Sports Big Business No. 2859, welcome to pay attention to the leading sports industry information platform
Wen | Zhang Bing
Sports big business reporter
In the cage of the Singapore Indoor Stadium, two MMA boxers carefully probe each other.
Suddenly, Tang Kai, a Chinese player wearing black and red shorts, hit his opponent in the face with a swift straight punch, followed by another punch that hit the root of his opponent's ear, and South Korea's Kim Chiong fell to the ground. Immediately afterward, Tang Kai did not give his opponent any chance, and pounced on it and punched continuously. The referee then terminated the match and declared Tang Kai a one-legged KO win.
The match, which took place on March 26, was one of the 10th anniversary of "ONE:X", and only 2 minutes and 07 seconds passed from the start of the game to the final victory. As the only Chinese player to participate, Tang Kai won the full house with his outstanding performance, jumping from fourth to first in the world rankings, and received a $50,000 bonus awarded by ONE Championship CEO Chatry Xiyoutang.
In the post-match interview, "KO male god" Tang Kai was full of ambition and boldly said that he "wants the right to challenge the world championship". At this moment, the Chinese male boxer is only one victory away from the one championship gold belt. ONE Championship, an IP of a fighting event originating from Singapore, is also becoming more and more well known.
Ten years of hard work Unicorns in the field of fighting are on the rise
In fact, similar to Singapore's background, the ONE Championship has been a mission since its birth in 2011 to represent Asian martial arts and compete with mainstream Western sporting events. In the view of the CEO of the event, the mainstream sports in the world today have basically been monopolized by the West, but it will be an exception in the field of martial arts, because Asia has thousands of years of martial arts culture, which determines that Asia can cultivate world-class events in the field of fighting and fighting.
Founder and CEO of ONE Championship Saiyudo
Up to now, ONE Championship has become the largest sports media company in Asia, with broadcast coverage in more than 150 countries around the world, a total of 14,053 hours of TV broadcast time and 47 billion social media exposures. According to the data report released by Nielsen, the ratings and interaction rate of the ONE Championship games ranked among the top ten sports events in the world, and together with other events such as the NBA and the NFL, it became the most popular event IP in the world.
There is no doubt that ONE has played a positive role in expanding the martial arts market, which can increase the attention and influence of martial arts, mixed martial arts and other projects. At the same time, it is needless to say that under the influence of the global epidemic, any event has been greatly affected, and the fighting events that need to be set off by the fiery atmosphere of the scene are no exception. One not only carried through this cold winter, but also stockpiled more sufficient "ammunition" in the environment that has gradually opened up overseas.
On January 5, 2022, ONE officially announced the completion of a new round of financing of $150 million, led by Guggenheim Global Asset Management and the Qatar Investment Authority, which means that the ONE Championship will continue to increase the coverage and impact of its sporting events in the future.
According to statistics, the total financing scale of the ONE Championship so far has approached 500 million US dollars. With the official completion of a new round of financing, a unicorn in the field of martial arts was born. Looking back at the financing road of the ONE Championship, there are many internationally renowned investment institutions such as Temasek, Sequoia, Guggenheim, Qatar Investment Authority and other internationally renowned investment institutions. For the Chinese market, which has great development potential, ONE is also ready.
A number of layouts ONE Championships continue to exert efforts in China
In 2014, the ONE Championship held its first competition in China, which was widely praised by the industry. Subsequently, in 2015-2019, the ONE Championship will land in China no less than two large-scale events every year. Although no tournaments have landed since the epidemic, from other perspectives, ONE's growth in China can be described as a step by step: according to statistics, since the establishment of the China office in 2016, the number of Chinese signings in the ONE Championship has increased from 4 to 67, and more than 50 Chinese boxing gyms have reached cooperative relations.
ONE Championship China's performance on social media has also been excellent, from the initial 75 million video views to the current 7.5 billion, an increase of 100 times. How did ONE do it all in just a few years? Recently, Sports Big Business and Li Ying, President of ONE Championship China, had an in-depth dialogue. And she unveiled several major layouts of the ONE Championship in China in recent years.
