The Chinese market is notoriously hard for any company to enter. A recent survey by the American Chamber of Commerce on Friday found that American companies are facing increasing trouble in China due to antiforeign sentiment, vague labor laws and industrial overcapacity.
So, it comes with great surprise that ESPN is able to move into China, promoting what will be valuable content to millions of Chinese in ESPN’s latest exclusive partnership with Tencent.
Tencent has their hands in a lot of sectors of the Chinese economy. They are most famous for their instant messaging software QQ, but they even go so far as to control the Chinese equivalent of Uber, among many other ventures.
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Tencent’s digital sports portal, QQ Sports, has hundreds of millions of streams every day, in addition to those reading sports news. It is the go-to spot for the Chinese to access sports online.
With this new partnership, QQ Sports will add an ESPN section to their online platform. This platform will contain Mandarin-language content, primarily based around international soccer and the NBA.
The first joint NBA coverage will begin with the NBA Finals in April, and ESPN will supply live Mandarin-speaking commentators and analysts for the series. Tencent has also licensed the Chinese-mainland digital rights for March Madness, more than 100 NCAA basketball regular season games and the X Games.
The ESPN content will also appear on other Tencent platforms, aside from QQ Sports, and the two companies hope to expand to other sports in the future.
This agreement comes at an interesting time for ESPN, as they have experienced a huge loss of cable subscribers. The advent of online streaming and those who have become known as “cord cutters,” has put a dent in ESPN’s revenue.
So, they are looking for different markets and potential sources of new revenue with this deal. It may be interesting to also look out for the burgeoning world of eSports, and perhaps some cross-cultural exchange between ESPN and Tencent. Tencent owns Riot Games and Epic Games, two of the biggest gaming companies in the world. Riot Games is the developer of perhaps the biggest eSport game on the market—League of Legends.