Meet China’s most famous and insightful sports insider, Mark Dreyer, who’s a regular commentator on the Chinese sports industry.  Now that the Winter Olympics is just around the corner, we felt it was time to get Mark’s opinion on sponsorships, the events, and what it’s like in Beijing these days.  Mark writes weekly columns for SupChina & SportsBusiness & is co-host of his own show, the China Sports Insider Podcast.  Mark has also released his first book “Sporting Superpower: An Insider’s View on China’s Quest to Be the Best”.

1.  Mark’s experience in Beijing 2008
2.  I would love to see China win the World Cup
3.  Can China win at team sports?
4.  Winter Olympics:  A covid games like no other
5.  Will the Winter Olympics Encourage more winter sports?
6.  Mark’s bold predictions for the Winter Olympics:  expect a breakthrough in sliding sports
7.  Sport sponsorships are bleak (unless you’re a local Chinese brand)
8.  Eileen Gu will potentially be the face of the Winter Olympics
9.  Impact of social media and sports players:  CCTV has become a dinosaur
10.  Will we be seeing NFT tokenized moments at the Olympics?
11.  What will be the next big thing for sports sponsorships in China (It’s not good news)
12. What about watching sports abroad? One bad tweet and you might be blacklisted
13. Sports amongst the middle class has grown significantly, but it can’t get in the way of school
14.  Yao Ming or Li Na?  It’s Li Na!

Mark Dreyer Links:
1.  Buy Mark’s Book:  “Sporting Superpower”:  https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09QC64Y9B/
2.  China Sports Insider Podcast:  https://chinasportsinsider.com/category/podcast/
3.  Twitter:  @DreyerChina
4.  Mark on LinkedIn:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/mark-dreyer-945747/

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ShanghaiZhan Theme Music:   by Bryce Whitwam
https://soundcloud.com/bryce-r-whitwam/bad-cough-syrup?si=cfb30a6e0c0e459da78b912bf60825ac
Bryce on Linkedin:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/brycewhitwam/
Ali on Linkedin:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/alikazmi/

TRANSCRIPT OF THE SHOW:

Welcome to shanghai Zhan. A raw and lively regular debate about china tech, advertising, creativity platforms and the intersection of it all join us. Each session for timely and relevant discussions on all things china marketing. We’ll also be joined by the entire spectrum of china experts. You can learn more about shanghai Don at our website john station dot com. That’s Z H A N station dot com, coming to you directly from the city of shanghai. I’m Bryce Whitwam and I’m ali Kazmi. Ali. In today’s episode, we have china Sports Insider, Mark Dreyer, formerly a reporter and Sky Sports in the UK and Fox Sports in the US. Mark has been based in china since the 2008 olympics and has worked for a number of media outlets. He’s a regular commentator as an analyst on the booming chinese sports industry. Mark also writes a weekly sports columns for sub china and sports business and is a co host of his own show, China’s sports Insider podcast. We’ll leave links in the show notes to his site and just this week, Ali Mark has released his first book on the china’s sports industry entitled Sporting Superpower, An insider’s view on china’s quest to be the best it’s available on amazon And I should also point out that today’s episode is sponsored by our friends at campaign Asia as we’ve reached the 13,000 download. Mark, that’s unbelievable. Mark is not actually in Shanghai. He’s in Beijing. So it’s not really a Shanghai podcast, but we’re talking to him from Beijing. We’re definitely still in china and this is the first time we’re experimenting with doing running a podcast across different cities. Mark, how is the New Year treating you so far? Yeah, pretty good. Um Yes, you’re right. I’m in Beijing. I was actually in shanghai fairly recently doing my quarantine. So you know, if that counts been in shanghai before too, Not too long ago, that definitely counts. Quarantine definitely counts. So mark, we we all share, share something in common. You arrived in Beijing in 2008 for the Beijing Olympics I believe. Ali and I were also in in Beijing in Shanghai at that time. Ali when were you in Beijing? So I’ve been in Beijing since 96 all the way through to 2008, but I moved down to Shanghai in May of 2008. So I wasn’t there for the Olympics, but I definitely shared a lot of the fervor. So, tell us about your experience for the Beijing games. I actually came very end of 2007 I think November 2007. So kind of nine months before how 10 months, I guess before the build up. I’ve actually been working in the, in the States. I had previously been in London and I met my now wife and she was living in new york. So we were kind of long distance for a bit, then moved over to the States. We were there for a couple of years. Got married and then she was setting up a business that was partly based in in china, partly based in the US and the olympics were coming up which was big on my radar because I had a background in in sports tv and so we just thought, hey, let’s move for a year. You know what’s the worst that can happen, you know, we can always leave. Ah And then so we saw it kind of threw the olympics and What are we now sort of 14 years on and there’s another Olympics around the corner. So kind of crazy. But yeah, still here. And how long have you been covering sports? I mean I guess ever since. Well even before leaving university I graduated, gonna date me here but 2000 and kind of moved to Sky Sports in the UK fairly quickly after that. So I was working on a on a soccer show for about five years and then was with the what was then the Fox Soccer channel in the U. S. That was fun. And do it some other things with ap television as well. Yeah, I was doing that but I spent most of my time at university and on the local radio station also doing sports shows and and other stuff there. So kind of ever since I can remember. So what keeps you in china, you’ve obviously been here quite a while and now coming up to a second olympics. So what keeps you in china all this time. Yeah, just just, I mean, I’ve kind of worked in various um media and sport related jobs with the new olympics coming up the second olympics here, the opportunity to to put out a book, which is basically my it’s my arc in china, you know, from one olympics to the next. So it’s a bunch of sort of tales that I’ve that I’ve come across and I’ve heard and interviews and, you know, some of my humble analysis too. But yeah, it was it was fun to do and I think there’s so much, there’s so much to discuss. You can pick any sport pretty much and and doing a whole book on it. So I’ve tried to uh pick little bits from