Around the world with IMG: a region-by-region guide

0:03Hello, and welcome to another episode of Around the World with IMG, a region by region guide here on the Leaders Worth Knowing podcast. My name is James Emmett. I'm the Editorial Director at Leaders. And with me in the IMG co-hosting chair over there in the Leaders studio here is Josh Humbler, the VP of Strategy and Growth at IMG. Josh, how are you doing? Good. Thank you, James. Thanks for having me. No problem at all. Josh, welcome to the studio here. We had your colleague Hilary Mandel in that chair not so long ago, and we will have someone else joining us for the next episode in this series.

0:50But the point of this episode and this series in general is to sort of give a region by region guide to how sports business is currently being done. And IMG, obviously the perfect organization through which to look at that because of the historic and current tentacles that you guys have across the sports business world. Today's episode is focused on APAC, which is a vast region, obviously, with many differences within it. But Josh, your role, give us a little flavour of what you do at IMG. Yeah, sure. So I oversee the strategy team globally from our London HQ, but that means partnering with our executives in various parts of the world.

1:48We have 30 offices across the globe of various sort of nature. But the role of the strategy team in that context is effectively to act as a growth engine for initiatives for rights holders, broadcasters, investors across the world of sport. A little bit later on, we're going to be hearing from a couple of Chinese-based, China-based colleagues of yours. Elaine Cao, who's a VP of China for IMG and focuses on media, and Rufio Zhu, who's VP Digital Social, are going to be joining us on the line from Shanghai. we will have a conversation focused on China specifically. It's one of the most interesting, unique markets in the region.

2:37But Josh, I felt it probably be useful for you and me to chat a little bit before that about APAC more generally and how IMG views the development of APAC. You're based here in the UK, right? Correct. When you, in the strategy team at IMG, look at APAC, what do you think? How do you view that market? How do you divide it up? Where are your sort of markets of emphasis? Yeah, give us the overall view of APAC. Yeah, I guess if I start with dividing it up, there's so much nuance, but to try and aggregate it, I think generally speaking, there's a set of relatively common markets in North Asia, South Asia.

3:24And then we tend to look at the Australia, New Zealand region as distinct again from that. And then you've got India, which is somewhat different again. So that's probably the way we look at it. In terms of our emphasis, that's quite variable based on sport. So even in those four or so regions I've set out within APAC there, the focus on different sports is very different in different parts of that. So there's always a conversation for us around sort of marrying up market and sports and then the broadcaster and brand interest that tends to follow those things. And the final piece I would say, particularly in APAC, is athlete.

4:14The relevance that you see of how brand and broadcaster investment swings based on individual athletes in international competition is very significant in that part of the world. Okay. And forgive me for making a judgment, Josh, but you sound like you might be from APAC. I am. I am. Very, very proud Australian living in London. Very much looking forward to the Ashes later on in the Australian summer. I'm looking forward to it a bit less, but there we go. You're from Brisbane, right? Brisbane's home. Very good. And Australia as a market, I guess Australia, when you look at it in terms of its position in APAC, it's almost as unique as China, right?

4:59It's a very distinct sport, almost self-contained sports market, but particularly with Brisbane confirmed as a host of the Summer Olympics, it feels to me like there is a concerted effort with Brisbane Olympics, with the work of the Australian Open Tennis. There's an internationalization effort going on with sport in Australia. Give us your view on how you've seen that market develop recently and what's exciting you about Australia from a business perspective? Yeah, I think from a major event perspective, there's probably two sides to that story. In terms of interest in Australia, the state governments and federal government in particular are very keen to attract international events to that part of the world.

5:52I think also from a rights holder perspective, Australia has developed a reputation now of putting on great major events. And if you think of the major events there recently, the FIFA Women's World Cup, we've got a rugby world cup coming up in 27 there. It is somewhat of a safe pair of hands when you take a major event to the Australian market, you kind of know it's going to go well and it will be well supported. The other important part just in terms of look and feel on TV is Australia is blessed with great stadiums that work with a lot of different varieties of sports. So it leads itself to a very appealing product for broadcasters and brands.

