A PROFESSIONAL club in a globally minor sport is making inroads into the potentially lucrative Chinese market.
Australian rules football club Port Adelaide will play in Shanghai in May 2017 against the Gold Coast Suns – becoming the first professional sport in the world to host a regular season match in China.
Announced today by the Australian Football League (AFL), the May 14 match at Jiangwan Stadium follows three years of work in China by the South Australian club. This has included attracting Chinese business investment and broadcasting weekly documentaries to promote the sport on national television in China.
AFL Chief Executive Officer Gillon McLachlan, who made the announcement alongside Port Adelaide President David Koch at The Chinese Museum in Melbourne, said the AFL was proud to be taking Australia’s Indigenous game to one of the world’s greatest and most exciting cities.
“We are proud that Australian Football will play a bigger role in deepening the historic connections between Australia and The People’s Republic of China,” McLachlan said.
“Our game exists in a global sporting market place, and this event is part of our broader strategy to reach into new markets, both inside Australia, and across our region.”
Port Adelaide Power’s push into China began in 2013 with an agreement with Southern China Australian Football League club Hong Kong, which led to the Power’s support of the Chinese National team at the International Cup in Melbourne in 2014.
Port Adelaide China and Government Relations General Manager Andrew Hunter joined the club in March 2015 and began shifting the club’s Asian focus from Hong Kong to Mainland China.
In April this year the club signed a multi-million dollar, three-year sponsorship deal with Chinese property developer Shanghai Cred.
As a result of the partnership, Port Adelaide Power will hold annual training camps in Shanghai, continue to sponsor the South China AFL, Guandong AFL, Team China and host business events in Shanghai, Beijing and Hong Kong.
It also struck a deal to produce a weekly AFL documentary and broadcast AFL games on China Central Television.
With the help of Adelaide-based production company 57 Films, the club has so far produced about 20 episodes of its “AFL Show” since April, which usually airs about 9.30pm on Saturday nights across China on sports channel CCTV5.
The 30-minute program follows the fortunes of Team China’s AFL captain Chen Shaoliang, who was brought to Adelaide at the start of the year to train with the Power. The programs also feature international student from Shandong Li Jinsong who is employed by Port Adelaide to commentate games in Mandarin.
Two Port Adelaide home matches were also shown on CCTV in April, with the second match viewed by 3.8 million people in China to become the most watched minor round match in the history of the sport.
The rising popularity of the sport in China then led to games being shown on CCTV every week until the season ended in early October.