from across the spectrum. Do you feel that you’re more connected to china? Do you feel that there’s an emotional bond with the characters and the names and the people and the teams? Do you feel that you’re supporting them to win and be successful, kind of fall in love with the country a bit more every time you write about them, the success, the fans, the celebrations, the results, it’s a great question. It really is. Um and you know where to start. I think I would love to see, let’s just, you know, we were talking about soccer before and I would love to see china have a solid, a decent soccer team. I’d love to see them win the world Cup. I’d love to see them like qualified for the World Cup. I think it would be, it’ll be great for the chinese people. There’s there’s millions and millions of passionate soccer fans here. It would be great for world football, you know, to have a competitive china team. It hasn’t happened for various reasons and and as someone who’s followed it, that’s frustrating because there’s some pretty obvious missteps that have been taken. Um and like you you hate to see it because, you know, there’s a kind of a pathway to success which is generally agreed upon, you know, without getting into the details and when other priorities, whether it’s political or economic priorities sometimes get in the way of the sports. And I think that has been, it’s been one of the fascinations for me that more so in china than anywhere else I think, you know that the fact that that politics and business and sports are just basically inseparable. You know, you try to untangle them, but but you really, you really can’t in so many ways whether that’s the olympics, whether that’s um, you know, where that soccer, but pretty much every every sport as well. So, you know, yes, to go back to the questions I do root for china, I’d love to see them do well, you know, I’ve been covering their their hockey team’s pretty closely in the, in the build up to the olympics and there’s some really interesting stories there with some what they’ve called heritage players. So north americans of chinese descent who have kind of been recruited to both the men’s and the women’s team. Um And just just the way that they are kind of integrated has has been interesting as well with sort of citizenship and passport issues to um I do think though that from from an outside observation of of chinese fans is that you know they do there is still sort of like this separation of chinese and other. Right? So so for example in the soccer team they’ve naturalized a bunch of players. They’ve they’ve recruited some Brazilians, some have chinese heritage and some do not. This is perfectly standards in in global football. The majority of teams at the World Cup have at least one foreign born player who for various reasons has has maybe grown up in the in another country, born and then moved in childhood or or or whatever. Sometimes if you play for long enough and there’s a five year rule if you play for another country then you’re qualified under FIFA rules. This is not a controversial thing. But for china. And every time you see the report it’s still like the naturalized footballers or the you know the the the the foreigners who are playing for the national team. It’s not just like the chinese team and the chinese players like they never fully accepted as maybe some fans do accept them more than others, but I think there is still that kind of separation. Um that in itself I think is a really interesting kind of cultural elements, china of course is not an ethnically multicultural place. And so I think that that’s sort of an obvious reason for it, but china is not really all that good in team sports, are they? This is it’s a bit of a cliche to say it, but but there’s certainly some truth in this and you know, china historically has done very well at the in the individual sports and the olympic sports, frankly, if you get 50,000 gymnasts and put them in a gymnastics factory, the best one is going to win olympic gold. You know that that’s a tried and true formula That China has followed time and again, Olympic cycle after Olympic cycle. So, so these sports where it’s, you know, it’s gymnastics and it’s diving and so on weightlifting. Another one that, that China, there’s only, there’s 75% of China’s gold medals at the Olympics have come in just six sports. Um and so they’ve really kind of hammered on on these things that they’re good at now when it comes to the more team sports where historically and there are exceptions, women’s volleyball for example, they’ve they’ve generally women, Yeah, they’re they’re kind of on the downward slope 20 years ago. They were they were pretty good and they got to the World Cup final but they’ve they’ve regressed unfortunately in in more recent times? I think one of the big reasons is that the sporting system, the all powerful sporting system kind of reverts to what it knows is successful. Um and that is the again a cliche but there is some truth and it’s the sort of the more military type state run sports where it’s like, you know, repetitive, highly pressured and, and, and a lot of training that works in gymnastics and diving, it doesn’t work in soccer, if you, if you know what someone’s going to do with the ball at their feet, it’s very predictable. The answer is not in a lot of these sports to just train twice as hard as the other teams. You know, we know a lot more than we did about recovery and nutrition and all that sort of stuff. But when china loses that, the fallback is always well, they must not be trying hard enough so we need to train them more and and I hear this so many times, I hear this from chinese athletes, I hear this from foreign coaches have been brought in but you know, the bosses, the leaders are still kind of in that older mindset and that is one of the, one of the reasons I think why some of the progress has been, has been hindered in some sports, hey Mark, let’s turn to the winter olympics since we’re just around the corner, are you getting excited excited about it. Are you excited about the olympics and more importantly, are you going to attend the events? I don’t even know how you even get tickets or how that even works. So you have to go into another bubble inside the bubble. That’s what I heard. I wonder if you have a press card. Right? So, so it’s, it’s a little bit complicated as you can imagine and they still haven’t announced if there will even be any public ticketing plans. So that’s, that’s one thing journalists can go in there, but imagine the, the bubble, it’s, it’s really a series of bubbles. They’re calling it a closed loop management system. So there’s three olympic clusters, there’s one in yen ching, which is kind of some mountains. Then