John Tang became hooked on fantasy sports while a student at UCLA in the 1990s, picking players and creating teams online to slug it out with virtual rivals. He is now trying to turn that youthful pastime into a profitable business back home in China.

    The company he founded with a partner in 2008, Fan Te Xi (pronounced “fantasy”) Technology, currently has approximately 300,000 users for its Chinese-language fantasy basketball games. 

    Besides operating his own game business, Mr. Tang is in talks with other companies to bring their games to China. Potential partners include American news giant Bloomberg, which already has its own English-language fantasy baseball game. Bloomberg has reportedly approached Mr. Tang about bringing its game into the Chinese-language market.

    Mr. Tang thinks his business is merely scratching the surface of fantasy sports in China. “It’s about numbers, and Chinese people love numbers. It’s also about sports. And Chinese are fanatics when it comes to sports. And it’s on the Internet.”

    About 30 million people already play online fantasy sports in America, said Mr. Tang. Among the most popular sites are CBS, ESPN andYahoo. 

    China is different from the U.S. because American football, the number one fantasy game in the United States with about 70 percent of the market, has only a small following in China. Basketball has less than 10 percent of the U.S. market but is king in China. Additionally, American fantasy sports players normally pick a team at the start of the season and essentially stick with it for a season, making only a limited number of trades. 

    Mr. Tang is already planning ahead. He is developing a cell phone application and would like to have at least a million registered users by the end of next year. As he builds up his games, he hopes to have the capital to promote another grand goal -- a NCAA-like league for Chinese colleges. “I think it’s something China would get behind,” he said. “It could create a lot of jobs -- a lot of tax revenues can come from it.”

    Source: Forbes

 中国的体育梦幻

       上世纪90年代，加州大学洛杉矶分校学生约翰·唐闲来无聊时迷上了梦幻体育游戏——在网上挑选运动员组成球队，跟虚拟对手决一雌雄。现在，他返回中国，尝试着将年轻时的这项消遣活动转化为一门有利可图的生意。

       2008年，他联手一位合伙人创建了范特西科技公司（“范特西”来源于英文中的fantasy，意为“梦幻”）。这家公司推出的中文梦幻篮球游戏每个月的用户人数已经达到了大约30万人。

       除了营运自己的游戏业务之外，约翰·唐正在跟其他公司磋商，意欲将它们的游戏引入中国。比如，已经推出英文版梦幻棒球游戏的美国新闻巨头彭博资讯主动接洽约翰·唐，试图让其将这款游戏带入中国大陆的中文市场。

       约翰·唐认为，他的公司目前仅仅触及到了潜力巨大的中国梦幻体育市场的表层而已。“梦幻体育涉及数字，中国人爱玩数字。它也跟体育有关系，而中国人对体育运动极其狂热。此外，它是在互联网上进行的。”

       唐先生说，网上梦幻体育游戏在美国很流行，大约有三千万人玩。最受欢迎的网站是雅虎，ESPN和CBS。

       中国和美国不同的是，美国最热门的网上梦幻体育游戏是橄榄球，约占市场的70%，而中国不然，中国人热衷篮球，但它只占不到10%的美国市场。另外在美国，游戏迷通常在赛季开始时选择一个球队，并保留一个赛季，很少做交易。

       但约翰·唐已经开始筹划未来几年的发展大计。他正在研发一款手机应用软件，希望在明年底至少吸引到100万注册用户。在构建其游戏王国的同时，他还希望募集资本，推动另一项宏伟目标：为中国的大学建立一个跟全美大学生体育协会（NCAA）类似的联盟。“我认为，中国应该支持这方面的发展，我认为这个联盟可以创造大量的就业机会和大量的税收收入”，他说。