6:39I think what we've seen commercially recently in Australia is something of a rebound. Australia is a market where for legislative purposes, a lot of rights are split free to air and pay TV. We've obviously seen significant investment from DAZN in that part of the world buying the Foxtel Group, but the advertising market has been quite challenged in recent times and we're starting to see some positive signs on that. So the big watch for that in terms of market progress will be the NRL rights, which come to market perhaps now, perhaps in the early part of next year. There's a lot of discussion around that, but I think that will be a strong signal as to the market.

7:21Give us a sense of how IMG approaches doing business in that region, the nuances that you have in terms of local expertise in market. Where are the IMG offices, for example? We have offices right across the region. And within that, there will be a different set of executives in those offices based on what our relationships are in the market or what we're trying to build in the market. So if I think through specific offices, we've got our Australian HQ in Sydney, we've got a strong base in Singapore, we've got our colleagues that will join from Shanghai, and then we go to Japan, Korea, India, and one or two others in the region.

8:08So it's quite a significant presence. That will be a mix of commercial executives dealing with broadcasters and rights holders, digital executives, where we've got a significant on the ground presence through what was Mailman, what will be IMG Digital. So yeah, quite a broad presence across the region. When we get Elaine and Rufio on, we'll dig into the nuances of the Chinese market and we'll focus on the very specific challenges inherent in that market and also ask them to point to some sort of recent wins. I'd like to give that question to you first but looking at that whole APAC region what would you say first of all can you point to a couple of wins sort of big bits of sports business success that IMG has had a hand in or not um in recent years uh and also like when you think about APAC Is there something that, you know, that gnaws away at you, a challenge that of a way of doing business that is just particularly difficult?

9:22Yeah, on the wins front, I think Football Australia have been a significant client of ours and a growing client where we've really lent in and been able to unlock the value for them off the back of the performance of the Matildas and thinking quite creatively around what the fans want in that market. I think it's a record number of sellouts for the Matildas in the Australian market consecutively post the World Cup. That generates brand interest, it generates broadcast interest, and we were quite creative in the manner in which we packaged the latest round of Football Australia broadcast rights to try and secure a better outcome for Football Australia, which we were very successful in doing.

10:07So that's a significant one. And I think if you think about some some broader wins beyond that uh the the women's golf and the way that we are supporting women's golf in in that part of the world in uh japan we've been able to secure a very significant uptick in in the the broadcaster investment there we have through our events operations teams the the live event support for uh the the market events that the lpga operate in in japan and career. So the continuing investment we see in women's golf is significant in that part of the world. And then in terms of a particular chat, when you look at that region, a headache that you have?

10:52Yeah, it's quite a mixed bag on the broadcast front at the moment. There are some markets that are going very well and you're seeing very good results from, but there's other markets that are concentrating their way to one or two buyers, which is problematic if you're a rights holder or if you're a commercial engine as we are in the region trying to generate and create tension and value around a set of rights. We're seeing rights holders as a result have to think a little bit more creatively to unlock value there. But we're in a period of time where in certain markets, particularly I'd say in South Asia, where those markets are concentrating down, there is definite interest from the streaming platforms and the like to enter over the medium term.

11:46There's just a little bit of a disjointedness with respect to the timing of these things that we're not quite seeing the downtrodden nature of the broadcast market be supported by the uptick in the streaming market just yet. So that's something that we're observing with interest, but it's a confronting challenge to try and do business in that part. So in general, a bit less competition sort of market by market in media rights. Yeah. Is there a particularly hot market at the moment somewhere where, you know, the big international rights holders, you would point them towards for like, well, there is growth there in media or sponsorship or something like that?

12:30Yeah, I think generally markets get hot when you deal with new players coming into the space. I'd say Thailand is an interesting one in that context. There has been some shifts in some of the significant rights packages in that market. I think it's not quite at that stage of heat, but Australia is an interesting one. There's a lot of observation, conjecture around the presence of DAZN coming into that market and what that might mean and what their ambitions might be for the Foxtel group of assets. So they're the two I would point to that are going well for rights holders, generally speaking, and have a bit of uncertainty in them and and uncertainty can be a pathway to unlock value yeah um we're gonna bring your um chinese colleagues in very shortly and i i wanted to before we do that turn your attention to china as a market i think it's one of the most fascinating uh it was one of the most fascinating countries in the world in general but particularly when it comes to business and sort of media business, I think the particular environment in which Chinese organizations operate, the restrictions that they have through censorship and just the way of doing business there, give the sort of guardrails for this immense innovation and creativity.