there’s Janja coach only, that’s another group of mountains and then there’s downtown Beijing and there’s sort of transport links between the three different areas. Now there’s a story out last week which was pretty hilarious. Well kind of funny and not. And they actually put an announcement saying if you’re in a car crash with one of these olympic vehicles where it’s transporting olympic participants, whether the athletes or coaches or so on. If you’re in a car crash with, with one of these shuttle busses taking them from one part of the bubble to another? Like don’t interact with them stay in your vehicle, keep the windows up because the big fear is these guys are all infected with Covid and then it’s gonna infect you and then you’re gonna bring it back into the to the population and then it’s basically it’s out. So you know, Covid is by far the number one priority at all times. So you have this bubble. But imagine it’s kind of like a separate little country On the outskirts of Beijing. And part of the downtown Beijing as well like carved out because if I go into the bubble for 20 minutes and then come out, I have to go into quarantine for three weeks. So it’s basically like I’ve left the country and reentered. So for a lot of the journalists who are based in Beijing what’s happening is they’re actually gonna stay outside of the bubble because they don’t really want to go in for 2.5 weeks of olympics and then be in a hotel for three weeks. And their colleagues from overseas are flying straight into Beijing on these commercial charter flights. They’ll go straight into the bubble and then they can leave straight away without any quarantine. They have a lot of testing both before they come. And and daily testing as well. But that’s basically how it is going to work. So I think the authorities are very nervous, very nervous indeed about about Macron being so infectious. But they’ve set up a system that I think is as good as they could possibly do And at this point it’s just you know, how well can they manage. Mark how would you compare the vibe in Beijing towards the winter olympics. Uh compared to the 2000 and eight experience you have the additional component of Covid and then you also mentioned the bubble. So when you sum it all up it feels like it’s going to be a bit more mute versus 2000 and eight. And obviously the country’s changed as well right in the country and fan ship and and all that fervor has obviously changed as well. I mean I think I think I think you’ve already hit on the head there. Like my previous answer all I was talking about was covid and restrictions and bubbles. You know that’s any that’s that’s top of mind for everyone. Like I came here to cover the Olympics. I then went to the Vancouver Olympics and covered that one in the London Olympics in 2012. I love the Olympics. It’s so much fun to to cover. This is very very different and you know I am I am I looking forward to the olympics. Well yes but you know it’s just a very very different vibe. It’s all about from the organizers point of view at this point. It’s you know can we just get through it can we just get through it safely? I think the I. O. C. As well with with a lot of the political considerations they’ve had and that these these diplomatic boycotts and other hassles that the other issues that they’ve had to deal with. They’re just trying to get through it with with as little incident as possible. Um And so inevitably that affects the mood for the summer price. You were here. It was a party. It was it was outdoors, it was the summer where people were watching in the streets. People had tickets to go to the games. It was so much fun. And I tried to get to as many different events as I could. I had a press pass which allow me to do that. But my friends also had as many tickets as they could because they could afford basically it was china’s again a cliche but it was china’s coming out party on the world stage. It was it was a very well it was a spectacular event from the opening ceremony onwards. And you know Beijing residents had a lot of fun. This is this is not this is not gonna be that. I don’t think Beijing residents are going to be able to attend generally there are a few kind of back channels that I’m still hoping to get to a few things. But if I do get to an event and if anyone from the city goes to an event Here’s here’s how it will look. They have to have two tests within 96 hours of going two tests after coming out of the event and then monitor themselves for for a week afterwards. I’ve heard that school kids actually have to there might be some school kids they have to not just monitor themselves but stay at home for a week afterwards. So kind of like a mini quarantine. Even if you’re in a segregated part of a of a venue where there are athletes and coaches who are in the bubble there’s not going to be zero risk. So basically they’re just worried about cross infection. It’s obviously an airborne virus. So you can’t have Spectators and zero risk. So it’s a balance. How do you put on a good show But also how do you balance all the pandemic restrictions? But do you think that there will be A greater amount of interest towards winter sports coming out of the Olympics from China in general. There’s two sides to this really um when China won the bid for for the 2022 games that was in 2015. And basically the reason why they got it is is they sold the future of winter sports. They said we’re gonna have 300 million people involved in winter sports. Now there’s something about this number. You know we hear 300 million middle class consumers. We have 300 million basketball players like that. They’re just made up numbers frankly. Um It’s meaningless. Like you don’t have one in four people playing basketball in china. Like it’s just just not factually true. The NBA says this and I’ve asked the NBA and they say over the C. B. A. The chinese basketball association told us well I was like well it doesn’t make it true but they probably had an agency like I can totally see an advertising company coming up with that number and I can explain to you how how how I would back up that number as well participation is a really broad word. Right? Yes. Absolute. And and let me tell you the definition of 300 million particularly when it comes to winter sports has changed dramatic every week. It seems to have a different definition of exactly what a participant is China announced last week. They’ve achieved this goal I think I think we’re at 346 million. I mean again like okay you don’t have 346 million people skating and skiing. But but I have witnessed a huge increase over those seven years since china was was awarded the olympics. So you know ski resorts have popped up all over the