Dated TV deals hurting league's development
The 17-team league has seen a sharp fall in coverage
China's outdated TV sports coverage is damaging the popularity of the country's favourite game, it was claimed yesterday.
Millions of basketball fans are being denied the chance to watch their heroes because cash-strapped domestic clubs cannot afford the steep charges levied by local television stations for live games.
'It is a very embarrassing situation,' Hao Guohua, director of Chinese Basketball Association (CBA) managing office, told China Daily, which claimed six of the 17 professional CBA clubs can't afford to pay.
With poor outside broadcasting technology and limited commercial business skills, many state-owned local TV stations charge clubs hundreds of thousands of yuan to broadcast each game - a bizarre business model not seen anywhere else in the commercialised sporting world.
Stations in the US, by contrast, pay the NBA and clubs millions of dollars a season for broadcast rights.
'The charge is very high for clubs,' said Hao. 'We will have some specific regulation for the bottom-ranked clubs and try to help improve their [income].'
Hao admitted the only way to change the situation in the long term was to enhance the quality of the league.
Such policies are blamed for making Chinese fans spurn their own league in favour of the NBA, where they can watch compatriots Yi Jianlian and Yao Ming.
Between 100 and 200 million tuned in to 19 domestic TV networks to watch the Yi's Milwaukee Bucks play Yao's Houston Rockets earlier this month - making TV companies millions in advertising revenue.
However, Paul Wong, the head of Infront SportsChina, the CBA's marketing company, which bids on behalf of the league clubs for TV rights, strongly denied the CBA was losing popularity, saying more people tune in and watch the domestic league than a decade ago.
'We need to change the business models and make them more systematic to take advantage of the marketing opportunities,' he said.
'About 400 million watched last season. This is China, and things have to be done step by step. But things will change,' he added.
Sha Yifeng, co-owner of Shanghai-based Zou Marketing which represents Chinese national basketball captain Liu Wei, said the Olympics has become the sole obsession for the game - and things will not improve until post-2008.
He added: 'Right now, everybody is concerned more with getting the national team ready for Beijing, which is why the CBA season has been cut short by three months. But after the games, there will be a call to change the business models between the clubs and TV stations. The game is popular as ever and will grow after the Olympics - especially if we win gold.'
