Hualu Baina, a film company, announced last week that they were going to co-establish a sports company using 500 million yuan. This is a large move that this company made after it declared intentions to enter the sports industry earlier.
The author of this article found that sports industry could be regarded as the hottest industry in recent years. Large businesses have plans and capitals are very active in founding various platforms.
In this month up to now, there was news about capitals moves in the industry almost every day. The new investors did not invest randomly. They invested in different sectors.
On June 10, Century Star, a skating club in Beijing, announced cooperation with China Equity, to go public as the first winter sports company. The president of the company said that their customers would increase significantly if Beijing succeeds in Winter Olympic bidding in July this year.
At the beginning of June, FullGoal Fund launched an index fund which is said to be the first index fund in the Chinese sports industry.
On June 10, China Beijing Equity Exchange secured its first sponsorship deal since its establishment in October last year—Nongfu Spring’s partnership with 2015 Snooker World Cup. Since the day it’s established, it has introduced about 20 calls for sponsorships.
The online industry is also entering into the sports industry. BAT, i.e. Baidu, Alibaba, and Tencent, the three most important online giants have all entered sports industry. Baidu was reported to be having discussions with Perform Group regarding collaboration in the Chinese sports market.
Tencent bought exclusive online rights of NBA in China at the start of this year, spending 500 million yuan for 5 years. This is the largest international digital media cooperation for NBA.
As a summary, there are capitals and new players for individual sports, second markets, equity exchange platforms, event rights, etc.
An investor in the sports industry analyzed that now it was the best chance to enter the Chinese sports market, given the support of Chinese government, increasing market demands for sports marketing and sports content, and the meeting between eastern and western sports world.