country. Indoor ski resorts you know in the south where where it’s not where it’s not cold they’re up as well. So we’re seeing you know every time I go skiing there’s so many people on the slopes a lot of them on the beginner slopes. They’re learning for the first time. Again anecdotally so many people in Beijing. I know like their their kids are learning to play ice hockey and learning to skate so so we are seeing a huge drive towards winter sports and developing that industry. Again, it kind of annoys me because there aren’t 300 million people skiing and but again, how do we get kind of accurate numbers? It it’s kind of impossible. So I’ve given up mark, do you have any bold predictions to make for the winter olympics or two to extend that a bit? Are there any particular sports that we should be looking out for? There are a few sports where china has historically done well, that’s short track speed skating and that’s always a fun one to watch. If people are kind of wondering, let me try some olympics watch short track speed skating, not not just speed skating, it’s got to be the short track because there’s always crashes and disqualifications and there’s always drama and when it’s the olympics there’s always accusations of you know cheating and and and bias and and it’s fun but china china has had metal success. Their figure skating are also good and then some of them were the kind of the the younger hippo sports, so freestyle skiing and snowboarding, china is is, has some some definite medal hopes there. I think the one area where they may have a breakthrough here is the sliding sports now, sliding is a bobsleigh and luge and skeleton frightening, you have to be, you have to have the guts to a lot of guts, you know, you know, you have to be incredibly brave to go down these these these ice shoots at, you know, up to 90 miles an hour an inch away from the ice at some point and it’s dangerous if you crash, you know, you’re, you’re gonna be in trouble. The reason I think they’ll do well is is twofold one. There aren’t that many professional sliding athletes globally, you know, we’re talking we’re talking hundreds just because there aren’t too many of these bobsled tracks um and so if china can can get, it’s it’s effectively it’s it’s a sponsored professional athletes and it’s olympians in for a number of years, they can kind of quickly catch up to to the global, the elite level and we’re already seeing a couple of some of the chinese sliders performing at the top level. There was a guy um in the, in the skeleton who won a World Cup event in europe just just a couple of months ago, so that’s kind of been really encouraging to see. The other reason I think they’ll do well is because home track advantage has such a big, you know, it is really important in the sliding sports. There was there was one of the foreign coaches who’s a foreign coach of the chinese sliding team and he was saying that The other athletes coming into China will probably have a chance for 40-45 training runs on this track and he said, my guys will have had 10 to 14 times the number of practice runs. Um So it’s basically imagine it’s like playing your home golf course, you play it three times a week. And then you know of course if you’re if you’re one of the best golfers in the world you’re still going to play well, you’re still going to be competitive. But knowing that course, knowing that track is going to give you a huge advantage. Those are some of the sports where china may perhaps see some breakthroughs. That’s really interesting. And what do you think about the state of sports sponsorships this year given the covid issues and we’ve got of course Xinjiang cotton issues with some brands is sponsoring the olympics. Is it a good value In a word? No this is this is an Olympics like no other when it comes to when it comes to sponsorships the there’s 13 top level sponsors. A lot of the big brands that that you’d be aware of. They are very very low key less so in china I would say. But but particularly overseas because the political temperature around these games, you know we’ve had the the diplomatic boycotts from a lot of the western countries. Congress in the U. S. Has has been really really hard on these corporate the corporate sponsors and sort of blaming them for for promotion of of the chinese government and so on and so as a result we’ve seen them basically trying to take a really, really low profile in the past, you know, you’re spending millions and millions and millions of sponsorship dollars just to just to get the rights to be an olympic sponsor and probably 2 to 3 times that in the activation. So you know, we we we’re not seeing that at all. Again, that’s I would say less to do with Covid than more to do with some of the, the political nature of these games. You know, we’re in a more global world. So, so what you do in one market now, closely watched by viewers overseas. So it’s not that you can kind of have like a big, you know, happy campaign within china and no one overseas notices those days are long gone and I think that has really affected what what some of the big brands are doing that said, you know, if you’re a chinese brand and you’re, you’re focused on the chinese market, I mean if you’re anti or leaning or you know, one of these, one of these sports brands, you could do it, you can have some great campaigns where you’re largely almost entirely marketing towards chinese people. Um, there’s no issues politically whatsoever. Um you know, you can, you can leverage, even if you’re not an official, I wouldn’t exactly be like ambush marketing, but you can leverage these olympics successes every time china has um, you know, china has a metal success you get on social media with a with a fun campaign and kind of leverage that positive momentum. You know I think there’s a lot of opportunities for those brands but I think the international brands, the multinationals and the olympic sponsors, they signed up for the olympic partnerships long before they knew the Beijing was going to host these games along before they knew that they were going to have the or so many political issues as well. But it’s it’s it’s been tricky for them for sure. Yeah, I remember doing work for addie does a couple of months ago when when when we were planning campaigns for Tokyo it’s not that it was very political but we were just coming off of the cotton crisis and it was really difficult to kind of plan a campaign. So you know, how do you go in and and talk about advertising or how do you run a campaign attach itself to attach yourself to the volleyball team and still be very authentic in what you have to say and support china and and and and still be of german origin and that was really that that was really