The long-awaited PGA Tour China Series – a collaboration between the PGA Tour and the China Golf Association – teed off on Thursday at the Mission Hills resort in Haikou on Hainan island, the first of 12 tournaments that will run throughout the year.
First some background, then some analysis…
Roads & Kingdoms has an excellent long-form piece by Gabrielle Jaffe profiling the fans of Chinese Super League team Beijing Guoan, exploring the history of the beautiful game in China and delving into the culture of supporter groups around the country.
For those unfamiliar with the capital’s sole CSL team, Beijing Guoan’s crowds last season would rank them eighth in the current list of English Premier League average attendances – above Everton, Spurs and West Ham.
There are lots of highlights, including this:
2014年4月18日，上海将连续11年迎来F1大奖赛赛事，但是无论赛事本身会发生什么，这都有一种似曾相识的感觉。
Another day, another sports team signs a sponsorship deal with Huawei. This time, though, the sport is cricket and the team is Indian Premier League side Royal Challengers Bangalore.
Formula 1 is a state of flux right now. Aside from all the massive rule changes for this season, Ferrari boss Stefano Domenicali quit this week, there’s due to be a new US-based team from 2015 and three of the existing teams are reported to be meeting in Shanghai on Thursday to discuss how to make their engines louder, after those new regulations sucked some of the noise out of the sport.
But the one constant that remains is China’s antipathy to Grand Prix racing. The race at the Shanghai International Circuit on Sunday will be the 11th consecutive Chinese Grand Prix held there, with current or former world champions winning eight out of the previous 10 races. But after the initial buzz, reality set in.
Here are some of the problems:
Continue reading China’s F1 antipathy a constant in season of flux
获得斯诺克世界冠军的79个人中有76人来自英国和爱尔兰，2位来自澳大利亚，1位来自加拿大。但是来自中国的丁俊晖以出色的发挥夺得了今年的斯诺克中国公开赛的冠军，让斯诺克的历史上出现了来自中国的世界冠军。
The NBA’s Global Games schedule is out for 2014 and the upshot for Chinese fans is this: Nets vs Kings in Shanghai on October 12, before the same teams play in Beijing on October 15.
Continue reading Brooklyn Nets, Sacramento Kings heading to China
Despite effectively being blocked from doing anything of consequence in the US, Chinese telecoms group Huawei has been continuing its expansion plans in Europe and elsewhere, thanks in part to an increasingly successful soft power campaign that has seen the firm partner up with a variety of sports properties. In the last year alone, Huawei signed deals with: Continue reading PSG becomes Huawei’s jewel in the crown
Snooker may not be everybody’s cup of tea, but it’s perhaps the best example of the Chinese taking over a sport in a short space of time. Since Ding Junhui won his first China Open title in 2005 as an 18-year-old (he added his second on Sunday), the sport has grown so much here that there are now 13 Chinese in the world’s top 100 players, and five of the season’s 11 full ranking tournaments now take place in China. In TV viewing terms, it’s now firmly established in the second tier of sports (with basketball and soccer the only true Tier 1 occupants).
The most important Russian to China right now is not Vladimir Putin, but it’s a man who knows him very well: Alexander Zhukov. That’s because he has just been appointed head of the evaluation commission for the 2022 Winter Games. In other words, he is leading the team that will select the host city.
Continue reading Russian politician holds key to China’s Olympic hopes
