Well, I hope everyone’s watching Super Bowl tonight! I’m watching it, just for an excuse to get myself some Buffalo Wings! Besides, Super Bowl ratings may drop this year, according to Adgate. Why? Because growth has maxed out. How should growth be maintained then? By attracting more viewers. Who are the viewers? People! Where are the people? CHINA! (Well, at least 20% of the entire population)
Tonight, 7 TV Channels will be broadcasting Super Bowl XLVII in China. And it will also be streamed. 22 million Chinese fans watched last year’s game, which means there is indeed a room for NFL to grow in China. But what if there was a Chinese team playing tonight? MORE VIEWERS! Yes, NFL is planning to introduce “American Football” in China. Yes, there are concerns about this but, what’s your take on it. Do you think this idea would be successful? Will there be soon a Chinese team playing “Football”?
Okay… go get some wings now!Source: China, Are You Ready For A Super Bowl
While the NFL would have great potential to grow if it became solidified in the Chinese market, it seems unlikely. The time difference between the United States and China may prevent many Chinese citizens from watching the game live. A larger problem is that American football has little presence on the global scale. Its simply not as accessible to Chinese citizens as sports like basketball or soccer. I believe that if the sport would catch on in China, it would take a lot of time.
I don’t foresee American Football taking hold in China in the near future. Soccer has yet to take of in China which is thought to be more easily translatable to China than football. There is great interest in soccer, but they have failed to create a competitive league with world-class Chinese players. I think that with football there is much, much more work to be done just to lay the ground work. There would need to be fields created, teams formed and leagues started. That’s where the interest comes from. If you grow up playing or around a sport then chances are you’ll watch or be interested in it for the rest of your life. Football would have to become part of the culture of China for it to take off. Maybe it can in the future, but I don’t think that it will be happening very soon.
There’s lots of inertia in sports … soccer has only a modest hold here, baseball is absent in Europe, cricket is unknown outside the constituents of the 20th century British empire. Now I would expect some exhibition games, but is there anywhere beside the US where “American” football reigns? (Canadians have their own version and resent the “American” label, as though they’re not on this continent.)
With the NFL now hosting games in London, I wonder if the NFL will begin to receive more international recognition and fandom. The Chinese do watch the NBA and it is the largest market for the league outside the US, credited mainly from Yao Ming’s popularity. The limiting factor for the NFL becoming popular in China is fact that there are no Chinese stars present in the league that the citizens can cheer for and there looks to be none up and coming anytime soon.
I tend to agree with what Benjamin said. There was little to no interest in the NBA in Asia before players like Yao Ming and Jeremy Lin (technically born and raised in America, but of Taiwanese decent) gained notoriety. Now the NBA has a major presence in Asia. For the NFL to really gain traction and become popular in China, they would need a big name player. Since, as has been pointed out before, the NFL has a very small presence in China, this seem unlikely. I also like the point The Prof made about sports being relatively stable. They don’t travel very much and it’s extremely hard to spread a sport to a new country.
This also related to my post and weprinsky’s in the China’s Soccer topic. There seems to be a trend in which the Chinese are attracted to mostly individual sports. For example, as weprinsky said in that topic, the Chinese Olympians excel in table tennis, gymnastics, and badminton; and we rarely see them do well in team sports such as basketball, baseball, and soccer.
Basketball is not football, it’s fairly popular in parts of Asia (it is wildly so in the Philippines). Hence there’s already a fan base that, given a tie to the NBA, can extend to watching US teams. An empirical check might be what countries have done well in basketball in the Olympics.