As China reopens, international sports events gingerly eye return
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The Women’s Tennis Association in 2021 announced an active boycott of China until a full investigation into tennis star Peng Shuai’s case takes place.
PHOTO: AFP
A clutch of international sports events is set to return to China after the pandemic, but the entities behind them are treading carefully and trying out new ways to buffer themselves against a more unpredictable business environment arising from geopolitical tensions.
Others are taking a wait-and-see approach.
The World Snooker Tour has announced that it will be returning to China after a four-year hiatus, beginning with a tournament in Shanghai in September. It will hold two other events in Wuhan and a third in a yet-to-be-determined Chinese city.
Mixed martial arts (MMA) league Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC), meanwhile, is gearing up to resume live events later in 2023 after a three-year pause.
But its return comes with a new partnership – with the Chinese government – to promote the latter’s Healthier China initiative, which encourages healthier living.
UFC is organising and funding family-friendly roadshows and other fitness and lifestyle events, a deviation from the league’s MMA-focused events in other markets.
“These are a little bit more unique to China than they are in the other parts of the world,” said UFC senior vice-president and head of Asia Kevin Chang.
The hope is that the efforts will help the Las Vegas-headquartered UFC build up goodwill while navigating political sensitivities in China. These have always been part and parcel of operating in the world’s largest consumer market, but uncertainties have grown in tandem with the increasing hostility between China and the United States.
The American Chamber of Commerce in China on Wednesday released its 2023 White Paper report, which labelled worsening bilateral relations as a key challenge in 2023. About 87 per cent of respondents to a flash survey said they were at least slightly pessimistic about US-China ties – 14 percentage points higher than in the chamber’s previous poll in late 2022.
Sports events are not immune to the malaise.
The Shanghai Grand Prix, meant to take place earlier in April, has been cancelled for the fourth year in a row. left a four-week gap
This follows a string of sports events affected by politics.
In March 2022, Chinese broadcasters pulled English Premier League (EPL) matches from showing because of the clubs’ planned display of solidarity with Ukraine before kick-off.
National Basketball Association (NBA) matches were taken off air on terrestrial broadcaster CCTV in 2019 after then Houston Rockets manager Daryl Morey tweeted in support of protesters in Hong Kong.
Collaborations were dropped and only two games were shown during the 2020 season. Matches eventually returned to Chinese television screens in March 2022 but NBA commissioner Adam Silver said the league lost hundreds of millions as a result of the fallout.
Asked about NBA’s future plans, spokesman Mike Bass simply said in an e-mailed statement that the association remains committed to engaging fans in more than 200 countries and territories, including China.
NBA matches are now back on television, but the association’s main business in China lies in rights and merchandising. It is also active at the grassroots levels, organising training sessions to promote the sport.
In 2019, EPL matches involving Arsenal were also pulled after former Arsenal player Mesut Ozil, in a tweet, accused China of persecuting its Uighur minority in Xinjiang.
Some have capitulated in view of the huge Chinese market.
The Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) said earlier in April that it will bring tournaments back to China in 2023. In 2021, it announced an active boycott of China after Chinese tennis star Peng Shuai, 37, accused one of the country’s former top leaders of sexual assault,
This never materialised. Peng, who later retracted the allegations,
In announcing the tour’s return to China, the WTA said in a statement in English on April 16 that after 16 months of suspended tennis competitions and “sustained efforts at achieving our original requests, the situation has shown no sign of changing”.
“We have concluded we will never fully secure those goals, and it will be our players and tournaments that ultimately will be paying an extraordinary price for their sacrifices,” it said.
Asked about the tour’s about-turn – given the WTA’s early principled stance – an executive referred The Sunday Times to the same 412-word statement.
But besides politics, there is another reason why some sports events give up on China.
Many have struggled to achieve any significant results in penetrating the Chinese market, said Professor Simon Chadwick, who specialises in sports and the geopolitical economy at the Skema Business School in France.
For some, this has meant that the allure of the Chinese market, with its large middle class and seemingly insatiable appetite for sport, is beginning to wane: The National Football League and Major League Baseball, as well as ESPN, have all put China expansion plans on ice.
Said Prof Chadwick: “Organisations like the WTA thought their popularity and power would ultimately trump that of the Chinese state and its government institutions.
“They were wrong; there is an asymmetry of power – in China’s favour.”
This story has been edited for clarity.
