Wang Jianlin, a Chinese billionaire who heads the country's largest real estate developer Wanda Group, said he planned to add "new content" to Wanda Sports to make it a company with an annual income of more than USD 10 billion.
"We plan to keep merging and add new content into our sports branch. Wanda Sports aim to become the world's first sports company with an annual income of more than 10 billion US dollars," Wang said.
"China's sports industry is still in its cradle but the government has launched a plan to promote it and set a goal of 5 trillion yuan in scale. If the goal is realised, sports really is a very promising industry,"said Wang, who recently visited India for investment opportunities.
"The significance of establishing Wanda Sports is not only to integrate Wanda's interests in sports, but also to truly expand and strengthen Wanda's businesses in the industry," he said.
Setting up the company was Wang's latest move to seize a big share of China's sports industry cake, which seems all the more lucrative as Beijing won the right to host 2022 Winter Olympic Games, stat-run Xinhua news agency reported.
In less than a year, Wanda bought stake in Spanish La Liga champions Atletico Madrid, spending about 11.6 billion yuan (about USD 1.85 billion).
The Chinese government's announcement has expectations and drawn huge investment into the sports sector.
The Nasdaq-listed company, which have business cooperations with German champions Bayern Munich, Spanish giants Real Madrid and NBA star Kobe Bryant, then launched its own sports company in September to focus on professional sports.
Two other internet companies LeTV and Tencent also jumped on the bandwagon by establishing respective sports companies.
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