14:02Like there's the restrictions sort of breed something really interesting. And it's always been a market that you would look to for kind of technological innovation and kind of UGC and doing a lot with a little in terms of how media is produced and distributed there, particularly when it comes to the work of international rights holders where their content, their live product is not on in a favorable kind of time window. And I'm always interested in chatting with folks in the sports industry in China. What's your take on China, Josh? How involved are you in that market and what gets you going about Chinese sports market?

14:52Yeah, I think we're increasingly excited about it as a market. It's been a challenging market over the last few years. I think you've just asked me about challenges. And if I sat here two or three years ago, I would say there's a lot of uncertainty around how particularly rights holders from outside China should act in that market. I think we're starting to see more energy from a government level, but then importantly from a digital platform and a brand level as well there, which excites us. I think the other interesting component is the numbers always look big, but how you convert those numbers into value of some sort is always challenging to work through.

15:39And we're seeing a lot more interest from other APAC countries to try and coordinate, cooperate with entities in China as a means to try and unlock that value. So whether that is taking their content there, whether that is activating more of a digital presence there in the first instance to cultivate fandom that might well turn into live events or the like further down the line. But I'd say generally speaking as a business, we're pretty excited and we think the arrow is pointing up with respect to China. Could you give me an example there of what you're talking about in terms of sort of regional entities trying to activate China as a market?

16:19Yeah. So a client that we have in the Saudi Pro League, they are certainly looking at how they grow their product internationally and where they have common ground through relations and the common ground there is both being members of the AFC that they can seek to take live events there and potentially unlock value around that. So there's a push to play live matches in the Chinese market and therefore to try and realize value in that way. And that's often a question rights holders struggle with across the globe is, what do I do first? Do I build it and they will come in terms of live events? Or do I sort of warm the market up through digital activity and other means?

17:06And then once I think I've got enough fandom there, then I go. So that's something that we help rights holders with a lot and China's a market that we're seeing certainly increasing interest in that right now. Right, Josh Humbler. It's time to see if we can dial in Shanghai. Give us a moment. Sure. I'm delighted to be joined now as BUILD, Josh, by your colleagues over in APAC. coming in live from Shanghai. We've got Elaine Cao and Rufio Zhu. How are you doing, guys? Good. Doing great. Very excited to join this one. Good. Well, welcome. Thank you. Thank you for being here. Technical question. How easy is it to join an international sort of podcast recording like this from China?

17:57Are you using sort of technical wizardry? It's actually very easy. We just click the link, see the password, join in. Easy and talk. Great, great. No sort of VPNs and all of that sort of stuff. It's a very safe country. Don't worry about that. Okay, good. Good for you. Right, let's work out who we're talking to here. Elaine, if we start with you, please could you introduce yourself and give us a sense of your role and responsibilities at IMG? Yeah, sure. So hello, everybody. Nice to be here. And my name is Elaine Tao. I'm based in Shanghai, China. So my responsibility is mostly like oversee the whole IMG media business within China, including the distribution and like the production as well as sometimes like a BD related to like events and the sponsorship sales.

18:55Okay, great. And how long have you been with the business, Elaine? Wow, 22 years. Oh, wow. Okay. A veteran. We're talking to a veteran. Great. And Rufio, how about you? So, yeah, similar to Elaine, we're based in Shanghai. We look after the China and the wider the APAC business for the IMG digital part of the business here. You know, we have about 120, 130 full-time staff in China and the region, mainly across the digital services for different price holders in this region. And yeah, very excited to join this one. Thanks again for being with us. Rufio, you came up through the sort of mailman side of the business.

19:37Is that still a sort of active brand within the IMG world? or is it all img digital now so that's a great question you ask um so actually the plan for this is we're gonna retire the brand actually on the next week wednesday next week okay so that's in the past when this goes out that'll be a few that'll be a few weeks ago uh well goodbye and thank you to mailman uh and welcome img digital in china um folks uh we talked about it here in the studio with Josh. Obviously, the term APAC covers such a vast quantity of people, of markets, of territories, of different cultures, of different ways of doing business.

