Depends I guess. If they already have a good TV deal there then there is no point. What's the breakdown of Chinese support of European clubs? [MENTION=13941]Luftstalag14[/MENTION] any idea? Seems to me they want to target somewhere with a large viewership potential where Premier League are either non-existent (which is near impossible but Latin America is as good as) or blatantly outcompeting La Liga i.e. former British colonial territories.
In terms of Chinese support of European clubs, it is hard to measure exactly how many fans are out there for each league (or each club for that matter) and some of the numbers that I have seen being thrown around are quite outlandish, for example Bayern claiming they alone have 90m supports in China and La Liga claiming they have 120m fans in China etc, which are way too high in my opinion. Below is my stab at a slightly different question when I was talking to Leo_Messi in a different thread:
If I have to rank the popularity of the European Big 5 leagues ( as a whole) in China and profile each fanbase based on my anecdotal experience, I would probably say this:
(1) EPL (both older fans and younger fans)
(2) Bundesliga (both older fans and younger fans)
(3) La Liga (mostly younger fans)
(4) Serie A (mostly older fans)
(5) Ligue 1 (younger fans I assume and probably not that many at all)
La Liga has room to expand in China for sure, in my opinion. Currently La Liga games are broadcast on a dozen local TV channels throughout China and are also streamed online by PPTV. Not all games are aired by the TV channels, only a selected few as far as I understand. Most people turn to PPTV to watch La Liga games but there have been a lot of complaints about that platform from streaming speed to commentating. The biggest hurdle though for La Liga expansion in China, in my opinion is the game time. Most EPL and Bundesliga games are played before midnight Beijing time (China's only time zone) here so naturally you have more viewers. Only die-hard Barca and Real Madrid fans get up at 3:45 am in the morning to watch those later games.
