International combat sports brands hope to conquer China – but fighters may have the final say
September 1, 2017
In the next four months until the end of this year, boxing will make a serious splash in China.
GLORY, the world’s premier kickboxing league, recently announced that GLORY 46 will take place at the Guangzhou Gymnasium on October 14th. This is the first GLORY fight in China and a sign of GLORY returning to the East Asia market after a four-year absence.
GLORY also unveiled some of its stars, such as the heavyweight champion Rico Verhoevenwe, ‘Bigfoot’ Antonio Silva, and eight Chinese fighters including Meng Qinghao, Zhang Chenglong and Li Chenchen, who will all appear on fight night.
China has seen multiple international kickboxing games declare their ‘China Events’ in the past month.
The UFC (Ultimate Fighting Championship) is set for its debut ‘UFC Fight Night: Shanghai’ in mainland China scheduled at Mercedes-Benz Arena on November 25th, featuring the ‘Spiderman’ Anderson Silva. But UFC hasn’t released its Chinese fighters in the game yet.
ONE Championship, another mixed martial arts (MMA) event that closed a C-Round investment from Sequoia Capital India and Mission Holdings in July, has announced its inaugural event in Shanghai, China, which is set to take place on September 2nd, at the Shanghai Oriental Sports Center.
Some Chinese fighters will make their debut in this game. According to the schedule on its website, there will be another two events, one on October 21st in Beijing, the other on December 23rd in Shenzhen.
Glory Sports International, GLORY’s parent company, announced that it had completed a B-round fund-raising led by Yao Capital in September 2016. Almost a year later, it made its first move in China by launching a new event. Scott Rudmann, co-founder of GLORY, has revealed that there will be a joint venture held by Chinese capital and more events every year in China.
The heat surrounding Chinese kickboxing may be explained in two ways. First, China has a long history of martial arts culture, the market has tremendous growth potential.
But in another way, we can see that those kickboxing brands, most of which are supported by investment, are seeking opportunities in China which will further expand their vitality and valuation.
When the going got tough, Sagetdao got going. #Shanghai #MartialArts pic.twitter.com/CreX9PFzFi
— ONE Championship (@ONEChampionship) August 30, 2017
However, entering China may not be as easy as some people imagine. Although some international kickboxing organisations went to great lengths to promote their brand, no one can claim victory in China.
The biggest barrier would be the scarcity of Chinses fighter stars.
UFC is under less pressure from this problem, because it already recruited two star fighters: Li Jingliang and Wang Guan, who are both supposed to perform in UFC Shanghai Fight Night in November.
These two fighters, standing at the pinnacle of China’s MMA scene, are still waiting for a chance to fight in UFC’s ‘Numbered’ events. However, as the number one brand in MMA, UFC has a better chance to harvest Chinese top fighters should they come along.
In 2016, ONE held a total three events in China, and set up an Chinese office in Shanghai. As a brand originated from southeast Asia, also known as the Eastern UFC, ONE is more eager to get assess to Chinese market.
Financial Times reported that in Manila, this five-year championship just hit a record audience number in an event in April. ONE never released its financial details, but its founder Chatri Sityodtong hinted that it is “close to profitable”, with an “eight-figure revenue and high growth rate”.
In an interview with Lanxiong Sports last July, Sityodtong stated that the company had 350 fighters, 70 of them from China, the biggest number of Chinese fighters in MMA brands. All those fighters signed an exclusive contract with ONE.
But the cooperation between ONE and Chinese fighters has gone through turmoil when fighters like Li Kaiwen, Ma Jiawen and Xie Bin from Tianjin K-1 club, got into disputes about their contract with ONE in May.
Although ONE lost competitive Chinese fighters such as Li Kaiwen it still has plenty of Chinese faces in the octagon cage, especially in the second half of this year when many Chinese competitors will join in the China Events.
Notably, there will be a direct confrontation between ONE and UFC when trying to seize more Chinese fighters. ONE got into trouble when it tried to stop Li Kaiwen from joining a UFC training camp. Unfortunately, no one can guarantee that the same case would not happen again.
After all, it is true that fighters define the quality of the events. Comparatively, there are more active fighters in kickboxing than MMA in China, which plays to GLORY’s favour.
Han Dawei, CEO of Yao Capital, told Lanxiong Sports that “As an American style boxing, MMA has its regional limitations and we think that kickboxing is more close to Kung Fu. There is a TV show, WU LIN FENG, featuring martial arts and boxing that has been on air in China for ten years, sound proof of the true market potential in China, which makes us confident in GLORY.
In other words, kickboxing is facing a much more severe and intense competition than MMA in china. According to the statistics from GLORY, it has signed exclusive contracts with more than 80 kickboxing fighters from 25 countries, covering six men’s weight classes and one women’s weight class.
Scott Rudmann told Lanxiong Sports confidently that GLORY has the most outstanding kickboxing players.
Cor Hemmers, Managing Directo of GLORY, told Lanxiong Sports that GLORY had signed almost 10 Chinese fighters, five of them with exclusive contracts, and they are still seeking out more Chinese talents.
After it got Chinese investment, GLORY waited for a year before it launched its first event in China. It took the time in between to find and prepare the right fighters that could help it open the market.
Time to defend The Throne. #TheOne #Glory46 LETS GO! @GLORY_WS pic.twitter.com/75YAse5lbd
— Simon The ONE Marcus (@SimonMarcusNo1) August 30, 2017
If you were to venture a guess, maybe in four or five years GLORY will start co-operation with local events by sharing fighters. Rudmann also told Lanxiong Sports that fighters from GLORY have been showing up in local Chinese events for years.
He stressed that GLORY is a super league like NFL and NBA, instead of just a “kickboxing entertainment”. It seems promising if GLORY could build up a world-class league to pull in top-level Chinese players.
After all, you need to activate the market first, then talk about money. It is when more bankable stars like Zou Shiming come along, that customers really start paying for the tickets.
Some of UFC’s events are already pay-per-view on a Chinese online media platform PPTV, along with WWE. And the actual tickets for its China events are divided into 7 classes, the price ranging from £33 ($42) to £351 ($453).
If UFC or PPTV is generous enough to show the final box office figures, then we will have a rough understanding of the audiences’ willingness to pay.
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