NFL, Tencent Aiming for China's Smartphone Screens
August 22 2017 - 8:26AM
Dow Jones News
By Wayne Ma and Alyssa Abkowitz
BEIJING -- Pro football may rule big-screen TVs in the U.S., but
it's the small screens of smartphones where the National Football
League hopes to make its play in China.
The NFL and Tencent Holdings Ltd. announced a deal this week
that will give the Chinese internet company exclusive rights to
digitally stream games online for three years. Financial terms
weren't disclosed.
Tencent plans to stream live games and other NFL content for
free on both mobile and desktop platforms, including its flagship
WeChat social-media app, which has more than 960 million monthly
active users.
Expectations are that most of the viewing in China will be on
mobile platforms, partly because of the time difference between the
U.S. and China, said Richard Young, the head of the NFL's
operations in China.
"Because our games came in on Monday, Tuesday and Friday
mornings, people were often displaced from their TV sets," Mr.
Young said. "Now, they are watching from home while getting ready
for work, watching on their commute to work, putting it on pause,
going to work and continuing to watch."
Under the agreement, Tencent will pay the NFL to stream all of
its Thursday, Sunday and Monday Night Football games, as well as
the Super Bowl and other selected games. Chinese viewers can listen
to live Chinese commentators as well as read NFL coverage on
Tencent's news platform.
One of the NFL's biggest challenges has always been popularizing
the game and its players in a way that mirrored the path taken by
basketball, the most popular spectator sport in China.
Former Houston Rockets player Yao Ming helped promote the
National Basketball Association here, where players such as Kobe
Bryant and LeBron James have big followings.
For Lian Xu, becoming a Boston Celtics basketball fan was the
gateway to becoming a New England Patriots football fan. Mr. Lian
said one of his favorite football players is Patriots wide receiver
Julian Edelman.
"He always plays hard and runs great routes," the 27-year-old
graduate student from Shanghai said.
Several analysts and industry insiders are bullish on football's
prospects in China.
"The culture of the NFL, the fans, the tailgating and the drama
that is delivered with the NFL is appealing," said Andrew Collins,
chief executive of Mailman, a Shanghai-based sports- and
digital-marketing agency. "It's not just sport, it's
entertainment."
For Tencent, the deal is part of its overall strategy to keep
its hundreds of millions of users engaged and available for
advertisers. It also follows a template established in 2015, when
Tencent paid at least $500 million to become the NBA's exclusive
digital-streaming partner in China for five years.
For the NFL, the deal comes as the New York-based league faces
headwinds in the U.S. Last season, the average audience for NFL
games was 16.5 million, down 8% from the previous season, according
to TV-ratings firm Nielsen. Analysts say oversaturation is an
issue, along with viewing patterns shifting from TV to the
internet.
Under the deal with Tencent, Chinese viewers will get to see
more than 100 NFL games a year, including all its prime-time games,
live or on-demand. In contrast, Amazon.com Inc.'s streaming deal
with the NFL is for just 10 prime-time games this season.
The NFL began a major push into China around 2009. That year, it
produced a 16-episode reality TV series -- about a Taiwanese pop
band exploring football culture in the U.S. -- to raise awareness
for the game among Chinese viewers.
The league also dipped its toes early into China's internet,
signing a deal with social-media company Sina Corp. to digitally
stream a single game. Eventually, the NFL sold broadcast rights to
19 different provincial satellite TV channels to show NFL
highlights and games.
Mr. Lian, the Patriots fan, said the more games he has watched,
the more he appreciates how defense is played. "China is the most
populous country in the world. If the NFL is able to connect a
small portion of the population through the Tencent deal, it'll be
considered very successful."
Zhang Huan contributed to this article.
Write to Wayne Ma at wayne.ma@wsj.com and Alyssa Abkowitz at
alyssa.abkowitz@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
August 22, 2017 08:11 ET (12:11 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2017 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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