challenging for them. But yeah, I mean ali to your point like like when pr teams and marketing teams are sitting around going, how do you plan a campaign because there’s so many, you know you might get hammered from this side, you might get hammered from the other side. The answer basically is like well then you don’t do anything right, and so that’s what, that’s, people have become so cautious that there have been too many examples where brands have been burnt both in china and overseas, just over the last, you know, 6 to 12 months, you know, the, the default, I think more and more is becoming okay, let’s just lie low slightly on topic, but a little bit perhaps off. I think the campaign with the work that we did for Adidas ended up taking a sustainability turn and there was a lot of content around, so the content that we created for them was around sustainability. Um they built a bunch of football grounds and in far away places and then talked about how distant sport and football have traveled um and how they’re, you know, how they’re helping um you know, young people in remote areas of china um pick up sport, so um so instead of, you know, being proactive about look at us, we’re an amazing brand and showing off the celebrities or, you know, just adding fuel to the celebrity status of a lot of their their athletes, they went off and did, you know, feel good things, which I think like, you know, for a brand at that time, just off the heels of of the cotton crisis I think makes a lot of sense and they got a lot of positive press, I think increasingly brands, uh this is something I’ve seen as well, you know, sustainability is, is kind of, it’s about as neutral as you can get and it’s sort of positive and you know, it’s hard to be attacked politically from kind of anywhere, so, so it’s, it’s sort of like the only area that’s still safe um and we’re seeing that a lot I think um I don’t know if it’s, you know, if post olympics that’s going to change from, from a sort of a china angle and china versus the west, but that’s definitely the case at the moment, right? So I have a question for you, I’m just looking at the question seven over here on our sheets, who’s Eileen Gu, Oh Eileen Gu, she’s the skier, she’s born in California and she’s half Chinese are mothers Chinese and she switched sides. She she’s now a Chinese citizen uh still living in California where she grew up. So I was just going to get your take on that Mark. It’s a very bold move. I mean of course, I’m not suggesting anything against switching your citizenship or anything, but be able to do this raised a lot of questions. She argues that it’s about being loyal to her ethnicity. I’ve heard other people say no, it’s all about getting sponsorships on the Chinese side, it’s definitely a hot topic right now and actually it was the last, you know, on the, on the china sports insider podcast that we just did that this week that we kind of talked about it at length, I think to try to sum up, I know that not everyone is going to agree with with this particular take, I kind of see, I don’t see her as half Chinese, half american, I see her as fully Chinese and fully American and she can only represent one country at an olympics. So that makes sense. Yes, it makes more commercial sense for her to, to to represent china, but I think that it’s not the only reason why why she’s made the switch, she has a big opportunity, she’s 18, 19 years old, she’s going to Stanford and not fall, you know that to answer your point about, you know, why is she still in the States? Well, you know, she’s still kind of schooling there, She’s friends with the people on the, on the us ski team. Um she’s kind of obviously integrating into the, the Chinese team as well. She she switched over in 2019, so it wasn’t like just around the corner. Um but I think that in terms of the opportunity she is going to be the face of these, these olympics or or at least one of the faces of these olympics because she’s a gold medal favorite and at least one of her disciplines that that she’s competing in the opportunity that she has and again, this sounds a little bit sappy and and perhaps idealistic, but she has an opportunity to, to inspire millions and millions of of of young Children. She spoken in the past about when she was growing up skiing in in the US on the west coast there. Um you know she was the only girl on the ski team, she was the only one with with asian heritage and she said you know if there were more people who looked like her she would have been more likely to get into the sport. You know. Again yes she’s going to get more money from the sponsorships and when I was coming out of quarantine in Shanghai I think I saw her face on three billboards within the space of an hour just walking around the streets, there was cola that you know the sort of the the bathroom brand there was there was luck in coffee and I forget what the other one was. So so she’s been everywhere in terms of the sponsorship and as a side note I was kind of thinking well you know maybe she’s just win, win some some gold medals first before she kind of capitalizes. But frankly she’s been on fire this season, she’s unbeaten coming into the olympics. Let me get back to it. You know, I I do think it’s a it feels genuine to me that she wants to kind of make a difference and inspire Chinese kids, she could do this and have a lot more of an effect in china than she could in the U. S. By kind of being the face of these games. There’s too many other names for her to compete with and and and appeal to um in the US. So I think it’s easy to be cynical and say she’s only switching for the money. I try to kind of see it a different way and sort of think well like she’s she’s she’s engaging with with who she is and her heritage and and and hopefully this could be huge for the development of of winter sports in china. There is one kind of issue with with Eileen gu that that it came up over the last few weeks like the Wall Street Journal had a story and and Red Bull one of her sponsors had had on her web website saying um You know she renounced her American citizenship in 2019. And the reporter kind of contacted rebel to say can you confirm this? And then this sentence particular sentence magically disappeared. And so there are gonna be questions in the build up and I’m sure she’s gonna get asked like does she still have a chinese, Sorry does she still have a U. S. Passport? Because as a lot of people know china doesn’t recognize dual nationality but this is sort of a china issue no from from the US side and different countries have different rules on this. Um So it is definitely a sensitive it is a sensitive thing. We don’t know, we don’t know whether or not she does or doesn’t have