SOCCER:Chelsea's plans for world domination came a mouseclick closer to realisation yesterday with a Chinese internet tie-up that adds more than 100 million people to the club's potential fanbase. The launch of a Mandarin language website in conjunction with China's biggest portal, Sina, is part of an intensifying global contest for hearts and wallets that pits the London side against Manchester United, Real Madrid and Juventus.
It will soon be followed by the release of a Bollywood film aimed at making Stamford Bridge lovers out of India's middle-class, as well as a pre-season tour to the US by Jose Mourinho's team and an intensified Asia marketing strategy with Adidas and Samsung. With the world's biggest population and the fastest growing economy, China is seen as having huge potential by Manchester United and Real Madrid, both of which have sent teams to tour here in recent years.
Apart from lucrative friendlies every two or three years, however, few foreign clubs have made much money here because average incomes are still below £1,000 a year. Two Manchester United-themed restaurants in Chengdu closed recently because customers were not willing to pay extra for the brand.
Chelsea - who are neck and neck with Manchester United in terms of popularity, according to market research surveys - will focus their efforts on the internet, grassroots support and co-operation with the national football association.
Their new website partner, Sina, is the most powerful force in the Chinese internet, which has more than 120 million users. Sina will translate material from Chelsea's English website and add comment from a local perspective in return for a share of revenues from advertising, sponsorship, online sales and membership subscriptions. Within a year, it is expected to turn a profit.
Chelsea will also announce plans for a first-team tour of China - possibly as early as 2008 - and the hosting of the Chinese Olympic football team at the London club's training ground later this year. In association with the Asian Football Confederation, Chelsea will also expand a grassroots coaching programme from the current two cities - Qingdao and Wuhan - to 15, including Beijing and Shanghai.
Dong Lu, a leading Chinese football journalist, said Chelsea appealed to younger fans more than Manchester United or Real Madrid. "Their popularity has grown in the past two or three years because of the impressive power of their football."
Paul Smith, the club's business affairs director, said he had just been to India, which the club has identified as a potential growth market despite its reputation as a cricket-mad nation. He revealed that Chelsea would make a "cameo appearance" in an upcoming Bollywood film in which a key character is a Blues' fan.
Reports in English newspapers quoted an unnamed boardroom source last week as saying Mourinho was under pressure to get the season back on track without delay. "You've got to look where we are today," Chelsea chief executive Peter Kenyon, who was in the Chinese capital to launch the website, told reporters. "We're second in the league by six points . . . with arguably the toughest part of the season still to come.
"We qualified top of the group in the Champions League which, again, was arguably one of the toughest groups. We're in the semi-final of the (League) Cup and got through the third round of the FA Cup. So if we're overly concerned about that position, there's a lot more people who should be more concerned."
Guardian Service
:quality(70)/cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/YVIRIOZQ35EWRPZXR27KGMO6YU.png)