Rugby in China: Can the English Premiership make an impact? RUGBY IS straining to expand, to conquer new frontiers. And just over the horizon, we are told, are new markets. It appears faraway lands are just waiting for the game of union to take off. On Sunday, The Daily Mail uncovered details from the minutes of several Premiership Rugby board meetings, in the build-up to a £200m deal with private equity firm CVC. Whilst a lot of debate has come from what the piece said about scrapping promotion and relegation in the Premiership, there was another interesting thread: the notion that the Chinese sports market was one worth exploring alongside the US one. Could the Premiership take fixtures over to Asia, as they had done in the past in the USA? “In my opinion rugby currently does not have the profile and popularity in China amongst the local population to fill the stands at these types of exhibition games, so you’d either be relying on expats living there and/or the overseas travel market to get bums on seats,” says the CEO of the Hong Kong Rugby Union, Robbie McRobbie. “English Premiership rugby is currently being shown on TV in China, and although this is on the subscription channel CCTV5+ it shows what can be achieved by individuals who know their way around the system. “Fundamentally, though, there needs to be grass-roots investment to build interest in the game – but this brings with it multiple challenges. “The structure of sport in China is complex, with various degrees of influence at national, provincial and city level. It is also a vast geographical area, which brings with it significant logistical challenges. “Currently the HKRU are in discussions with the China Rugby Union around collaboration in the Greater Bay Area, which consists of Hong Kong, Macau and the nine southernmost cities in the Guangdong Province – this is a relatively small area, but contains a population of 67m people!” You can understand why some are salivating over the prospect of breaking into such a market. After all, there are roughly 1.4bn people in China and rugby is already on TV there. Yet it’s not that simple. “First of all, there is a huge difference between being on CCTV-5, which is the main sports channel in national broadcaster CCTV’s free-to-air channel, and its paid sister channel CCTV5+,” clarifies Mark Dreyer, the editor of China Sports Insider, based in Beijing. “A typical Premiership game from last year drew fewer than 80,000 viewers at any one time. Every sport is currently trying to crack the China market, and in truth rugby is way, way down the order. To give some perspective as to where it ranks, the Chinese for ‘rugby’ is often confused with the Chinese for ‘American football’, so a sizeable percentage of the population here might not even know what the game is. “The number of foreign companies (in any industry) who have entered China with dollar signs in their eyes thinking they ‘only … Continue reading Rugby in China: Can the English Premiership make an impact?