Football comes out on top in Chinese broadcast report

Football has always been one of the most supported sports in China since professional leagues were created. Nowadays, the government encourages the biggest Chinese brands to invest in this sector because the president Xi Jinping, a fan of football, has the desire to import even more  football culture into the country and wishes to become a great nation of football in the future. The Chinese Super League is now in the spotlight with all the latest transfers this year.

Yutang Sports report is looking on China’s football broadcasting landscape in 2015. It focuses on the development of the broadcast industry with an analysis of future trends.

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As you can see from the above image from Mailman, Football is the most watched sport in China and attracted 1.027 billion football viewers during 22,000+ TV broadcasting hours in 2015.  Its coverage was much higher than Basketball last year. Indeed, the coverage of football events was 42% higher compared to Basketball events.

Premier League (5058 hours) and the Chinese Super League (4095 hours) were the most broadcast events, accounting for 41% of the total football events on Chinese TV in 2015. La Liga, the Champions League and the Bundesliga were far behind but still getting a lot of attention.

The top 10 most viewed matches all featured either the China national team or a domestic club. The top 3 most viewed matches of 2015 were:

  1. China vs. North Korea: Asian Cup Group Stage
  2. China vs. Australia: Asian Cup QFs
  3. Guangzhou Evergrande vs. Al-Ahli: Asian Champions League Final

For further information, check out the full report.

About author

Germain Massoué
Germain Massoué 27 posts

Germain is a French social media intern at Snack Media and writer for Digital Sport. Follow him on Twitter: @Germain_Nayver

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