Canadas largest sports company wants the Maple Leafs to become Chinas favourite hockey team, in much the same way Manchester United is the most popular soccer team in the worlds most populous country. At the same time as Chinese government officials have asked the NHL to stage a regular-season game in China as early as next season, TSN has learned four executives with Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment are scheduled to leave Friday for Beijing for meetings to help grow hockey in China, an untapped frontier for many sports leagues around the world. MLSE chief commercial officer Dave Hopkinson, Bo Hu, MLSEs executive in charge of Chinese business, and two colleagues will attend meetings in Beijing with Prime Minister Stephen Harper, his staff, and Chinese government officials. Maple Leafs President Brendan Shanahan was scheduled to participate but canceled at the last minute, a team spokesperson said. (The NHL and NHLPA announced forward Carter Ashton was suspended for 20 games on Thursday after testing positive for a performance-enhancing drug. Ashton said he borrowed another athletes asthma inhaler.) MLSE executives, the 27-year-old Hu in particular, have quietly laid the groundwork for building the companys profile in China over the past three years. Because basketball is so popular in China, MLSE staff first established relationships with companies interested in sponsorship agreements with the Raptors. The basketball team now has sponsorships with Chinese auto tire maker Aeolus Tires and Asus, a laptop maker. MLSE has also partnered with I.T. company Huawei on music-industry projects. Its believed that MLSE garners more than $300,000 from each of those sponsorships. Company officials declined to say how much sponsorship revenue they make from China-based companies. As MLSEs relationships in China matured, the company landed meetings with the Chinese government - meetings where MLSE received an attractive offer. China is competing with Kazakhstan to host the 2022 Winter Olympics. China wants to have hockey teams that are competitive. But with a mens national team thats ranked No. 38 — behind New Zealand, Belgium and Iceland — China needs help getting to that point. China wasnt a sports nation before the Beijing Olympics in 2008, but it is now, Hopkinson said in an interview. The president of the country attended the Team Canada mens hockey games in Sochi and said he fell in love with hockey. Whats important to the president of China is important to China. Chinese officials said in exchange for helping to develop grass-roots hockey programs in China, the government would help MLSE promote the Maple Leafs brand there. This is the most storied and established brand in the game, Hopkinson said. We were told that if they were going to partner in the NFL, it would be with the Dallas Cowboys. If they were doing a baseball deal, it would be with the New York Yankees. And if theres a partnership in the NHL, its going to be with the Maple Leafs. It doesnt hurt that the Leafs are based in Canada. Tensions might appear if a U.S.-based team tried to do what the Leafs hope to do. The Chinese have told us they really appreciate what we are doing, boots on the ground, helping them to develop a hockey competency, said Hopkinson, who has made four previous trips to China. In March, the Leafs converted all of their rink boards to Chinese to welcome Chinese viewers. In August, the team sent staff to Beijing and Shanghai to stage hockey camps for young amateur players. In coming weeks, the Leafs will aid in the production of a 10-part Hockey 101 series to be included in NHL broadcasts on CCTV in China to educate viewers. We arent the only team in China, Hu said. The Canucks and Islanders are there, too, but we really have a plan to become the biggest hockey brand there. We want to keep holding camps for kids, building grass roots interest, and eventually take our Maple Leafs players there. This is the Manchester United model. The worlds most famous soccer club says it has 108 million fans in China, where it has played almost a dozen times since 1975. Hu said because the NHL prevents teams from promoting themselves outside their local territories, MLSE has been targeting Chinese companies such as Air China and the Bank of China that want to expand their business in Canada. There are a lot of Chinese mining companies that have investments in Canada, although we just signed an agreement with a Colombian mining company, Hu said. Hu confirmed Chinese officials have told the NHL they are interested in hosting an NHL game as soon as next season. As any seasoned marketer knows, the payoff for a team to break through in China is huge. In its recent filing for an initial public offering, Alibaba reported just 45.8 per cent of Chinas population uses the Internet, far lower than Canada or the U.S. In 2000, four per cent of urban households in China were considered middle class; by 2012, more than two-thirds of those homes had gained that status, earning between $9,000 and $16,000. In 2022, Chinas middle class may eclipse 630 million consumers. There already are signs that China, a non-traditional hockey market to be sure, is open to a new sport. Last year, the state broadcaster CCTV began showing four live NHL games every week. This is CCTVs second year of a three-year deal with the NHL. NHL games broadcast on the weekend in China have attracted an average 800,000 households - airing at 7 a.m. local time. By comparison, televised Leafs games in Canada with national distribution this season have attracted about 1.5 million viewers. This year, Beijings 150 registered teams have 2,300 players between the ages of six and 15, MLSE says. Still, there are challenges to growing hockey in China. For starters, its an expensive sport, Hu said, thanks to 30 per cent import duties for hockey equipment shipped from the west and expensive ice time. There are politics to consider. In 2005, the newspaper Beijing Today accused western soccer teams of gold-digging, using their tours of China solely to build their brand and commercial presence. Some efforts simply dont translate. Manchester United closed a pair of theme restaurants after fans didnt see a connection between soccer fandom and eating out, The New York Times reported in 2007. Also, its unclear whether the NHL sees a big upside in China. The league does not have a senior vice president in change of expanding its international business, a position common in other pro sports leagues. Moreover, the NBA has a long head start in China, where it began to lay a toehold during the 1990s. Now, the NBA attracts some five million viewers a game in China. In the U.S., NBA broadcasts on cable TV get about two million viewers per game. Its doubtful that the NHL would ever grow business through the sale of team jerseys. While authentic jerseys now sell for $330 in Canada, counterfeiting has flourished in China, bringing down the price of knock-off jerseys to $5 or $10 in some cases. Martinas Rankin Jersey .A. Happ capped a challenging season with one of his best efforts of the year. Martinas Rankin Texans Jersey . The moves were the first punitive steps taken by the Dolphins since a report on the NFLs investigation of the case was released last week. 