Chinese State Broadcaster CCTV Kicks Off Auction For Brazil World Cup Advertising

State broadcaster China Central Television Station "kicked off an auction on Thursday for advertising during the upcoming 2014 FIFA World Cup Brazil," according to Qiu Bo of the CHINA DAILY. Two months before the tournament, CCTV "held a fair to preheat the auction." More than 700 representatives from advertising agencies and companies nationwide "were in attendance." CCTV Sports Chief Jiang Heping said that CCTV "is the World Cup's sole media rights holder for the Chinese mainland." A CCTV statement said that many big sports-related names, including Nike, adidas and Castrol, "successfully cornered World Cup advertising slots before the end of last year." The statement said that Chinese business-to-consumer platform Tmall will spend 141M yuan ($22.8M) to sponsor the top-scorer board, and Nike will pay 46M yuan ($7.4M) "for naming rights of a program during the event" (CHINA DAILY, 4/10).