The Gold Coast Suns are set to take on Port Adelaide in an Australian Football League (AFL) championship match in China next year, as the high-contact Australian sport seeks a toe-hold in the world’s second-largest economy.
AFL is embraced with religious fervor in Australia’s southern states, but in overseas markets it remains a fringe sport confined to obscure time slots on cable TV channels.
That has not stopped the AFL from wading tentatively into foreign waters.
The 18-team league, dominated by Melbourne franchises, trumpeted its first championship match in New Zealand in 2013, when the St Kilda Saints played the Sydney Swans at Wellington’s “Cake Tin” stadium.
However, after hosting a third match last year, the New Zealand capital opted out of extending the arrangement, citing underwhelming crowds and an inadequate return on investment.
Convincing Chinese to tune in to the fast-paced game played on a pitch the size of a cricket ground might also be a hard sell, given the Asian nation has no tradition of high-contact ball sports.
However, the deal makes perfect sense for Port Adelaide and their new sponsor Shanghai CRED Real Estate, a property developer and part of a Chinese consortium bidding for politically-sensitive pastoral lands in Western Australia.
Shanghai CRED’s sponsorship includes beaming Port Adelaide games into China via state-run broadcasting behemoth CCTV and a documentary series.
Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull gave the sport a free-kick by attending the announcement of a memorandum of understanding between Port Adelaide, the AFL and Shanghai CRED in Shanghai last week.
“AFL is the most exciting football code. An enormous field, extraordinary athleticism, it is the leaping, jumping, flying game,” he said.
Port Adelaide’s opponent was not announced last week, but Suns chairman Tony Cochrane told local media his team had been awarded the game.
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