20:22You two are both based in China, but I imagine your purview is sort of slightly wider than just the Chinese territory. Elaine, again, coming to you first, what do you, sitting there in Shanghai and covering predominantly the media side of the IMG business, what markets are you particularly looking at? So I actually only focus on China. But, you know, the China have very multiple companies. They are like going export. So, for example, China Mobile, they also have some infrastructure in Hong Kong. and like CCTV, they do have a local cable channel who access that in Macau. So sometimes my responsibility also will accept and then look after Hong Kong and Macau, two territories.

21:16Yeah, okay. And Rufio, what about you? What are you looking at territory-wise? Predominantly used to be China and now I think I will gradually look at the APAC regions as well with our changing to, you know, being grandly part of IMG. Okay, great. And give us a sense of what the biggest story is right now where you are. I mean, it filters through to us over here in Europe in dribs and drabs according to what's interesting to us, I would suggest. I've seen that there's, you know, NBA basketball going on in Macau at the moment. Obviously, there's always a lot of hype around basketball in China. But Elaine, as far as you're concerned, what is the biggest sports industry story right now in China?

22:02Recently, I think it's an NBA's venue with Migu with a nine-figure deal. That's quite big recently. Okay. Yeah. And what about you, Rufio? What are you sort of excited about at the moment that's a big story where you are? I would say, like, so I think if you look at, like, September, October, it's actually big sports seasons in China. The NBA Macau Games is huge. Like, honestly, everyone being there has talked so positive about the overall experience, how they be there, how NBA hosted, how they actually bring returns to their brands and that the game is hosted. So that's definitely a massive win in this region.

22:44but also on top of that I think it's actually China tennis season for the last two months as well so this year we actually have about 14 different events in China which is five more than last year and we definitely more of tennis growing in this part of the world golf is also happening during this part of the time so we see a lot of different things happening and that's very intriguing because I think one of the background stories there's a COVID there's a lockdown and now we see sports really coming back. Super, I mean, for brands, for the rice holders, it's definitely the timing is coming back to this part of the world.

23:23Yeah, yeah, for sure. And you mentioned tennis there, Rufio. It seems to me that China's been strong in tennis, particularly women's tennis, for quite a number of years now, but there certainly seems to be this resurgence. You know, it's coming strong again, having sort of had a little dip in enthusiasm and investment. Aline, from the media side, how are you seeing China's involvement in the tennis world sort of ramping up at the moment? Yeah, okay. So let's start from like WTA. So because of the women's tennis player, their performance is quite well and rising. So WTA actually, they extended their footprint in China on the media side, I mean, because they used to be one exclusive license holder, which is ITE.

24:22Then now they're extending to Yoku and Migu as well as Tencent. They have three non-exclusive digital broadcasters. So I think this is one sign of like the women's tennis is really getting more and more popular, especially like as Rufio mentioned, like during the China Open Beijing. So Miss Jen played for the first round and everybody is very excited. So then ATP and we also have Yoku, who is the exclusive digital broadcaster there. And we also have like Wimbledon broadcasted by Tencent and the USTA broadcasted by Migu. And the other two Grand Slams are broadcasting by ITE. So it's quite diversified.

25:15So that means we do have a very big space for the tennis. And Rufio, from your perspective, working on the digital side, it certainly used to be that rights holders, the international rights holders going into the Chinese market would be very impressed by the big numbers that media organizations could reach in China, but not necessarily be quite so impressed with the amount of money that they're able to drive back through those agreements. how are you seeing the kind of media environment uh evolving uh in china at the moment i would say like i think from as as you mentioned right like there's a more and more players is coming in to this tennis world and the continuous investment from all these rice holders including the grand slams including the atp wta's i think they're coming to see a bit of uh they come to see the results out of it.

26:18With the rapid growth of the women's tennis, we see more and more women's tennis players doing really good on different competitions. Like Li Na, she has her glory years, and Zheng Qinwen, she's doing great now. So we believe the fandom of the tennis in China, the more and more consumers' audience will come to follow the sports, which in return, the brands will have more attention, the media platforms will be more willing to invest in. So, like, for example, you will see there's a Chinese liquor brand that has sponsored Australia Open called the Lu Zhou Laojiao, which they have been there. Unfortunately, they got an impact by the COVID years, but I think their strategy has been shown a dedicated strategy.

