By Li Zhenyu, People' Daily, Internet Center
BEIJING, March 21 (Xinhuanet) -- While fight fans in the Western hemisphere are enjoying the thrill of mixed martial arts (MMA), those in the East can enjoy their Chinese equivalent – the Wushu Masters Association (WMA).
After a debatable inaugural showing in 2009, the latest installment of China's professional kung fu championship was put on the Big Screen in CCTV prime time February 22, 2011.
Filling the void
Like the Ultimate Fighting Championship, which has exploded in popularity in North America over the past several years, the Kung Fu championship pits combatants in various wushu disciplines on leitai, an elevated fighting arena without ropes that first appeared in China during the Song Dynasty (960-1279). The main objective of the championship is to knock your opponent off the platform under a strict set of rules.
However, unlike its Western counterpart, which follows the doctrine of "business first and entertainment second," the Chinese martial arts championship seems to be on a mission to bring more cultural flavor to the big stage.
Kung fu, brimming with ancient wisdom and millennia of tradition that are otherwise unavailable in other parts of the world, is a gem of Chinese culture. There is a saying that one cannot get a deeper understanding of China without comprehending wushu.
Kung fu has put down its roots in Chinese culture. According to Gao Xiaojun, president of the Chinese Wushu Association, in China, there are 130 million people practicing wushu and 121 colleges and universities with wushu majors, along with over 10,000 privately owned wushu schools. The total number of wushu students has reached 500,000. The influence of kung fu literature and movies is profound and far-reaching. Popular kung fu novelists are household names in China and the nation is a major source of kung fu movies on the global map.
Although the local art has a large following, wushu has never been a mainstream sport in China, whereas Western sports such as soccer, basketball and tennis have dominated the domestic market.
Some insiders agree that the sorry state of Chinese martial arts was partly due to the industry's low level of commercialization and lack of a platform for wushu events. For several decades, there have hardly ever been any professionally managed kung fu league matches.
The WMA aims to fill the void in the traditional art's market, with a brand new business model and a series of modern sports business concepts.
Brand new model
"WMA is the first professional sports league in China with a complete industrial chain," says Ruan Wei, managing director of CCTV Sports Entertainment Co Ltd, the company that runs WMA.
Although China adopted the notion of professional sports from the West and brought in the league system just over 20 years ago, a professional sport that is built entirely upon the system of the free market economy has yet to come into existence. China's sports federations that own their respective sports leagues, such as the Chinese Super League (CSL) and Chinese Basketball Association (CBA), are all State-owned.
"For the industry to reach its full potential, Chinese sport must free itself from the centrally planned regime and be centered around independent, professional sports leagues and also develop its own industrial chain," Chen Shaofeng, director of the Sports Industry Research Center of China, told the Global Times.
The WMA brings a unique business model to the table in that the league is owned by CCTV and run by its affiliate company, an entity that is independent from the General Administration of Sport. CCTV holds all the privileges, from hosting rights to intellectual property. The league owner and its clubs are also equal entities, belonging to a community of interest, rather than of administrative relations.
Clubs possess the athletes under contracts and focus on talent selection and cultivation in order to produce the best fighters for the league. Some clubs aim to build their own wushu schools, with the purpose of expanding their talent pool as well as making money off it.
"Many parents and students applied to attend our school because of the WMA," one club owner said. "We'll set up our movie studio, and incorporate the club, school, and studio to forge an industrial chain."
"In terms of its business model, the WMA is a step forward," Chen commented. "The WMA is actually 'a Chinese man in a Western costume.'"
Conversely, looking at the big picture, China's entire sports community is a Westerner dressed in a Chinese outfit.
To date, most of the best sports programs on CCTV have come from overseas, such as NBA games, which the network has been airing for more than 20 years.
"No sports fans in any other countries are as starved as those in China, in the sense that they depend so much on other countries for sports content," Ruan said.
According to Jiang Heping, director of CCTV Sports, 80 percent of the first run on CCTV's sports channel, which accounts for over 80 percent of the audience market, relies on copyright purchases, and domestic events take up only a tiny proportion. More than half of the channel's budget is spent on purchasing copyrights of overseas events every year.
"China abounds in cultural resources," said Chen. "What the nation should import is business models, not cultures, in the way that the WMA does."
(Source:en.huanqiu.com/sports)
