NBA Final and Euro 2008 in China
Clay (ChinesePod’s product manager, once a minor league baseball player) once asked me which sport was more popular in China: basketball or soccer. It’s a question that you can never find a precise answer to. But very timely are the 2008 NBA finals and Euro 2008, both broadcast live in China, and have a firm and fast growing fan base. Typing in 2008 NBA 决赛/jue2 sai4/final on google.cn, you get just over a million results. 2008 欧洲杯/ou1 zhou1 bei1/ Euro Cup returned an astounding result of close to 7 million.
Soccer does seem to have a wider appeal across generations, enthusing grandpas and primary school boys. Chinese TV stations broadcast live games of the 4 major European leagues every week. And the government sanctioned soccer lottery also includes betting on those games. Basketball, or shall we say the NBA by comparison has most of its fans in young Chinese, although middle aged men such as my dad enjoy a good game too. Yao Ming still draw weighty attention, but we get equally hyped up if not more by Kobe or Lebron.
Many would attest that watching the NBA and Euro Cup are worth skipping school or work for. Or staying up late for a Euro Cup match is like partying to 3 in the morning on a Friday night. So in some ways, one benefit of the Beijing Olympics is that we can finally see a topnotch game in a civilised hour.
With the recent rise of anti-Western populism, soccer and basketball seem to be the only 2 safe territories where one can declare unambiguous love for the West. A good game is a good game.
Cpod’s lesson on basketball
Cpod’s lesson on soccer
This entry was posted on Thursday, June 19th, 2008 at 2:38 pm and is filed under musings, observing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
11:16 pm on June 19th, 2008
I like your last paragraph. Comes to show that sports truly is a globally unifying factor. Who can ever forget Ping Pong diplomacy? Or when wars would stop just so people can watch Pele? And a more dramatic power of sports, especially football/soccer, can be seen in the reaction and fanfare when the Brazilian national team visited war-torn Haiti in 2004 (or was it 2005? I forget, but watching the video on Youtube speaks volumes of the power of sports!).
Good job Jenny! Hope you’re having a good time in Canada!
12:01 am on June 20th, 2008
Mickey,
Thanks a lot for your support! Canada is wonderful. I am visiting the Hockey Hall of Fame tomorrow.
5:45 am on June 20th, 2008
Hockey Hall of Fame? Cool! I wonder how many times Amber has gone there
12:20 pm on June 20th, 2008
i’m betting that as long as the world-class basketball and football players don’t utter anything involving the 3 Ts, people in China are going to continue to enjoy watching and following the games.
5:53 pm on June 20th, 2008
I thought the whole Googling stuff to compare the result set count was something only computer geeks like me did. Or, maybe you’ve become one of us?
5:52 am on June 21st, 2008
maidou,
I guess what makes google so phenomenally successful is it delivers for both the web savvy and unsavvy (like me).
A lot of Chinese still opt for the local search engine baidu. But they actually have a joint service: baigoogledu, which displays both engines and results on the same page, juxtaposed. Quite interesting.
6:51 pm on June 22nd, 2008
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