Would the Rocket fan-base decrease if Yao was traded?

Yao huge happy dunk time no rockets yao score 50!

 

Most stupid ass!

 

I followed the Rox after they traded the 2 time mvp moses, greatest player in rox history in hakeem, so why wouldn't i support the rox because they traded an above avg center? If they got a good deal for him, i couldn't care less.

 

for those who live in Houston, it is easy for u to call youself a all time Rockets fan. I am in Virginia where doesn't have any professional sports leagues.
What makes me to be a fan of a NBA team? through a good bball player.
for baseketball fans live in China, of course many of them are Jordan or Kobe's fans, but what team will be easy for them to follow?? I don't think it is either a difficult choice for them or a hard fact for u to swallow. so why not leave them along.

back to the thread, my answer is YES absolutely.

 

I'll be here.

 

How many Chinese fans do we have on this board? 20,000? How many fans have said that? I remember 1 or 2 persons have said that in 5 years, and they could well be the same persons with different monikers. Why would you use what one single person has said and phrase it like it is the general opinion shared by 1 million people? And how do you know that the person who said that is really a Yao's fan or really from China? I can tell you for sure that some morons would make up a name like "YaoMingTheBest" OR "WithYao", then say something r****ded to make the real Yao's fans look bad. You must be one of the simple-minded people who are easy to be deceived by such dumb trick.

 

Thats what i'm saying. The rox are my number 1 sports team followed by the titans,astros,texans. I support those teams no matter what. I didn't like it when moon was let go, dream traded and those was great players. Yao isnt a great player, just a good one.

 

Oh, you hate them because of their poor English. I see. So do you hate yourself too?

My English is not good either. But I will still try to help you out.

"Man, I am Asian and I love Yao, but I hate YOFs. I hate them because of their bad English, but I hate them even more because they don't care if the team win or lose. They only care about Yao's stat.

And to those people that think I am a TOF, NO I AM NOT. I like both Yao and Tmac equally. But if they can't take my team to the promise land then they should get the hell out of my town!"

 

Do you have documentation to support your suggestion that the Rockets have huge media and sponsorship revenue from China?

I have been able to find articles about NBA contract & marketing activities, but haven't found anything yet on contracts that the Houston Rockets are the sole - primary beneficiary.

NBA charges East

Beijing - While China increasingly is considered an economic threat to the US, the National Basketball Association (NBA) is not seeing an opponent in the world's most populous nation, but a growth opportunity.

Though China's claim of having 300 million basketball players - as much as the entire population of the US - seems quite exaggerated, no one doubts that the sport is becoming increasingly popular in the communist country.

Yao Ming, the Houston Rockets star from Shanghai has helped to spread NBA basketball into every corner of China with his image dominating billboards, soft drinks and other products all over the country.

Of 15- to 24 year-olds in China, with a population of 1.3 billion, 83 per cent consider themselves NBA fans, a huge advertisement base for all sorts for consumer products.

The growing popularity of basketball is also evident in the fact that already 20 per cent of traffic to the website NBA.com, which offers a Mandarin version, is from China.

Games are broadcast on China's 51 TV stations, and if the viewers want to sport a team's colours NBA merchandise is available to fans in more than 50,000 locations, according to the league.

The league maintains marketing partnerships in China with 20 of the world's leading brands.

To push even further into the Chinese market the NBA has set up a Chinese subsidiary and head-hunted one of the most prolific businessmen in China, Tim Chen, to lead the franchise.

The longtime Motorola executive in China and chief executive officer of Microsoft China for the past four years, Chen was picked Wednesday (September 19) to establish a Chinese NBA league, in cooperation with the existing domestic basketball league, run by the Chinese Basketball Association.

'The NBA is a truly exceptional brand with a huge fan base that reaches across all parts of China,' said the Taiwanese-born Chen, who lives with his wife and two children in Beijing.

'I'm thrilled by the scope of this opportunity and the ability to work with such a talented team, as we build on the enormous business potential that spans media, merchandising, marketing, events and new initiatives.'

To net Chen for the job is a coup by the NBA as his experience working closely with the Chinese government and business community for many years will no doubt come into play.

However, coordinating central and provincial governments, the Chinese Basketball Association, sports officials, investors and sponsors as well as broadcasters together with the NBA to form their own Chinese basketball league following the US model may be more than the businessman bargained for.

