Dalian Wanda Poised To Invest A Whopping US$297m In Chinese Football

Over a year after selling its 17% stake in Spanish football club Atletico Madrid, Dalian Wanda Group plans to invest 2 billion yuan ($297 million) to build 23 football fields and training facilities in the northeastern city of Dalian, the conglomerate said in a statement on its website early this week.

The amenities will be able to accommodate as many as 600 players and coaches and will start in December, according to the statement. Wang Jianlin, Wanda’s billionaire owner, is hedging on a sport that has more room to grow domestically. Following President Xi Jinping’s bold World Cup plans in 2015, major Chinese companies including Wanda started ploughing money into foreign football clubs, however a crackdown in Beijing last year halted this trend.

Wanda sold its 17% minority stake in Atletico Madrid in February last year, with Idan Ofer’s Quantum Pacific increasing its share in the La Liga club to 32%, but the Chinese conglomerate is still the title sponsor of Atletico Madrid’s home ground, the Wanda Metropolitano, which opened in September 2017. In their heyday, Chinese money had poured into dozens of foreign football clubs, including AC Milan and Birmingham City.

With the latest move, Wanda is turning its focus back on domestic sports. The group will also spend 50 million yuan (almost US$7.5m) annually to support 60 youth teams in Dalian. Since 2011, the company has been sending 30 talented players every year to Spain to train with professional clubs, with over 200 trained in total so far, it claimed.

The news comes just days after the Chinese Football Association (CFA), the governing body for soccer in the country, signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with FIFA to accelerate football’s development potential in China.