a U. S. Or a. Or chinese papers right for me it doesn’t really matter. You know, as long as the federations and the I. C. And and you know okay with her being eligible then then that should be the that should be the main thing. But yeah people are going to ask these questions and unfortunately there will be some nasty stuff online. Hi ali and I hope you enjoy shanghai john the only marketing podcast coming to you from china now you can help support shanghai john by becoming a patron and for just a few dollars a month you can help support all the great marketing content that you hear on shanghai john simply go to our website john station dot com. That’s Z H A. N station dot com. And click on the patron lake at the bottom of the site. You can also go directly to Patreon dot com slash shanghai’s on. That’s P A T R O E N dot com slash shanghai dot thanks. We appreciate your support. Thanks Mark. That’s really interesting switching gears for a minute. How has social media impacted the sports players and the brand sponsorships in china? Well let me wind that out first of all from social media just to kind of the media landscape. I remember I was at a panel event, I want to say around 2013, and Richard Young who is a guy that I’m guessing one of both of you might know who previously ran NFL in China out of Shanghai for for a number of years. He was talking about you know, ccTv, the national broadcaster was basically the only game in town and he said that this is going to change their a dinosaur that it can’t go on like this forever. And he goes, this change is coming soon. And I remember sitting in the audience thinking that, you know, I’m kind of skeptical, it’s china like it’s they can do what they want. And within a couple of years and this started with with the 10 cents online streaming sponsorship with the N. B. A. It completely revolutionized the chinese sports industry in terms of broadcasting. Um and then we saw the rise of all these streaming platforms and and some of them have kind of already gone through boom and bust. But we had love sports, we’ve had P. P. T. V. Um you know, 10cent, but all the other online streaming platforms as well have have competed for eyeballs. And I think to to go back to the initial question like that the younger demographic, they probably don’t even have a tv at home, they’re watching on their phones, they’re consuming on their phones. Um And so the streaming platform makes sense. And that kind of ties goes hand in hand with social media, there’s a huge amount of opportunity for both vote for teams and for leagues and for the individuals as well to connect with chinese consumers, whether it’s web or whether it’s, you know, there’s lots of different, um, more focused apps for different sports as well, like different platforms, um, suit different, different target audiences. You think there’s going to be tokenization of some of the plays and uh, and some of the content that’s created around the sports for the first time. I mean it would seem, it would seem to be, you know, the olympics would would seem to lend itself superbly to something like that in terms of like those key moments, you know, I’m going to give my book a quick plug here, but the very opening chapter is when I was sitting four rows from the front at the men’s 100 m final, I was actually sitting next to Sir Matthew Pinsent who was a four time olympic gold medalist who was commentating for the BBC at the time, but he would, he would Retired and he was sitting in the media seats and we were basically 85 meters down the 100 m track and four rows from the front Usain bolt broke his own world record and kind of around 85 m, he looks to the right, which is where we were and it looked like literally felt like he was looking at us when he started to celebrate early and he put his arms, you know, and, and that that’s a moment that that it was like iconic, you know, these these individual moments. Um I created the olympics because it’s a four year cycle. They don’t happen all the time. So I think even more than like a great goal in this league or or in this game, you know that the olympic pinnacle, it means so much to the athletes because just to get there just to time the cycle right and be free of injury and to be peaking at the right time is such a big deal. You know, people, people say that the olympics are losing their luster, but for me, you know, they’re still in a lot of these sports, it’s still the peak going back to sports sponsorships in general. Where do you see the next big opportunity? I mean, we’ve seen a lot of mishaps in the china becoming a local football power. There has been issues with Daryl Morey and his tweets and in the fall of the of the N. B. A. Where would be the big bets you think for professional sports sponsorships in china, we’re going into a really tough period to be honest, because the rest of the world is kind of moving on from Covid when it comes to sports, you know, leagues are back up and running arenas and stadiums are full and yes, there’s suspensions here and here and there, but basically they’re trying to get back to to having four arenas as much as possible. And Covid is not seen as, as with the same amount of fear and terror as it is still here in china with with the Covid zero strategy. So very, very different, very different approaches. But what that has meant is that basically there are no international sports events in china right now, of course, there’s the olympics, but I mean, the management required for this pandemic just unbelievable. It’s not something that can be easily repeated. And the other thing is, you know, players and athletes have been very clear like they hate playing in empty arenas. Like it’s it’s the worst. They were just as relieved as fans to get the fans back in the stadiums overseas. And so, you know, we’re seeing the chinese super league playing a bubble. We’re seeing the chinese basketball association playing a bubble. It’s just not the same. The foreign players have basically all deserted um because it’s it’s just, it’s just so difficult. And so as a result, the attention on the league has gone down the quality and the league, the league have gone down. So we’re not gonna see international sports events. We have joke on you. The first chinese driver in F one who will be in F one this year, he won’t be able to drive it drive in his home grand prix because they’ve already scrapped it. So 2022 is definitely out, 2023 who knows? At this point, it would be a pretty bold prediction to say sports will be back to normal. So, you know, where does that leave us? Well, short to medium term in a tough spot. Like I said, I guess the opportunities are, you know, there’s still going to be people engaging online with, with