Chen will start his new job effectively on October 15, NBA Commissioner David Stern announced.

'Tim Chen is a proven business leader who has guided the dramatic growth of two Fortune 100 businesses in China,' said Stern.

'Tim is the ideal person to lead NBA China as we expand our infrastructure and operations to meet the growing interest from fans and consumers throughout the region.'

NBA China will be a new enterprise being created to encapsulate all of the league's businesses in Greater China.

The board of directors will include NBA owners, representatives of outside investors as well as Stern, and Heidi Ueberroth, NBA president of global marketing partnerships and international business operations

'After an extensive search that produced many qualified candidates, Tim Chen was the clear choice based on his tremendous experience and accomplishments,' Ueberroth said.

Chen, who worked for AT&T in the US before joining Motorola, couldn't help but be a basketball fan, having lived in Chicago during the dominating reign of Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls.

He will start with 80 staff in the NBA greater China offices in Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong and Taiwan - just in time for a jump start ahead of the 2008 Olympics in Beijing in August.

The NBA is conducting more than 170 special events in 112 cities in Greater China including the NBA China Games 2007, three pre-season games in Shanghai and Macao in October.

On October 17, in Shanghai, the Cleveland Cavaliers will play the Orlando Magic, who will also play against the Chinese national team the next day.

The Cleveland Cavaliers and Orlando Magic can also be seen in Macao in the Venetian Macao Resort, the just-opened world's biggest casino in the former Portuguese enclave that fell back under Chinese sovereignty in 1999.


NBA Full Court Press
The NBA's full court press in China
Why do the values of teams continue to rise? The same reason five Chinese TV networks will be covering the all-star game.
Fortune Magazine
By Marc Gunther, FORTUNE senior writer
February 17, 2006: 9:41 AM EST

NEW YORK (FORTUNE) - The NBA has committed its share of fouls in recent years -- it's never a good thing for a player to go after a fan in the stands -- but franchise values keep rising and corporate sponsors are jostling to get into business with the league. A big reason why is China.

So why do the values of NBA franchises continue to rise, and why do corporate sponsors jostle with one another to get into business with the league? A big reason is China.

Basketball's popularity is booming in China, thanks in large part to two decades of spadework by the NBA. League games have been televised weekly in China since 1991, and its stars have been visiting ever since. The NBA's appeal in China now goes well beyond the national pride in 7'6" Yao Ming of the Houston Rockets, a one-man marketing machine who boasts endorsement contracts with such global companies as Reebok International (Research) and PepsiCo (Research).

No sports league has done as well as the NBA in exporting itself to China. "The NBA is poised to continue its evolution from an urban basketball league to a global entertainment company," says Rick Horrow, a sports analyst and visiting expert in sports law at the Harvard Law School.

For evidence, look no further than the NBA's All-Star weekend, about to get underway in Yao Ming's adopted hometown of Houston. Five Chinese TV networks, including the big national broadcaster CCTV, will send crews to provide coverage. By contrast, U.S. coverage will be on cable's TNT, which can't match the ratings of the U.S. broadcast networks.

The Chinese networks will telecast such events as the T-Mobile Rookie Challenge; Sprite Rising Stars Slam Dunk; Foot Locker Three-Point Shootout; PlayStation Skills Challenge; RadioShack Shooting Stars; NBA All-Star Jam Session presented by Nokia.

Yes, there's also a basketball game on Sunday night.

To expand its reach, the NBA announced earlier this month that it will offer live webcasts of games over the Internet in China with a partner called NuSports. The NBA also operates a Chinese Web site with a local partner, Sohu.com, which gets about 3 million page views a day.

"We have a very sophisticated base of fans who follow the game and play the game," says Heidi Ueberroth, executive vice president of the NBA, who oversees the league's global expansion.

Analysts say the NBA generates about $3 billion a year in revenues, about 20 percent of it from overseas. China is the league's biggest market outside of the U.S., and revenues are growing by better than 10 percent a year, according to Ueberroth. She's made five trips to China in the past year, and the league has about 50 employees in China, Hong Kong and Taiwan, most of them Chinese nationals.

