Alibaba Wants to Build China’s Sports Industry
From left: Bernard Lapasset, chairman of World Rugby, Brett Gosper, CEO of World Rugby, and Dazhong Zhang of Alisports after signing a partnership to see development of rugby in China.
Photographer: Isaac Lawrence/Getty Images
Alibaba Group Holding Ltd., China’s e-commerce leader, has been trying for a few years to multiply sales of sporting goods and related merchandise on its platforms, which totaled about 76 billion yuan ($11.2 billion) last year. (The U.S. market is more than 10 times that.) The problem is that, for its size, China doesn’t have much of a sports industry. So a relatively tiny arm of the Chinese company is trying to make one.
Alisports, a 210-person Alibaba subsidiary funded partly by Chinese telecom Sina Corp. and venture company Yunfeng Capital Co., is tapping its corporate parent’s troves of data on about 500 million shoppers to organize and broadcast sports competitions and aim products at local markets. It’s teamed up with sporting goods companies, as well as national and local sports teams, schools, coaches, and courts, even managing some of the direct-sales businesses itself, a rare step for Alibaba.