NFL Using Reality Show To Convert Chinese Into Football Fans

Taiwanese Band Stars In NFL Reality Show On CCTV

The NFL has found itself "staring longingly at blossoming international markets," and the league last year partnered with IMG to “help promote the sport in China,” according to a front-page piece by Les Carpenter of the WASHINGTON POST. There is “little interest in football in China, where the most popular sports are table tennis and badminton,” but there are “small signs of real progress.” An estimated 400,000 people in China watched the ’08 Super Bowl, and that figure “grew to 2.2 million” in ’09. It was the beginning of the decade when the NFL “seriously considered China as a potential market,” opening an office in Beijing and making plans for an exhibition game in the city. While working on the exhibition game, NFL officials "noticed that young Chinese in the country’s biggest cities had an obsession with American culture.” NFL Dir of Int’l Media Kevin Chang said that they discussed “every concept they could imagine before settling on the idea of a reality TV show” in China. The show, titled “NFL Blitz,” will run on CCTV through the Super Bowl. The 16 episodes that have been filmed “follow silly plot lines” that have members of Taiwanese band Mayday doing things like going to the NFL’s N.Y. HQs looking for Super Bowl tickets and instead “landing in the office’s cafeteria taking on a cooking challenge.” The intent of the show is to produce a “campy, lighthearted program that will convince Chinese children that if they want to learn the essence of America, they must come to understand American football” (WASHINGTON POST, 9/13).