[Gossip Board] What’s Good Without The National Football Team? Hong Kong Media: Chinese Fans Lack Interest In World Cup TV Broadcasts

Recently, news came out that FIFA has not yet negotiated broadcast rights with relevant Chinese institutions. There are still doubts about whether Chinese audiences can watch the World Cup in the United States, Canada and Mexico on TV. In response to this situation, the Hong Kong English newspaper "South China Morning Post" published an article stating that Chinese fans lack interest in the television broadcast of the World Cup in the United States, Canada and Mexico. The main reason is that the home team has no chance to participate in the game.

Here are excerpts from this article:

Chinese fans may not have the opportunity to watch the US-Canada-Mexico World Cup on TV. At the moment, FIFA has not yet reached an agreement with CCTV on the TV broadcast rights. Although there are less than five weeks left before the World Cup kicks off, there is basically no promotional content on TV stations in mainland China. This is in stark contrast to the previous two World Cups. At that time, CCTV obtained the broadcast rights early and began to intensively broadcast sponsorship advertisements a few weeks before the opening.

It is said that the price given by the broadcasting rights holder is 300 million US dollars. This figure far exceeds the psychological price expected by CCTV, which is 80 million US dollars. However, Chinese fans generally do not care whether a deal can be reached in the end. Faced with this stalemate, the vast majority of fans support CCTV's firm attitude and refuse to act as FIFA's "cash machine" by consuming public funds.

The Chinese team once again failed to enter the World Cup. In addition, due to the large time difference, most matches of this World Cup are scheduled in the early morning of Beijing time. Some fans feel that the ratings of the matches will be very low.

In our country, no one will get up in the middle of the night, open a bottle of beer, and watch the World Cup. And even if they plan to celebrate, who are they celebrating for?

In fact, there’s no need to purchase broadcast rights at all. After all, the poor performance of those national teams has completely consumed the public's enthusiasm for the World Cup.

“If my kids can’t go to the show, why should I pay sponsorship fees?”

A representative opinion exists in large numbers on the Chinese Internet. A Chinese fan joked that, frankly, rather than raising the price of broadcast rights, FIFA would be better off thinking about ways to enable China to participate in the World Cup, because doing so would be more beneficial.