sponsorships and, but it’s not the same when you can’t have that in person interaction. It was so important for, for NBA teams. You know, it wasn’t about the preseason games, which were kind of glorified training sessions. It was about the sessions where they could interact with the fans and, and, you know, and shake hands and have the appearances around that, seeing seeing the athletes in the, in the flesh. There’s no, there’s no substitute for that. So this whole thing, you know, Covid and, and, and the travel restrictions, I think is, is gonna really, really hurt. Well, it’s, it’s really hurting China’s international sporting ambitions. On the flip side, it’s the domestic tourism and sports industry is booming because people can’t go anywhere else. So, for example, surfing in Hainan, you know, has, has gone through crazy growth in the last couple of years because people aren’t going overseas. So they’re thinking, well, I want to do something fun, let’s let’s go and learn to surf, you know, so that’s good. Um, yeah, I don’t want to be to sort of pessimistic about that, but it does, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s it’s an example of, you know, sports is not top in the in the in the in the priority rankings here in china, you know, right now it’s it’s um it’s covid that’s kind of number one and and political stability and and everything that that means and on that kind of ranking list sports way down. So um yeah, I guess short term it’s not looking great but hopefully we can move on from at some point, move on from this lovely lovely virus and uh and get back to some sort of normality. But are we seeing people still engaging in content from from abroad. So they’ll be watching they’ll be watching juventus or they’ll be watching the Golden State Warriors. Uh Is there opportunities there? I mean, in the context of of sports that’s happening in other markets? We are, you know, when it comes to, for example, the N. B. A. You know, we’ve you mentioned the Daryl Morey tweet with some sort of, I mean the NBA has is still struggling to kind of recover from that and and some of the teams are still banned and and and so given that the political temperature, we’ve seen issues with the Premier League and when players have something political to say and china doesn’t like it right now. Tennis is basically banned from being streamed in china. So it’s like it’s kind of who’s on the blacklist at any one time and that is something that that sponsors are going to be wary of, right, why would you sponsor something with, with an eye on the chinese market? If one individual or one comment or one tweet or one post can basically get you shut down for a year or more, right? The sponsor sponsor is going to be like, can I get my money back? So it’s a risk, You know, it’s a real pain. I wish it wasn’t like that, but I think, I think that is the reality. Yeah, I think the opportunities are more sort of within the chinese market from chinese brands, because you don’t have any of those risks, you’re not gonna have, you’re not gonna get shut down, you can really feed off the the kind of the sense of chinese nationalism and pride that that people have in their in their own um you know, sports and country and success here. Um it’s definitely going to be harder, I think, for for the multinationals at least over the next year or two, we have a lot of conversations with with some of our some of our clients on, you know, what sports means to um Uh young kids today, um and I just wanted to pick your brain and see if you feel the same 2008 was a watershed moment for China because um it was them um you know, hosting the rest of the world. Um and there’s a lot of things that were happening also at the same time in China um and if you compared to 2022 and you look at um young Children today um how how important is sports for them today and and and and is that something that um in the sports and athleticism uh still, you know, is it is it part of the curriculum and and and you know what’s happening over there? Let me kind of, let me kind of widen widen the context for this. So like in the book, I kind of basically take a timeline from from 2008 all the way up to to the present day and and sort of go through all the highs and lows of China’s sports industry development. I think the key moment was um was a document that was released towards the end of 2014 policy number 46 is it’s kind of colloquially known when this was to develop the chinese sports industry and the target was set to make it the number one sports industry in the world. Um you know worth ¥5 trillion. About 800 billion U. S. Dollars. And a lot of things fed off of that. So the first wave that we saw was soccer and we saw some huge growth in 2016, 2018. We’ve seen some really, you know, some some leaner years more recently. The second wave was kind of winter sports and that was feeding off, you know, china being awarded the, the olympic games and, and the results of that and the kind of the long seven year build up to to these Beijing olympics. And then the third wave was kind of the rise of mass participation sports. So people just generally getting involved in running and going to gyms and fitness and triathlons and cycling and so on. And that was more of an organic growth and so that I think is more sustainable. That’s been really, really good to see. Um, so that is probably, you know, whereas whereas the soccer was was not sustainable and we’ve already kind of seeing, seeing that play out to a certain extent. I think I’m most optimistic about the just generally everyday people being active in a way that they weren’t before. This was kind of an organic, partly driven by government policy. But also a lot of, a lot of people, a lot of middle class parents realizing the value of sports for their Children now that said, you know, there are a couple of caveats and I think one in particular is that that when sports gets in the way of, of schooling, It still loses that battle when it goes head to head. It’s it’s still seen as a distraction. And so you see a lot of the youth sports that the teams are very, very good until the age of about 14. And then there’s a dramatic drop off ice hockey for example, is one, is one example of that. And the pressure on The pressure on, on, on Children today to to get into a good university, you know, take that Gaoqiao, whether where they’re one of 10 million uh students a year, I mean the pressure to get into a to a good school is still absolutely incredible. And so as much as parents kind of emotionally kind of think, well sorry, as much as they intellectually understand well, you know, sports is part of a good well rounded life. The pressure when you see all the other parents, you