They get a big assist from marketing partners like Adidas, the German-based shoe and sportswear company, which brought Rockets star Tracy McGrady to China last summer to introduce his T-Mac sneakers. Besides McGrady, NBA stars LeBron James and Allen Iverson visited China last summer, courtesy of their sponsors, Nike (Research) and Reebok.

"Basketball's the most important sport in China," says Lawrence Norman, a marketing executive with Adidas, which has about 2,000 stores there. It expects to double that number by the time the Olympics are held in Beijing in 2008.

In a twist on the usual pattern of globalization, a Chinese sportswear manufacturer called Li-Ning recently signed a promotional contract with a little-known Cleveland Cavaliers player named Damon Jones who is known as a showy three-point shooter. Chinese fans tend to favor smaller, quicker NBA stars. McGrady has the best-selling NBA jersey in China, followed by Iverson and then Yao.

"They're very proud of Yao Ming, and they watch him on TV, but Tracy is a wing player, he's more athletic, he's more entertaining and they like his style of play," says Norman.

Nothing appears likely to slow down the NBA's marketing machine in China. A week ago, according to The Washington Post, a Chinese flooring company announced a partnership with the league and its retired Hall of Famer David Cowens. Cowens, who is 57, told reporters he likes quality flooring because he used to fall down a lot during games.


Big Buck Potential


When it comes to American born and bred professional sports, the NBA is leading the way in China and the league intends to keep it that way because the lure of a country with a population of more than 1.3 billion people -- 300 million of whom play basketball -- is too lucrative to resist.

"We believe the potential of a market with four times the population of the United States ultimately must be at least what the United States is," said Adam Silver, the NBA's deputy commissioner, who describes China's growth potential as "exponential."

Timothy Chen, one of China's best-known business executives, begins work Monday as the chief executive officer of the company's new Chinese subsidiary — NBA China.

Chen was Microsoft's No. 1 representative in China until he resigned last month. His job is to put together TV rights, sponsorships, new digital offerings and, perhaps, a new freestanding NBA-branded league in a nation where NBA merchandise is already hawked at 50,000 outlets.

The NBA generated about 50 million U.S. dollars in revenue last year from China -- the league's largest market outside the United States -- compared to overall NBA revenue of almost 4 billion dollars. But the NBA's 80-person staff in China is set to grow five times in the next several years and Silver suggested revenue will make at least comparable gains.

Ninety percent of the new subsidiary will be owned by the league. Two 5-percent shares will be sold to Chinese investors and to a U.S. media company. Silver wouldn't confirm it, but the American buyer is reported to be the Walt Disney Company, which owns ESPN and ABC.

The key to the NBA'a success may be the 16-team Chinese Basketball Association, which began 12 years ago. It was the proving ground for the Houston Rockets’Yao Ming and China's newest NBA player, Yi Jianlian, the Milwaukee Bucks’7-foot power forward.

"Both the CBA and we recognize that we can increase the caliber of the play and the quality of the presentation," Silver said. "In order to do that, it's going to require a much larger infrastructure as well as state-of-the-art arenas."

The NBA is succeeding in China where other sports properties like the National Football League, Major League Baseball and top European soccer clubs have failed. Some believe the NBA's impact on the way China does business may rival the effect of next year's Beijing Olympics.

"The NBA is the one foreign sport that is doing it right in China, that's really reshaping the business of sports in China," said Terry Rhoads, who runs Zou Marketing, a sports marketing business in Shanghai. Rhoads signed Yao to his first contract with Nike before leaving to set up his own business five years ago.

The way the NBA operates in China is in sharp contrast to Europe's top soccer clubs like Barcelona, Manchester United and Chelsea, which make an annual summer blitz hoping for quick cash and exposure.

By contrast, the NBA runs clinics, road shows, junior leagues and brings in a steady stream of players. NBA basketball has been on TV in China since the 1980s and has been popular since it was introduced in the late 19th century by missionaries. At parks and schoolyards, Chinese teenagers play basketball dressed in baggy shorts, wearing baseball caps cocked sideways on their heads, and even trash-talking in Chinese




I looked at the valuation story for the Rockets and the revenue positives are from domestic (US) activity rather than contracts in China.


Rockets # 5 in valuation

Team Value 1 $462 mil

The Houston Rockets
are owned by Leslie Alexander,
who bought them in 1993
for $85 mil.

