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Wendover Productions - American Sports' Battle for China

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Author: Wendover Productions
Categories: Business News & Politics History
Tags: business, news, history
Views: 2 · Last viewed: 2026-10-16 10:40 UTC

Short Summary

Main recommendation: American sports leagues should treat China as a major, under-saturated market, but their growth there is uneven across the NFL, MLB, NBA, and NHL, and the political sensitivities of American sports make that growth fragile. The NBA shows the most success so far, while MLB has struggled the most, and the video argues that selling one sports product to two very different markets creates an ongoing tension.

Key Points

  • China has shifted from being mainly a low-cost labor source for Western companies to a significant consumer market, with a rapidly growing middle and upper class.
  • American leagues (NFL, MLB, NBA, NHL) generate over $30 billion in annual revenue and earn substantial money outside the US through merchandising, league partnerships, and TV and streaming rights.
  • MLB has shown the least interest in China: its national league has repeatedly suspended and restarted since 2012, and none of the players from its three Chinese development centers have ever played in the MLB.
  • The NBA became a major revenue source in China, representing more than $500 million a year, a rise driven initially by Yao Ming but sustained by broader fan interest after his 2011 retirement.
  • The 2019 Daryl Morey tweet about Hong Kong showed how a single political statement could quickly threaten a league's China business.

Details Worth Noting

  • Concrete instructions: The video gives no step-by-step method for entering the Chinese market. Its actionable points for leagues are to host exhibition games in China (as the NHL did in Shanghai, Beijing, and Shenzhen), stream games through digital platforms (the NFL averages over 2 million viewers per broadcast), and use Chinese-language content (Tom Brady's Chinese-language show drew over 15 million total views).
  • The NHL held exhibition games in 2017 and 2018 but had no China games in 2019, reportedly due to arena booking problems, and later sent Alex Ovechkin to China and opened a Beijing office.
  • The NFL has not yet played a game in China; talk of one starting in the 2020 season was mentioned, but the video notes similar talk had not produced results before.
  • Chinese interest in the NHL is competing with the KHL, which added the HC Kunlun Red Star in 2016; the NHL has just over 1 million Weibo fans, while the NFL has about 1.3 million.
  • The NBA's China revenue was threatened by the October 2019 Morey tweet, after which the league issued an apology that drew criticism from both China and the US.
  • The video argues that sports, unlike films or music, cannot be heavily edited for censorship because the experience includes live, unscripted, and political elements, and US athletes often engage in political activism.

Bottom Line

American leagues can grow in China, but their long-term success depends on navigating political tensions that do not arise in other entertainment markets.