Infront Renew Partnership with Chinese Basketball for 8-Years

An eight-year renewal has been agreed to ensue Infront Sports & Media remain as the exclusive global marketing partner of the China Basketball Association (CBA) and the country’s national basketball teams.

The agreement was announced by at a press conference in Beijing today by Hu, rx Jiashi, Vice President of the CBA. Infront, which has been the exclusive marketing partner of Team China since early 2006, will continue in its role until at least the end of 2018.

Infront is the first international sports marketing company to have a comprehensive, all-encompassing marketing and development agreement with a leading sport in China – at both league and national team level.

The next eight years will be important ones for the renewed partnership as Team China will be taking part in two Olympic Games, two FIBA World Championships, another
edition of the Asian Games and two Asian FIBA Championships.

Both the men’s and women’s team recently won gold at the 2010 Asian Games on home ground last November. Internationally, they are both in the top 10 of the FIBA World Ranking.

Hu, Jiashi, Vice President of the CBA, said: “In the past 5 years, as Team China Basketball’s exclusive global marketing partner, Infront has provided strong support to the development of Team China. Infront worked with CBA in many aspects, not only the teams’ marketing and promotion, but also helped the teams to develop technically by introducing top level foreign coaches, scouts and physicians to China, and organizing high-quality international friendly challenge games for Team China to better prepare for big international events.”

Philippe Blatter, President & CEO of Infront, added: “This extension of our contract is unique – no international sports marketing company has enjoyed a partnership as close and sustained as Infront’s with the CBA. We have made significant investments in China and in basketball and always said Infront was here for the long-term – and taking a long-term view would lead to the building of trust between our Chinese partners and us. We are very much looking forward to further developing our excellent relationships in this important growth market in order to deliver much added value to the basketball and its stakeholders.”

Ma Guoli, Managing Director of Infront China, commented: “The relevant question for us today is how we can support TCB throughout the upcoming eight years. We are moving to a new phase, where the CBA will be playing a bigger role in running technical development and Infront will intensify its focus on marketing, promotion and media rights sales. We will focus mainly on three aspects, the further marketing and promotion of TCB, the organisation of friendly challenge games for the teams, and the enhancement of media production and delivering of a stronger broadcast product.”