When Chinese investors recently decided to acquire a 13% stake in Manchester City’s parent firm, it put the country’s renewed interest in football firmly in the spotlight.
The world’s second largest economy has never been a football powerhouse, qualifying for just one World Cup.
Meanwhile, the population seems more interested in NBA basketball than the sport known in the UK as “the people’s game”.
But over the past couple of years Chinese investors and firms have quietly been acquiring stakes in football clubs in England, Spain, France, Netherlands and the Czech Republic, while President Xi Jinping has professed a love of the game.
So why are the Chinese now snapping up stakes in European clubs?
Reasons include a national desire to look good on the world stage, developing China’s club football and national team, creating Chinese football fan bases, and firms using clubs to build their commercial presence in Europe.
‘Acquiring competence’
“China likes to be omnipotent and successful in everything it does,” Simon Chadwick, chair in sport business at Coventry University Business School, tells me.
“One thing they currently don’t do particularly well at is football, the global game. China wants to ascend to a position where it is respected globally as part of the international football community.”
He says President Xi has come out as a big football fan, and that by 2025 China wants to have a domestic sports industry worth $850bn (£564bn). Optimistic estimates put the current entire global sports economy at $400bn.