know, in the after school classes and the extra cramming and the, and the prep that they’re doing, you know, you don’t want your kids to be to be left behind. And so there is still that there is still that pressure, you know, I don’t think that’s going to change overnight, it’s something the government is aware of that where we’ve seen reform dramatic reforms to the education system over just in the last year. Um, but I think it starts a lot of it starts with the university systems, there are some good universities in china, You know, there’s a, there’s a handful that it would be in the kind of the top 100 in the world, but there aren’t enough, um not for the population and not for the size, not for china’s place in the world, you know that the middle class parents still, if they can they still want to send their kids overseas for schooling and it takes takes a generation to to really develop top universities. Um This is kind of getting off the sports a little bit but but you know, that kind of feeds into the competing um you know, competing uh drawers just you know, there’s only so much time that a child has and priorities that the parents have for their Children. But I think that’s sometimes sports will suffer as a result. Maybe this endorsement of Eileen Gu is um is, you know, is sort of tipping the hat and and endorsing sports and getting young people to perhaps reconsider and and consider sports as, you know, as a as a primary career. Yeah, that’s absolutely right and I and the one thing I would say, you know, Eileen Gu is going to stanford right, that resonates with some chinese parents more than an olympic gold medal. So you know, but but no but I’m but I’m serious and we’ve seen this in the past, we’ve seen kind of examples of of kids who are very well developed in um in a sport and they get a scholarship to a to a top U. S. School and so that then kind of becomes the pitch to the parents, hey get your kid good at this sport and then it will get them into a good university so, you know, if you can’t if you if you can’t change the mentality, you can kind of work around it. I think we’re going to do the A. B test. Um If you’ve, if you’ve heard the show before, mark there towards the end we go into the A. B test is um is short for my name and B is short for bryce. Um so we’re gonna give, you were going to throw two questions or two words that you you have to pick one. Um and there’s no right answer. There might be a deeper meaning to the words but we’ll let you know our our listeners figure that out. Some of the guests have snuck in a third answer which is not that is forbidden. You can’t do that. Yeah, you get punished. Am I allowed to Am I allowed to give like a brief explanation? Where necessary? Absolutely. Of course. Beijing Tokyo you gotta be. I’m a little bit torn but I think he does excellent. 10 years or 20. This is probably the Trickiest one on the list. I’m gonna say 20, I’m not quite sure why. Maybe because I’m I’ll probably end up being in China for 20 years. Right? I was trying to figure out where that came from. No, I just looked at how long you’ve been here and then I just wanted to see because you know we’ve always had conversations around leaving china. The first year it comes becomes 22 becomes 44 becomes eight becomes 16 and it just keeps on um soccer, basketball. This is easy, Soccer for me. You know, I grew up in the UK so I gotta be, gotta go with football. Excellent snore surf little bit torn. But hey, we got the winter olympics. So I’m going with snow. Excellent. NBA or C. B. A. Again, fairly tough. One of my top moments in china at a sporting event was watching the the Sixers play actually in shanghai. But I’m going to go with C. B. A. I did, I did a piece many years ago with with with the Beijing Ducks cheerleaders. That was that was pretty fun. So I’m going with C. B. A. That would turn me to the Beijing ducks cheerleaders would definitely turn me to the C. V. A. Over the N. V. A. Some of the, some of the sporting athletes or some of the supporting characters at least from from a decade ago. But exciting for me nonetheless. Yao ming or Lena. This is easy Lena for sure. She’s, I think my favorite chinese athlete. Any reason just, oh and she’s so funny. Apart from anything else, her speech when she won the Australian open in 2014. I mean she just had, she’s not like completely fluent in english, but she was speaking in english, She just had the whole crowd in stitches talking about how her husband was like, so lucky to have her but kind of, you know joking saying, hey, too much to my agent, hey max make me rich, you know, like it was, it was genius. It was really good. She’s everything that china needs as a sort of like a globally facing athlete and unfortunately we haven’t had too many others sang or linear little bit torn. I’m going with leaning my very first sports blog in china was called The Leaning Tower, which I thought was, which I thought was super clever and amusing. No one really got the joke, so I kind of had to explain it and I was like, okay, yeah, I’ll change it. But you know, for my own personal memories, I’m going with leaning their tattoos or ice cream, ice cream for me, Fox sports, CCTv sports, technically I’ve worked for both over the years. I’m gonna go with, I’m gonna go with Fox just because CCTV Again, I don’t want to get too long, too long an answer, but you know, they have so much money and they could be so much better with their coverage than they have been over the years. They could be so much more, you know, forward thinking and experimental, and and it feels like we’re just still watching coverage from 10, 15 years ago and it doesn’t need to be that way. So, you know, Fox by default kung fu panda or the skiing panda again, another tough one. I love these questions by the way, I don’t want to go skiing panic because it’s the olympics. But you know kung fu panda, my kids love that movie, I love that movie. I’m going with kung fu panda. That’s great. Hey Mark, thanks for taking the time to do this today. It was really fascinating and I definitely look forward to watching the olympics after after the show. So, congratulations on the book. Yeah, thank you. I appreciate you guys get me on. It’s been there. It’s been fun to chance. Thanks everyone for joining us on today’s episode and thanks for Mark to give us all this great insight. We’ll be posting the links to his book in the show notes of this episode and please, by all means check it out. And you can also go to our website for more information and more podcasts of the similar chinese marketing genre on Zhaan station dot com. That’s Z H A N station dot com join us next week for another exciting show and to all our listeners. Until then, have a great day