes RMB 8,000 a month working for a Chinese magazine, a salary could well afford his weekend TV pastime provided by WinTV. But he simply won’t purchase any of their products with p2p games available online. An earlier New York Times article examined this thorn, not just for the Guangdong-based TV channel:

Major League Baseball has perhaps the most advanced online business of the major sports, and offers a season of games streamed online for $79.95, a price that league executives say will come down slightly in 2009. Robert A. Bowman, the chief executive of M.L.B.comsaid that [online] piracy hurt business, but that “it’s embryonic, it’s not widespread, and we have a distinct advantage in that we have a better product.”

Ms. Deutsch, the lawyer at the N.B.A., hosted a gathering recently of executives from other sports leagues — not just in the United States but around the world — at the N.B.A.’s offices in New York City to discuss ways of combating live-game piracy.

“We view it as an international issue,” she said.

That is not just because sports leagues abroad face the same issue, but also because the pirates themselves, the hubs of the peer-to-peer networks that facilitate the illicit streaming of live games, are mostly outside the United States. Often they are in China, where some of the most popular services started as student projects, say league executives who have tracked the digital trail of their pirated games.

Compared with WinTV, CCTV, China’s main TV broadcaster who won big last year for the exclusive broadcasting of the Beijing Games, remained low-key so far. The Chinese public broadcaster has been awarded a major package of UEFA Champions League rights at the end of 2008. Under the terms of the deal, free-to-air channel CCTV 5 will broadcast at least one live match and a highlights programme on every UEFA Champions League matchnight as well as at least one delayed match every matchweek and the UEFA Super Cup. Coverage of the UEFA Champions League on CCTV 5 will be available to over 350 million homes throughout China. In addition, all live matches from the UEFA Champions League will be available on the internet via www.cctv.com and on mobile via the CCTV mobile portal cctvsports.net.

Related Reads:

• Bloomberg：Chinese Battle Over Premier League Soccer Rights
• China Economic Net: Tiansheng wins EPL rights, but loses fans
• New York Times: Online Piracy Menaces Pro Sports
• Titan Sports:  WinTV: The future of EPL rights will belong to us (Chinese)
• Yangtse Evening News: 4o percent of fans won’t watch WinTV even it provide free games (Chinese via Netease)

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The N.F.L., widely considered the most successful sports league in North America, will reduce its staff by about 150 employees after theSuper Bowl in response to the slumping economy, Commissioner Roger Goodell told staff members in a memo Tuesday.

The N.F.L. has a total of 1,100 employees at its New York headquarters, at NFL Films in New Jersey and at the Los Angeles offices of the NFL Network and NFL.com. Although voluntary buyouts are being offered now, the league will not determine the breakdown of cuts until after the championship game on Feb. 1.

Some franchises have started to trim their staffs, as well. The Denver Broncos made cuts earlier this year, and the New England Patriots recently laid off about 5 percent of the staff from Gillette Stadium — about two dozen people — in anticipation of reduced trade-show and special-event business there next year.

The Patriots also closed their one-person China office, which opened when the team was scheduled to play a game there. With the N.F.L. focusing its overseas plans on regular-season games in Europe, the China game has been canceled.

This is actually the second cancellation of the NFL China game this year. The 2008 game, which scheduled for August 9 between New England Patriots and Seattle Seahawks, was called off by NFL this April, with the reason that they wanted to concentrate their “global resources” on next October’s regular season game in London. 

NFL China has been concentrating on developing grassroots fans in local colleges by staging various events and also marketing themselves on TV and the Internet. Chinese fans can now watch games on CCTV and Shanghai TV, and a live game is also available once a week on Sina.com, a major Chinese web portal. 

We’re suprised by the Patriots’ pullback from Beijing. But it all makes sense when looking at a bigger picture, where Honda’s withdrawal from F1, MLB’s recent job cuts and Arena Football League’s possible suspension in 2009 are all considered. 

Related Reads:

• New York Times: Feeling Pinch, N.F.L. Will Cut About 150 Jobs
• LA Times: Arena Football League reconsiders suspending 2009 season

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