Chinese professional sports market to reach US$242 billion by 2025

The annual revenue from China’s professional sports industry will reach 1.6 trillion yuan (US$242 billion) by 2025, according to a report by China eCapital Corp.

As stated in the report, the sector is expected to grow at a rate of more than 20% from 2016 to 2025.

At the same time, amateur recreational sports will grow from the current 1.2 trillion yuan to 3.5 trillion yuan. It is said that the growth will be mostly driven by broadcasting rights fees for professional sporting events.

The report believes that this trend started with Ti’ao Dongli’s whopping 8 billion yuan bid to air Chinese Super League games from 2016 to 2020. Later, the company resold the first two seasons rights to LeSports for 2.7 billion yuan.

It explains "the capital market has apparently been paying more attention to the sports industry in the past year as the industry enters a period of explosive growth."

China's ongoing acquisition of global sporting properties has reportedl seen China Media Capital (CMC) and the  Dalian Wanda Group this week bid US$4.1 billion for the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC).

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