Include ping pong and badminton. Obviously soccer and basketball as well.
SK is going to be dead for 30 years before the NFL gets anything resembling a foothold in China. This is about making money NOW, not developing a brand that he will never live to see developed.
The NBA has been marketing into China since the 80's and it didn't take off until YMing played in the NBA. If they want to market and grow in China playing
ONE GAME A YEAR in a nation that large with that many people it will take........oh, I dunno..........decades.
MLB didn't get eyeballs and interest in Japan and Asia until some of their players came here to play.
Kroenke is doing this
for the money. Just like when he signed to play 3 straight years in London.
If the NFL wants to penetrate foreign markets they need star power ASAP. See NFLE. It didn't work (in large part) because it was almost all Americans and nobody native to any of the nations those teams were located in made it to the NFL.
Also, assuming that because there are nearly 1.4 billion people in that nation that they will quickly embrace a sport totally different than anything they have been used too in a big fat hurry is a huge marketing blunder. Our American economy would be (and is) a target of any international marketers dream.
Does that mean we will embrace Sumo wrestling, badminton, cricket or anything else? What about Formula 1? One of the most popular sports in the world that's been around forever........yet we here in the USA don't care that much.
