Sporting life lifts China TV
CCTV to broadcast 'Man'
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One such deal -- and so far these arrangements are more a bet on the future than a way to get rich quick -- has just been brokered by American firm Dynamic Marketing Group with Chinese pubcaster CCTV.
Deal involves "The World's Strongest Man," an extreme sports event that's produced annually and airs on ESPN in the States. It also involves TWI, the TV arm of IMG, the world's premier sports marketing agency.
The sporting contest will be produced by TWI for the first time in China, in Chengdu, a city of 15 million west of Shanghai. It will air live in primetime on CCTV 5, the country's top sports channel, which reaches virtually all the 400-odd million TV households in the country.
DMG acting managing director Chris Fenton, a former William Morris agent who is based in L.A., termed the deal "a beachhead into the Chinese market."
His company, he told Daily Variety, went directly to the Chengdu government to get the show greenlit, corporate sponsors in place, hotels and local bigwigs involved and the pubcaster onboard.
"We see this as a first step in bringing more programming events to China," Fenton added. Arena football, for example, could be next. He added that the Chinese enjoy "the entertainment and spectacle aspects of sport as much as they like star athletes."
There are already some key examples of U.S.-centric sport inroads into China.
- NBA star Yao Ming, who is enormously popular in his home country, is helping to whet the appetite of locals there for more Western sports events and programming. NBA games are televised on a daily basis on numerous channels, with CCTV 5 the biggest broadcaster of such.
- Golf is building steam. Tiger Woods is coming in November to play in a tournament in Shanghai -- his first such foray.
- Tennis is building. The Heineken open in Shanghai has attracted some of the top players.
- Formula One had its first race in Shanghai last year and is now trying to build a following.
As for DMG, it is already involved with the Beijing Olympics Committee and reps corporate clients in China such as China Mobile and Volkswagen.
DMG partnered with TWI nine months ago when it learned that the latter was looking for an interesting location for the 2005 edition of "The World's Strongest Man" and a way to exploit the series in China.
DMG chief exec Dan Mintz and Fenton convinced TWI that their company could find appropriate requisite locations, raise funding and secure CCTV interest. Negotiations and logistics took six months.
"It's all about cracking the complex and elusive Chinese code," Fenton said. While he agreed that the Chinese authorities were backtracking on a few media fronts (such as TV partnerships between foreign and local channels), he said the door was opening on many others -- and that money was beginning to be made.
In any case, the production will result in six hours of primetime CCTV coverage during the first week of October, concluding with a live telecast of the finals Oct. 7. (No segment of "The World's Strongest Man" has ever aired live before.)
TWI will distribute an international version of the live episode to 70 countries and roughly 200 million people. In addition to the sporting event itself, viewers will get to see a part of China that might otherwise go unnoticed.
"Bringing this unique entity to China in a bigger and more elaborate way demonstrates our ability to build media, sports and entertainment brands here better than anyone. We are going to make the 'World's Strongest Man' pay off for TWI in a huge way," Mintz said. (Presumably that will mean future relationships and initiatives, as some suggest the "Strong Man" show in Chengdu will net the backers only "a few million" at best.)
Though its core business is as a full-service ad agency, DMG is increasingly looking at the media, entertainment and sports marketing areas for future growth in China. Firm employs 400 people in five cities throughout China.
Mintz started the company in 1993 with local Chinese partners Wu Bing, a former star gymnast, and Peter Xiao, whose background is in the Chinese military hierarchy.
TWI is the world's largest producer and packager of sports programming, distributing 9,000 hours of events each year across 200 countries and covering 240 sports. It also reps TV rights to many of the world's premier sporting events and has a sports archive of 200,000 hours. Stateside, "Strong Man" is sponsored by Met-RX, a maker of nutritional supplements, which is part of the show's title.
