WSJ: Two Articles on Yao

NBA's Most-Visible Face?
More People Watch 'Scrubs'

In the movie "Simone," a desperate producer played by Al Pacino creates his own digital actress, who becomes an overnight success and takes Hollywood by storm. It seems that NBA officials enjoyed the show so much they decided to create their own apparition.

Yao Ming.

In just a matter of months, this towering Houston Rocket has become one of the NBA's most familiar faces. Yes, that's his mug on the cover of Sports Illustrated. No, you can't watch a sportscast without seeing endless clips of his jukes and jumpers. He's even cracked the ultimate American marketing pantheon: appearing in two commercials on Super Bowl Sunday. Playing in the All-Star Game this weekend is almost superfluous.

But at a time when most of us own enough cables, modems and satellite dishes to build a Mars orbiter, the number of people who have seen Yao Ming play basketball is actually pretty small. In fact, by generous estimates, no more than 16 million Americans have watched a live Rockets game this season (in person or on television). That's less than a single episode of "Scrubs." And unless the Rockets somehow make it deep into the playoffs, don't expect that number to move very much.

The Manute Bol Effect

What's the problem? For starters, the Rockets are still something of a local punchline, so even with Yao on board, they've sold 20% fewer tickets than the average NBA team. Under the league's new television package, all of Yao's games have been relegated to cable (including Sunday's All-Star Game). And despite all the preseason hype, the ghosts of previous flops from overseas (remember Manute Bol?) may still be haunting him. ABC decided not to carry any Rockets games this season. "There were so many unknowns," says Mark Mandel, a network spokesman.

Invisible man: He may be big on Madison Avenue, but how many Americans have seen Yao Ming play?

The crying shame here is that Yao is one of the few recent NBA experiments who seems to deserve the spotlight. His stats are handsome -- 93 blocks, 13 points per game, fourth in the NBA in field-goal percentage. Allen Iverson recently described him as "a gift from God." And his first meeting with Shaquille O'Neal produced three epic rejections and one of the NBA's highest cable ratings ever.

Sure, his English is still a work in progress, but Yao is already showing a level of humor and humility you just don't see in the typical kid superstar. During a recent interview conducted in Mandarin, he deflected a question about the All-Star Game thusly: "How will you know the taste of a Szechuan spicy dish before eating it?"

To be fair, Yao lumbered into the NBA with some unusual exposure problems. Except for scouts, almost nobody remembers his appearance at the Sydney Olympics. Because he never took part in March Madness, there was no appetizer to the main course. You may remember that 30 million people saw Michael Jordan win an NCAA title long before he turned pro. Playing in the Western Conference hasn't helped Yao: Two of his nationally broadcast games tipped off too late for most East Coast viewers.

In some ways, a little mystery is good for Yao. Yes, he was the first pick in the NBA draft last year, but he's still a rookie struggling to master the pros. As the first Chinese megastar to play in America, he's already getting enough ink outside the sports pages. And for their part, NBA officials say they always feel more comfortable promoting great teams over great players.

Tall Order

But let's face it, even if he struggles at times, Yao is the best thing the NBA has going for it. And his relative invisibility says a lot about the economics of pro basketball. After years of sagging ratings, league officials weren't able to land a monstrous bid for its TV rights without changing a few things. So they settled for a deal that cuts the number of major-network games by 60% while grossly inflating the number shown on cable, where the ratings are generally less plump.

Steep ticket prices aren't doing much for Yao's visibility, either. Though local ratings in Houston have jumped 25% so far this season, the Rockets have only sold about 12% more tickets. They're actually more popular on the road, where they tend to draw about 4,000 more fans per game than the average team.

The Rockets still have three appearances remaining on national TV this year, unless ESPN and TNT decide to add a few more. But even if the Yao drought is broken in the U.S., his fans overseas may not be so lucky. In China, NBA games are beamed live on a major network around breakfast time. But under NBA rules, broadcasters can't focus too much on any single team: That means as many as 80% of the games shown on China's largest network won't feature the nation's biggest star. "We want to give the fans a full dose of all the teams," says a league spokesman.

It's hard to say what impact any of this will have on Yao, let alone the future of basketball. Maybe in a digital age, a few highlights on "SportsCenter" are all we really need to be inspired by an athlete. Maybe three hours at the arena is no more revelatory than a cute laptop commercial. After all, anybody can benefit from a little editing.

Just ask Al Pacino.

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Yo, Yao: What's Up With
The Chinese Ads in Texas?

By GABRIEL KAHN
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL


First came Yao Ming. Then came Yanjing.

Last summer, the U.S. distributor for Yanjing Beer Group Corp., of Beijing, leased billboards lining the Houston Rockets' arena, home court of the 7-foot-5-inch Mr. Yao. The advertising deal, valued at just over $6 million for five years, marks the first time a Chinese company has sponsored a National Basketball Association team. It probably won't be the last.

