Clubs furious as League fails to turn on Chinese fans

Manchester City's Sun Jihai is China's most successful export to the English game, playing 168 times (Reuters)

As the Premier League continues to make plans to raise its global profile, the way it has handled its TV deal in China has come under sustained criticism, some of it from its own leading clubs. The League sold its rights in China for 2007-2010 in a "highest bidder wins" auction a year ago to a small pay-TV company, WinTV. But a spectacular failure to sign up subscribers means many games struggle to attract any viewers, in a country of 1.3bn people.

The deal has left Premier League viewing figures so low they cannot be registered, increasing the urgency for new measures to raise the League's profile overseas, and a vice president of one of China's major media companies warned last night that the deal risked "ruining its market" in China. It has also come to the attention of some of England's biggest clubs – including, it is understood, at least two from the "big four" of Chelsea, Arsenal, Manchester United and Liverpool – who have voiced private concerns to the League about top-flight English football becoming invisible in China at precisely the time it should be booming.

The League insists its plan for an "international round" of games in five foreign cities each season from January 2011 is wholly unrelated. But the warning shows that the League cannot be complacent about its international stature, and again exposes the fallacy that is the idea of a planet hanging on the Premier League's every kick.

WinTV set a target of 1.2m subscribers but actually has closer to 20,000. High pricing and technical problems are to blame. Viewing figures are as low as 10,000 people per game across the whole of China, or about half the capacity of the Premier League's smallest stadium, Fratton Park.

In ratings terms, the figures are effectively nil, exploding the myth that hundreds of millions of Chinese are glued to the Premier League. A knock-on effect for clubs hoping to "break" China is discontent among sponsors and commercial partners wanting to make inroads in that country via English football.

"Under the previous deal, when games were on free-to-air television, you would expect at least 10m viewers in China for big games like Arsenal versus Manchester United, sometimes several times that," John Yan, vice-president of the Titan Sports Group, told The Independent. Titan produces China's best-selling sports newspaper with a circulation of 5m copies per week, and Yan has worked closely with other media companies in China and with clubs in England.

Yan added: "The figures now are horrible. Terrible. Just thousands. I have personally spoken to chief executives at "big four" clubs in England and I know they are nervous about the situation in China. If WinTV keeps the Chinese contract over its whole term, the EPL is in real danger of ruining its market."

The League did more than 80 separate deals – many but not all with pay-TV firms – to show live matches in more than 200 countries, earning £625m from overseas rights between 2007-10.

"Overall, our clubs back the overseas deals," a Premier League spokesman said. And the Chinese deal? "Different clubs raise different concerns all the time. People are sensitive to growth issues and exposure issues."

The spokesman said it is too early to say WinTV is a failure. "If the market grows, concerns will be alleviated. We're only six months into a three-year contract."

Local reports in China say WinTV paid the modest sum of $50m for three years, or about £8m a season for the Chinese rights. The low figure is no shock, says Yan, because it is still normal in China for sports bodies to pay TV stations to carry content, not vice versa. Yet by opting for WinTV's top bid, the league has decimated its following.

The League's spokesman said different criteria were used to sell rights in different regions: sometimes viewing figures, sometimes cash, sometimes growth potential. "Maybe the pay-TV market in China is not as developed as we thought, in which case next time we have the flexibility to change. It could be that next time in China we will go for a mass viewing model. Clearly if [WinTV] are not making the rights work for them, they might not even be bidding next time."