Fancy Footwork

Club Football cashes in on local soccer craving.

By MARK GODFREY

ClubFootball coaches show Chinese soccer fans how to kick staight.

There are plenty of people trying to make Chinese sport pay but few have stuck around as long as ClubFootball, a Sino-British joint venture based in Beijing. With the Chinese soccer league still in disarray after a bust-up between teams late last year over money and alleged match-fixing, the company launched a European football news services for local fans. Turfed off its grounds early last year by a real estate developer, ClubFootball has turned to more innovative income streams. A staff of 25 delivers daily bilingual headline stories from European football to subscribers’ mobile phones. Clients can also sign up for a league service and get the biggest two stories each day on the English Premiership, Italian Serie A, Spanish La Liga or German Bundesliga. Instead of a monthly fee for the headline services subscribers pay RMB0.3 per message, adding up to a weekly cost of just over RMB4 for league services and RMB 2 for messages on individual club games.

ClubFootball is a partnership between Amateur Football Holdings Limited (AFH) and Beijing Fuying Natural Technologies Limited. The CFA, BFA and Beijing Administration of Industry and Commerce license the club to undertake all amateur football related activities. As the service is Chinese and English, the firm’s founders insist that their mobile services also bring language learning benefits to its subscribers, whilst a proportion of revenues generated are allocated to building and operating amateur football facilities for communities around China. “It’s a great fit,” says ClubFootball’s general manager Keith Bradbury, a lifetime Manchester City fan. “Fans and supporters can enjoy our world class football information service whilst helping to develop grass-roots football in China. We’ve been spreading the word about the amateur game for more than three years now, and person-to-person we find it’s extremely well received. But we needed a national reach to actually begin realizing our goals.”

ClubFootball has some influential backers. The company’s launch was sponsored by Adidas and Beijing Television. Liverpool legend Ian Rush was on hand for the launch too, even joining in a local amateur match. Signed memorabilia on display at The ClubFootball Centre in Sanlitun bar district features football pennants and shirts signed by players from stars of the game like Zidane, Beckham, Raul, Kluivert and Del Piero.

The audience for European soccer is massive in China. Hundreds of millions of Chinese watched young stars like England’s Wayne Rooney and Portugal’s Christian Ronaldo emerge from last summer’s UEFA cup finals in Portugal. Beijing fans also followed the Euro 2004 action on a large-screen projector at the ClubFootball Centre, a bar and office complex in east Beijing’s Dongzhimen district. The ClubFootball Centre at the Red House Hotel, on Chunxiu Lu showed every match live, with lunchtime and evening replays throughout the tournament and free beer for anyone who could down a house “Half Yard of Ale” in one go.

Beijing’s amateur soccer scene draws all nationalities.

ClubFootball FC had previously broken new ground, developing the amateur game in China through grassroots projects and initiatives. The ClubFootball Amateur League is a weekly 11-a-side league competition played outdoors on grass at the sports grounds around Beijing. Teams of expats and locals battled for glory in the 2004 ClubFootball Summer Champions' League. Leading teams included the Vikings, Sexy FC, Joy Utd and CNC. China Today watched Sexy FC secure a solid 2-0 win over Cosmos, led by Scottish wizard Jamie O’Neill who scored both goals to put his team through to a deserved semi-final spot. O’Neill manages a cashmere processing factory on Beijing’s outskirts. Joy Utd and Sexy FC eventually battled for the top honours, with Sexy coming out on top.

ClubFootball is planning to expand its SMS text-based services, available nationally to all China Mobile network users to the China Unicom network. The content will expand to include match previews and predictions, live scores, reports and analysis. Other offerings on the cards include mobile games and daily messages from star players to their fans, as well as pictures and ring tones. Bradbury has hitched ClubFootball’s wagon to China’s mobile phone services, which are set to incorporate third (3G) and fourth generation (4G) technology such as MMS (Multimedia Message Service), WAP (Wireless Application Protocol) and IVR (Interactive Voice Response) audio in coming years. The new formats, says Bradbury, “offer exciting opportunities over the coming year and a chance to bring the fans closer to the game than ever before.”

In addition to its text messaging services, ClubFootball has also been tailoring training and match packages for secondary schools and corporations. Beijing expat kids meanwhile have been given the chance to develop their football skills with a Soccer Academy run at the International School Beijing. One-day corporate events packages feature 7-a-side tournaments and ClubFootball "Powershot" competitions, a football approach to client/customer relationship building and corporate team building, explains Bradbury. China ClubFootball is also cashing in on football tourism, offering foreign amateur teams the chance to visit Beijing for a tailor-made package of football, culture and nightlife.

ClubFootball has brought soccer to the locals too. The ClubFootball name in Chinese, Wanguo Qunxing Zuqiu Julebu translates literally as “Everybody's A Star Football Club.” It was chosen, explains Bradbury, “to communicate the idea of a national amateur-football network embracing everyone who shares our vision for amateur football and our passion for the people’s game…” The company’s earnings will be ploughed back into the local game: Funds raised are used to build new community football facilities in China. With sponsorship from Bayer, German pharmaceuticals, the "Soccer in a Box" charity programme part-organized by ClubFootball last year distributed boxes full of football gear to school teams in China's poorest provinces. As part of the programme, ClubFootball sponsored the Qingning County Primary School boy's team of Gansu Province.

Beijing’s amateur soccer scene has ballooned to fill several leagues and divisions, with expats and locals playing on dozens of teams. Beijing Athletic was crowned First Division Champion in this year’s ClubFootball Amateur Premier League, and now that With ClubFootball’s amateur Premier League has finished and top sides Beijing Wanderers and Beijing Athletic are the declared champions. ClubFootball teams will be playing friendly matches in the springing preparation for the ClubFootball Summer Champions' League which kicks off in July. The local professional scene meanwhile remains stagnant. The walkout of the Beijing Hyundai Football Team in October lanced the boil of corruption that plagues China's soccer competitions. But there’s no sign of the wounds healing. Meanwhile, Chinese soccer fans, disillusioned by murky practices on green fields, have tuned in to foreign leagues.

MARK GODFREY is an Irish journalist currently based in China