China's Suning 'to pay $650m for Premier League TV rights'

Importer

November 18, 2016 1:01 PM

A Chinese conglomerate has won the rights to broadcast the English Premier League in the Asian country for three years, it said Friday, with reports putting the deal's value at $650 million.

The English Premier League is hugely popular across Asia

The contract would represent a huge uplift on the previous contract as Chinese money pours into the game and businesses rush to support President Xi Jinping's national footballing ambitions.

"The feedback that the board of the English Premier League gave us is that we have won the bid" to broadcast the English Premier League from 2019 to 2022, a spokesman for Suning Holdings's PPTV unit told AFP.

The exclusive media rights cover mainland China and its special administrative region Macau, a Suning spokeswoman said, adding they still have paperwork to sign before making an official announcement.

PPTV is an online streaming platform under the sports arm of the Suning Holdings company, which paid 270 million euros (then $306 million) in June for a majority stake of Inter Milan.

It also owns Chinese Super League club Jiangsu Suning, which twice broke the Asian transfer record this year to sign Ramires from Chelsea for 28 million euros and Shakhtar Donetsk's Alex Teixeira for 50 million euros.

The three-year TV rights were worth more than $650 million, Bloomberg News reported, marking a 12-fold increase on the current contract due to intense competition for the rights.

Chinese firms have spent lavishly this year on football clubs, players, and broadcasting rights in an effort to diversify their businesses and aid Xi's dream of making China into a global centre of gravity for the sport.

Xi is a known football fan and in 2011 -- when he was then vice president -- he laid out three hopes for China's soccer future: to qualify for another World Cup, to host a World Cup and to win a World Cup.

Sport planners hope to turn China into a "world football superpower" by 2050, with a target of 50 million people playing the game by 2020, according to a plan published by the Chinese Football Association in April.

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