The sports industry may be the next growth area for China's Internet companies. With big names like Tencent and Alibaba bidding to win broadcasting rights for sports, they are changing the landscape of the industry.
Let's follow CCTV reporter to see how the internet players themselves feel about the market.
Extreme sports, the English Premier League, the NBA, and the European Champions League, you name it, their media rights in China are all falling into the pockets of the country's internet giants.
With billions of dollars spent, companies like Le Sports, Tencent, and Alibaba are showing games on the internet for free.
Yu Hang, Vice President of Le Sports said:"Media rights is a key driver to own the user. So if the users come to your platform, they could become a potential subscriber or consumer."
The price is skyrocketing in the bidding war. Even the rights for China's football league, the CSL, sold for 1.2 billion dollars, a 20-fold increase.
Yu Hang is in charge of media rights purchase for Le Sports, the largest online media rights buyer in China. Even he thinks the market is overheating.
"The market is irrational, we need to cool down to see the business model behind that, if there is not a paywall that online streaming sites count for," said Yu Hang.
In order to gain more users for the paywall, Le Sports is making bold moves to penetrate the whole value chain: by title sponsoring a major football club in Beijing, introducing fancy technologies like panoramic view in broadcasting, and producing professional programs in its own studios.
Newcomers from the Internet are changing the rules of the game, and Chinese audiences may be saying goodbye to free TV sports sooner than they imagined. But eventually, experts say, they'll pay for the better games.
Yan Qiang, a famous sports commentator in China, has founded his own Internet start-up with venture capital. He believes that the era of paid content is around the corner.
In Yan's eyes, the changing rules don't mean the traditional TV broadcasters will be squeezed out. China's sports market is big enough to accommodate all the players.