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Keke Coutee Jersey .J. -- While Martin Brodeur wasnt willing to say he stole one for the New Jersey Devils against the Columbus Blue Jackets, almost everyone else was.There is some irony in the fact that Jason Spezza was finally traded on Canada Day. After all, there had been weeks of speculation that the star centre wasnt enamoured with the idea of playing in a Canadian market. But a few hours after the trade, Spezza wanted to make it clear that he wasnt leaving Ottawa because he couldnt stand the pressure and scrutiny that came with playing in the nations capital. “I dont think thats accurate," Spezza told TSN.ca. "My biggest motivator for a trade was to win. It will be portrayed however they want it to be portrayed, but the last thing I was worried about was coming out and doing interviews in front of my stall.” During the past month, it was widely reported that Spezza put the other Canadian teams on his no-trade list and that his desire was to go south of the border, where he would face less scrutiny. However, Spezza said the fact that most Canadian teams are struggling right now was the biggest reason why he put them on his no-trade list. He is never one to shy away from microphones and says he would welcome playing in a Canadian market again down the road if the opportunity arose. “It was more circumstance than anything of why those (Canadian) teams were on my list. I have one year left on my deal and I wanted to go someplace where I could win a Cup,” Spezza said. The troubling trend for Senators fans, however, is that Spezza is the latest superstar to have a somewhat messy departure from their city. In the summer of 2009, Dany Heatley demanded a trade and ultimately forced the clubs hand into trading him to San Jose. Last summer, Daniel Alfredsson and the organization had a sudden and bitter divorce, prompting the long-time captain to sign with Detroit as a free agent. Now that Spezza has been shipped to Dallas, it only adds to the growing perception that superstars have a short shelf life in Ottawa. But Spezza says the fans in Ottawa arent to blame for a number of players wanting to leave in a short window of time. “Its a fine market for stars, but just like any hockey market, its tough when youre not winning. All three situations are unique. I didnt make my decision because of Alfie and Alfie didnt make his decision because of Heater,” Spezza explained. “We all had our own reasons. There were some similarities, but in the end, each was a unique case.” In some ways, this does appear to be different than the Alfredsson saga from last summer, when the captain abruptly ended his tenure with the club. Spezza appeared to have a more calculated, long-term approach – far less emotional than the course Alfredsson seemed to take. But there is a striking similarity between Alfredssons comments last summer and the ones made by Spezza today.dddddddddddd In each case, the captain felt like he had a better chance to win a Stanley Cup with a different organization. “All I can say is my goal is to win a Cup. I think Ottawa has a good chance. They have a good core of young players and a good nucleus. But for me right now, I just felt like Dallas was a great fit,” Spezza added. Spezza said he had discussions with Bryan Murray towards the end of the season and alerted the front office that he likely wasnt going to re-sign a contract extension beyond 2015. And rather than make it awkward for everyone during the 2014-15 season – constantly answering questions about his future – he felt it was best for all parties involved to make a preemptive move this summer. “I didnt have any interest in signing an extension and that kind of hinted to them that maybe it was time to move on. I met with Bryan and had some really good and frank discussions. And I was being honest with them when I said it was best for me and best for them if I moved on,” Spezza explained. Spezza was asked if he knew the regular season finale in Pittsburgh on April 13 would be his last game in a Senators jersey. He scored a brilliant goal in the shootout to secure a Senators 3-2 victory and he admitted, “It wasnt lost on me that it could have been my last goal with Ottawa.” Spezza said he stayed quiet for the past few weeks out of respect for the process, but once Murray told reporters at the NHL GM meetings last month that Spezza had indeed requested a trade, he knew the writing was on the wall. “Once Bryan went public, I knew it was probably done for me there,” he said. (Spezza also went out of his way to point out that he still has a terrific relationship with Murray and holds the Senators general manager in the highest regard). Spezza isnt sure how the crowd at Canadian Tire Centre would react to his appearance when he makes his return to Ottawa on January 29, 2015 in a Dallas Stars jersey, but he does want Senators fans to know that he does not hold a grudge against them – even though he was often seen as a lightning rod for criticism by the fan base. “My time in Ottawa was fond and I know a lot of people are upset," Spezza said. "I would have loved to have the storybook career, where you spend your whole life in one city and play for one team, but thats part of the hard decision we had to make. This didnt just happen overnight and I woke up one morning and said ‘I want to leave. There was a lot of thought put into this.” China NFL Jerseys White Cheap NFL Gear Cheap Jerseys 2019 Youth NFL Jerseys China Wholesale Jerseys China Cheap NFL Jerseys Wholesale Youth NFL Jerseys China ' ' '