{"id":1154,"date":"2025-08-22T04:25:18","date_gmt":"2025-08-22T04:25:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.worldpumpnews.com\/?p=1154"},"modified":"2025-08-22T04:25:18","modified_gmt":"2025-08-22T04:25:18","slug":"college-basketball-league-shoots-for-success-in-china","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.worldpumpnews.com\/?p=1154","title":{"rendered":"College basketball league shoots for success in China"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<div>\n<p>Unlock the Editor\u2019s Digest for free<\/p>\n<p class=\"article__content-sign-up-topic-description o3-type-body-base\"><span>Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><iframe class=\"article__content-sign-up-iframe close\" scrolling=\"no\" id=\"signUpIframe\" data-prev-url=\"\/register\/in-article-sign-up?ft-content-uuid=cc05a9b5-3834-4c66-8507-8edc80217dd6\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<div id=\"article-body\">\n<p>One of the best-known billionaires to emerge from China\u2019s tech sector is hoping to tap into the country\u2019s passion for basketball by backing a pan-Asian college league styled on the US \u201cMarch Madness\u201d knockout tournament.<\/p>\n<p>Alibaba chair Joe Tsai \u2014 who owns the Brooklyn Nets, the US professional National Basketball Association team \u2014 hopes to build on enthusiasm for live events in China with a new amateur competition.<\/p>\n<p>The Asian University Basketball League launched this week with a tournament in Alibaba\u2019s hometown of Hangzhou, featuring 12 college teams from mainland China, Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Mongolia and Hong Kong, including Peking University and the University of Hong Kong.<\/p>\n<p>The league, which is also supported by former Chinese NBA star Yao Ming and counts Tsai\u2019s Blue Pool Capital, an Alibaba fund and VC firm Gobi Partners among its investors, is the latest attempt to capitalise on the popularity of the sport in the region, where participation and viewership is high.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe identified college basketball as a big untapped opportunity,\u201d said Jintian Li, chief executive of Realeague, which runs the new league. The sport has been a \u201cbig part of school culture\u201d in Asia for the past three decades, he added. \u201cSo many universities all have basketball programmes.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Basketball has cemented itself as a hugely popular sport in mainland China in recent decades, helped by Yao\u2019s breakout success in the early 2000s. <\/p>\n<p>In the US, college basketball often draws viewership numbers north of 10mn per game. Previously, student athletes were not allowed to be compensated, but in June, a legal settlement paved the way for institutions to pay them directly for the first time. Since 2021, players have also been permitted to profit from sponsorships and endorsements based on their \u201cname, image and likeness\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>The Asian University Basketball League, operating at a far smaller scale, is streaming on domestic platforms such as Youku and Tencent, and aims to draw on a vast sports viewership that also enjoys snooker and Formula 1. It is being run in tandem with the Asian University Sports Federation.<\/p>\n<p>After this week\u2019s initial tournament, the AUBL plans to revert to a league format with play-offs that echo the annual \u201cMarch Madness\u201d that caps the US college basketball season, and may in future expand to include different teams.<\/p>\n<p>The scene in the 3,000-seat stadium in Hangzhou closely emulated American college and high school sport, with cheerleaders throwing gifts into the crowd during breaks and audacious attempts at long-distance shots in the game\u2019s dying seconds.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis is a history-defining moment,\u201d said US NBA star Steph Curry in a recorded video that was shown. Sponsors include sports clothing company Under Armour, which held a \u201cCurry camp\u201d event in Chongqing this week attended by Curry, and Chinese electric vehicle company Zeekr.<\/p>\n<aside aria-labelledby=\"aside-label\" class=\"n-content-recommended--single-story n-content-recommended--inset\" data-component=\"recommended\">\n<p class=\"n-content-recommended__title o3-type-body-highlight\">Recommended<\/p>\n<div class=\"o-teaser o-teaser--article o-teaser--small o-teaser--stacked o-teaser--has-image js-teaser\" data-id=\"5a8bb423-62a3-4c42-bd54-566f05a9ea47\">\n<div class=\"o-teaser__image-container js-teaser-image-container\">\n<div class=\"o-teaser__image-placeholder\" style=\"aspect-ratio:2290\/1288\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"o-teaser__image\" src=\"https:\/\/www.ft.com\/__origami\/service\/image\/v2\/images\/raw\/https%3A%2F%2Fwww.ft.com%2F__origami%2Fservice%2Fimage%2Fv2%2Fimages%2Fraw%2Fhttps%253A%252F%252Fd1e00ek4ebabms.cloudfront.net%252Fproduction%252F85c7ef61-0e12-40f6-9730-b70f4cf923f1.jpg%3Fsource%3Dnext-article%26fit%3Dscale-down%26quality%3Dhighest%26width%3D700%26dpr%3D1?source=next&amp;fit=scale-down&amp;dpr=2&amp;width=240\" alt=\"Cheng Yanliang sits at a table with podcast equipment and a laptop, speaking into a microphone across from another person.\"\/><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/aside>\n<p>The NBA is set to return to greater China for the first time in five years, with two matches in Macau in October. The Brooklyn Nets, which this month added Fanbo Zeng of the Beijing Ducks to their training camp, will feature.<\/p>\n<p>Tsai, who co-founded Alibaba with Jack Ma, has also invested in other sports, including American football\u2019s Miami Dolphins and Los Angeles FC, and played lacrosse in college in the US.<\/p>\n<p>While China has its own professional league, the Chinese Basketball Association, the sport has also seen a rise in live amateur events, including a local intercity basketball league in Zhejiang, where winning teams are awarded bags of live fish.<\/p>\n<p>Shao Pengyu, a 24-year-old player for Zhejiang University competing in this week\u2019s tournament, said that Chinese basketball now was \u201cmore likely to develop from campus basketball\u201d. <\/p>\n<p><em>Additional reporting by Benjamin Wilhelm in New York<\/em><\/p>\n<div class=\"n-content-video n-content-video--internal\" data-component=\"video\">\n<div class=\"n-content-video__placeholder\" data-o-component=\"o-video\" data-o-video-id=\"31282edd-c0fd-498a-891a-e091d335c33c\"><span>Video: NIL: the revolution in US college sports | FT Scoreboard<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>#College #basketball #league #shoots #success #China<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Unlock the Editor\u2019s Digest for free Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter. One of the best-known billionaires to emerge from China\u2019s tech sector is hoping to tap into the country\u2019s passion for basketball by backing a pan-Asian college league styled on the US \u201cMarch Madness\u201d knockout tournament. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1155,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[784,163,783,785,786,787],"class_list":{"0":"post-1154","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-china","10":"tag-college","11":"tag-league","12":"tag-shoots","13":"tag-success"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.worldpumpnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1154","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.worldpumpnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.worldpumpnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldpumpnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldpumpnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1154"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldpumpnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1154\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldpumpnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1155"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.worldpumpnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1154"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldpumpnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1154"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldpumpnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1154"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}