27:05And then Hire, one of the home appliance brands, they actually sponsored a few Grand Slams, I think, if I'm correct, French Open has been one. And we will see more and more brands live on the globe abroad for this. So, yeah, I would say like the rights holder of attendance, their investment will continue to see the return eventually. And this market definitely shouldn't miss. I think the other bit I'd add there to your question, James, is rights holders now interpret how to convert eyeballs to money in China better than they have previously. I think very simplistically, the start was, well, eyeballs equal money.

27:44And now it's not that. It's, to Rufio's point there, it might not be a media deal as it was back in the day, but it's now a targeted sponsorship program or targeted digital campaigns and these sorts of things. So that sort of interpretation layer that has developed and matured over time has meant that rights holders can unlock more value. Yeah. And Josh, from your perspective, looking at the region as a whole, not necessarily being in the weeds day to day on the Chinese business and looking at it from a sort of overall macro strategic view, what do you see as the most exciting kind of story or development in China at the moment?

28:23I think Elaine touched on a little bit before is we're starting to see it open back up again for want of a better phrase. And I think perhaps part of the role that Elaine plays in our business as well is when there are interests from other rights holders who want to enter the Chinese market, Elaine's the person they pick up the phone to and we have that connectivity across our group. But the openness of an entity like the Saudi Pro League looking to cooperate more with China and how they can take matches there and these sorts of things. So it's thinking of China once again as a market for international growth ambitions where for the past probably four or five years, that's been a challenging market.

29:08So we're pretty excited to see how that develops over the next period of time. Interested in all of your views, actually, on who the dominant forces are in the Chinese sports market today. Again, maybe 10, 15, 20 years ago, if you're an international rights holder looking at the Chinese market, you obviously had to have a route to CCTV somehow. how uh but i wonder uh particularly from you folks who are in shanghai right now who do you need to know to do sports business in china apart from img of course elaine um if we if we come to you first on that yeah okay um i think there are multiple dimensions to answer this question so So, for example, the political dimension, because if, I mean, not only on the media, from the media perspective.

30:01So you need to deal with local associations when you want to launch an event in China, for example, like a football event with CFA, snooker events with CBSA. And the international sports events media rights also needed to be submitted to the filing process in front of the soft, which is the bureau responsible for the video and audio content censorship. So if only on the media dimension, I think our model usually, if we look at the strategy when we recommend it to the federations or any IP want to access into China, first of all, CCTV for sure. It's still the amount of money placed because they are under the government's umbrella, as well as all the digital platforms.

30:55So the digital landscape in China is very fragmented. And every digital platform, they have their own nature. They have their own content strategy, as well as they have their exposure, especially on some social media and UGC platforms like Douyin, TikTok, and Kuaishou, and Bilibili. So all the other UGC and social media platforms are also a very, very important touch. I think Rufio can be explained more because the mailman, let's say IMG Digital, always do lots of connections with them on the amplified IPs influence in China. Rufio, do you want to pick that up then? Yeah. So I would say, as Lin mentioned, the China digital platform, they are fragmented, but also in a different term, they are quite unique.

31:46So we actually see, for example, Douyin, the TikTok in China, they have actually obtained their media rights for the World Cup of Qatar and the Paris Olympics. They have done very well in terms of broadcasting the game, live streaming the games, showing to the audience they're getting great numbers, great returns in terms of commercial as well. That's a very strong case study. So they are not just in terms of common sense social media platform to providing content and group followers. they're actually doing more beyond it. So that's something we have all seen and we keep closely working with them to see how we bring value to the right soldiers in this part of the world.

32:26So, I mean, like to answer the overall question, James, you just said, I think working with local platforms is definitely one in terms of we want to have a strong digital presence or success story in China. Like NBA has been a good one. They've done a lot with local platforms. they announced a partnership with Weibo in Macau game. They have good relations with QuaiShow, they work with QuaiShow, work with multiple different platforms on that. So yeah, I think local platforms are also one to look at. And Elaine, I just want to go back to what you mentioned in response to that question about the importance of having good government relations or at least an understanding of how sort of government control works in China.