Li Ying, President of ONE Championship China
According to Li Ying, first of all, at the level of event operation, ONE attaches great importance to the construction of the youth training system, and in 2019, it opened the local selection competition "Journey to Find Britain" in China, which has continued to this day, laying a talent foundation for the development of Chinese martial arts. In the follow-up signal production, ONE has cooperated with media platforms such as Five Star Sports, Beijing Winter Olympic Documentary Channel, iQiyi, and Douyin to actively explore the live studio model of sports + entertainment and lead the event production standards.
Many people have the impression that MMA events can appear a bit bloody and violent, so in a huge emerging market like China, ONE has also done a lot of homework in leading the safety of the event. According to reports, people-oriented is one of the guidelines of the ONE Championship, and ensuring the safety of athletes is the primary task of the event. At the same time, ONE will introduce the safety standards of international events into Chinese local competitions, strictly check the athletes' pre-game physical examination, weighing rules, post-game physical examination and other links, and actively promote the international advanced concept.
At the business development level, ONE is even more fruitful. Since entering China, ONE has joined hands with first-line consumer brands including Xiaomi, Li Ning, Unity Lubricants, Hugo Boss, Daily Black Qiao and other first-line consumer brands to unite pan-sports crowds through cross-border marketing and empower the brand in both directions. Taking Li Ning's joint release as an example, Li Ning and the ONE Championship tournament released a joint model in 2021 and became the "Sa! The chief costume partner of Force Punch Open. Through the broadcast and publicity of the program, it conveys the oriental culture and sportsmanship of ONE and Li Ning based on the common Asian brand, and the strong cooperation between the international event IP and the national tide brand has made a model for the cross-border cooperation of the brand.
In fact, if there is one more important point that Li Ying did not mention, it is her joining the ONE Championship itself. In August 2021, Li Ying officially became the president of ONE China, becoming the first Chinese executive in the ONE Championship. Prior to joining the ONE Championship, Li Ying served as president of Huaxia Happiness Cultural and Creative Investment Service Company, including key positions in global leaders such as Disney and the NBA. It can be said that the above beautiful combination punches she played successively after joining ONE made the development prospects of THE ONE Championship in the Chinese market difficult to estimate.
In the next decade, we will continue to deepen our efforts in the Chinese market
As we all know, any professional sport can be regarded as a pyramid, with the spire of the dazzling star athletes and the tower base of hundreds of millions of fans and grassroots participants. From this point of view, the ONE Championship undoubtedly has great potential for development in China.
At the level of star players, Xiong Jingnan under ONE is currently the first and only mixed martial arts world champion in China, and also the women's world champion who has defended the most times in the ONE Championship. Tang Kai, who played his fist in the 10th anniversary tournament, is China's first world-ranked male mixed martial arts player, with only one victory left to become a true world champion. In addition, Zhang Peimian, Xie Wei, Miao Litao and others also used their Chinese kung fu background to play a world in ONE's cage.
Mixed martial arts world champion Xiong Jingnan
Needless to say, traditional martial arts sports have always been China's cultural treasures. In the Chinese sports market, with the diversified demand for sports, martial arts has become one of the sports with the strongest mass base and the fastest growth, second only to the growth of the marathon. According to the data, as of 2022, in China, the number of fans of martial arts exceeds 200 million, and more than 1/3 of the gyms offer fighting courses, of which 65% of the fitness practitioners' preferred fitness courses are fighting and fighting, which has a trend of popularization.
The development and promotion of martial arts in China is also inseparable from the joint efforts of the government, enterprises and events. Under the background that "Healthy China" has been included in the "14th Five-Year Plan", while shaping a strong physique, the martial arts sport can reshape the character from the inside to the outside, so that participants can be more confident, tenacious, brave and self-disciplined, and have become a sports project for primary and secondary school campuses in many places.
It is foreseeable that with the deepening layout over the years, ONE is expected to enter a new development cycle in China. The starting point of this cycle may be the moment when Tang Kai reached the top of the world championship, or the first game of ONE landing in China in the post-epidemic era. After all, for human beings, the age of 10 has just left the childhood stage and begun to enter the rapid development of adolescence. For an event IP, the most beautiful years have just begun.
Note: The images used in this article are from the Internet