Chinese companies selling everything from cellphones to apple juice are signing sizable sponsorship deals with sports teams in the U.S. and Europe. For the sponsors, these agreements offer not only an international marketing platform, but also a chance to bond with a domestic consumer group: Chinese fans consumed with following the growing number of Chinese athletes playing abroad. About 30 Rockets games will be broadcast in China this season, where tens of millions of viewers will see Yanjing's billboards lining the Houston arena on television.

Yanjing executives in Beijing and at Freeport, N.Y., distributor Harbrew Imports Ltd. see the Rockets ads as the marketing opportunity of a lifetime. The deal itself was the result of a fluke. Harbrew's vice president, Ric Iversen, was attending a food convention in Houston in June, the day before the Rockets were expected to select Mr. Yao as the NBA's No. 1 draft pick. Mr. Iverson dropped off 20 cases of the Chinese beer at a local sports bar that was hosting a draft party; it sold out in 15 minutes. Several Rockets executives in attendance took notice.

"The next day I got a call," says Mr. Iversen. The Rockets executives "were amazed at the response, and asked if we were interested in a sponsorship deal."

Yao Ming and Yanjing beer ad at a Rockets game

Such a deal is possible as a result of China's gradual integration into the global economy. The country's domestic market has caught fire, fueling ambitions of newly aggressive local companies with the resources to invest in branding. At the same time, China's international emergence has sparked public interest there in global pastimes, such as basketball and soccer. The Rockets and a few other teams with Chinese players command a near-fanatical following in China.

The interest from inside China caught the Rockets off guard. "We knew we were entering into uncharted territory" by drafting Mr. Yao, says Tad Brown, the team's director for corporate development. "I don't think we had a complete understanding that it was going to be this much this soon." Mr. Yao, halfway through his rookie season, got more votes than Shaquille O'Neal, the Los Angeles Lakers' superstar center, for a starting spot in the NBA's All-Star Game Sunday.

To take advantage of the growing opportunity in China, the Rockets recently hired two Chinese-speaking executives for their front office. The team has launched a Mandarin-language radio program that also can be accessed from their Web site. Mr. Brown says the team is talking to several other Chinese companies about future ad deals. "Yao is about the best marketing plan you can have," Mr. Brown says.

Indeed, Mr. Yao turns out to be a dynamic product pitchman. He appeared in two Super Bowl commercials, one for Apple Computer Inc. next to diminutive actor Verne Troyer (Mini-Me in the Austin Powers movies), and another for the Visa card. A line from the Visa spot -- "Yo, Yao" -- has become a catch phrase. "We hear it in restaurants and bars all the time," says Erik Zhang, one of Mr. Yao's representatives.

Thursday, Mr. Yao was in Orlando, Fla., shooting a Gatorade commercial. To date, he has signed just one deal with a Chinese company, cellular provider China Unicom. But Mr. Zhang says he has received more than 30 proposals from China. "For Chinese companies with multinational aspirations, [sports are] something that will help them get there," he says.

Soccer teams are tapping the Chinese market. Just over a year ago, British soccer club Everton, of Liverpool, was facing a crisis: It reported a $6 million loss for fiscal 2001 and had just lost its main jersey sponsor, T-Mobile, a unit of Deutsche Telekom AG. Then it received an offer from handset maker China Kejian Corp.

"We were a little bit wary," recalls Andy Hosie, Everton's head of marketing. Kejian insisted that Everton put at least one Chinese player on its roster; the team refused to sign a subpar player just to close the deal. It sent its coach, David Moyes, accompanied by Kejian Chairman Hao Jianxue, to South Korea during the World Cup to scout for talent. Mr. Moyes ended up signing two players from the Chinese national team (it has since released one of them). Kejian agreed to a two-year sponsorship valued at more than $3.3 million.

Kejian had its own doubts. It had just lost its sponsorship of its hometown team in Shenzhen. "Some executives just couldn't see a link between sponsoring an English team when our target market is China," says Li Haibo, Kejian's marketing and public-relations director. Others, though, argued that the popularity of British soccer teams was skyrocketing in China. It didn't hurt that Kejian's Mr. Hao is a die-hard fan.

Everton's popularity in China soared. Kejian's gamble paid off. "It has far exceeded our expectations," Mr. Li says. A British soft-drink maker and a British potato-chip company trying to enter the Chinese market bought Chinese-language ads around the stadium perimeter, and offers from other Chinese companies came pouring in.

To accommodate Chinese sponsors, Everton soon hopes to be able to superimpose different stadium ads on its television feed to Asia. The team is hawking merchandise in China and is about to start selling video highlights over its new Chinese-language Web site. In October, Everton announced a profit of $2.6 million for fiscal 2002 -- a turnaround it attributes in part to the Kejian deal.

There are some limits to expansion in China: Official Everton jerseys are already widely counterfeited, and Germany's Puma AG, which makes them, is reluctant to lower the price for the Chinese consumer for fear the cheaper jerseys will find their way into Europe.

Now, other European soccer clubs' interest has been piqued. Sheffield United, which plays in Britain's Division One, doesn't have a Chinese player, but it was able to land a jersey sponsorship with Chinese apple-juice maker Yangling Desun Fruits Technology Co.

 

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