Wins-to-player cost ratio 8 123
2006-07 Coach Jeff Van Gundy

Valuation Breakdown


The skinny
Despite more injuries to the star duo of Tracy McGrady and Yao Ming, the Rockets managed to reel off 18 more wins last season than they did the prior year. Fans responded: Attendance was up 7%, the sixth-best gain in the NBA. Although the team failed to get out of the first round of the playoffs (their last playoff series win was in 1997), the Rockets are one of the league's marquee teams when it comes to marketing the NBA in China. The first match-up of Yao's Rockets against the Milwaukee Bucks and Chinese rookie Yi Jianlian drew more than 200 million viewers in China, twice the audience for the Super Bowl. Despite their troubles on the hardwood, the Rockets are one of the most valuable teams in the NBA because they have a monster cable deal with FSN Southwest (which calls for the Rockets and baseball's Houston Astros to share $600 million over 10 years) and operate one of the league's best arenas.

Major corporate sponsors are AT&T (nyse: T), Southwest Airlines (nyse: LUV), Anheuser-Busch (nyse: BUD), McDonald's (nyse: MCD), Landry's Restaurants (nyse: LNY), PepsiCo (nyse: PEP). Naming rights sponsor is Toyota Motor (nyse: TM).

 

awww man...

 

I'd say 99% of people who would make the kind of comment you just did are morons.

 

Yao should be traded to see how many players in the NBA who have no business getting shoe contracts could get them with Anta.

J/k

 

I don't have any documentation. I believe that they have 6 to 8 multiyear deals with various Chinese corporations. Founder Group, ANTA, and Yanjing Beer are ones that come to mind. ANTA is a 4 year deal, and Yanjing Beer is a 6 year deal. This is not counting the American companies that are running ads for the Chinese market. More that anything else, it is the potential of future revenue that has the rockets salivating.

 

I just bought 200 dollars worth of Yao and Tmac authentic jerseys and shipped it back to my cousin in China. Does a percentage of the jersey revenue go back to rockets or all of them go back to NBA?

 

Found some of it for you. Seems like advertising revenue on Toyota Center signage and having the expectation that the advertising is seen when Rockets games are broadcast in China.


Rockets score Chinese retailer as latest international sponsor

 

not saying we are going to trade yao ever (we're not) or denying that the team would lose many fans if he left, but to be honest, people that would stop rooting for the rockets after yao left aren't real fans at all. i've been rooting from this team since i was a kid--and ive never even been to houston. i started rooting for them because of hakeem and i stayed a huge fan--even though i was a kid when they last made it past the first round.

these yao only fans might be 'real' fans money-wise and in the buisiness sense...but from a fans standpoint, i dont want those fans on my side. you arent true fans of the team, and you admit this readily. this has been the biggest negative of yao's being here (and i love yao). nothing personal to anybody, but yao only bandwagoner fans and fans of the rockets are not nearly the same thing.

 

I like the last paragraph of the article, which is on page 2. The rockets CEO says the following:

"China is such a unique market with 1.3 billion people who are seeing their economy opening up to multinational companies," Brown says. "With Yao, we've become China's national NBA team. We'd be foolish not to create a toehold in that market. The sky's the limit."

 

According to this article, the licensing revenue along with the national and international broadcast revenue is shared. Yes, the article is 10 years old, but I haven't seen anything newer saying that NBA teams are cutting their own deals on licensing and international broadcast revenue. So, go with that until something newer is found to trump it.

How the National Basketball Association put the bounce in basketball

...........The league negotiates and oversees all national and international television rights, sponsorships and license relationships, with revenues shared equally among the teams. This sharing has created unprecedented stability for N.B.A. franchises, allowing teams in smaller markets to remain competitive with those in major ones. It has also promoted strong fan bases........

 

I believe the Rockets have different ways to get the revenue without violating NBA sharing rights. They can place a billboard in the Toyota Center that can be seen on Chinese telecasts.

Another revenue item I forgot is the naming rights for the Toyota Center. Toyota pays around $5 million annually for the naming rights.

 

........but venue naming rights is done for many major sports facilities:

Minute Maid Park --- Houston AStros
Reliant Stadium --- Houston Texans
SBC - AT&T Center- San Antonio Spurs
etc