Canadian women’s league imports China
CWHL adds Shenzhen club starting next season in play for huge untapped market
The Canadian Women’s Hockey League announced Monday that it would expand to China, beginning next season, becoming one of the first North American professional sports leagues to field a team in Asia.
Beijing’s Kunlun Red Star hockey club, which began its first season in the Russian-based Kontinental Hockey League last year, will have a women’s team in the CWHL. The team’s home games will be played in Shenzhen.
The women’s league, founded in 2007, has teams in Toronto, Brampton, Boston, Calgary and Montreal. The CWHL has not yet offered salaries to its players — unlike the National Women’s Hockey League, which consists of four teams, all in the United States — but it is expected to begin paying players next season. An investment from China would help make that happen.
“This expansion will have a significant impact on women’s hockey around the world and indeed on women’s sports,” Brenda Andress, the league’s commissioner, said in a telephone interview.
The five-year deal opens professional women’s hockey to an untapped market in Asia full of sponsorship opportunities, but it also signifies China’s push to establish a competitive team for the 2022 Olympics in Beijing.
Andress said a new team would have to follow the same league policies of adding new players through the draft and free agency, but Kunlun Red Star’s roster is expected to consist of players from China and players from North America of Chinese heritage, as well as non-Chinese. Kunlun will also be forming youth girls’ teams this year.
Billy Ngok, the Kunlun Red Star founder, said in a statement that his team was “the national club of Chi- na” and that through co-operation with the sport’s national governing body, “we will prepare for our teams to compete in Beijing 2022” and “promote the game in China.”
Kunlun Red Star will be coached by Digit Murphy, who formerly led the CWHL’s Boston Blades and Brown University. Last year, she helped start the United Women’s Lacrosse League.
“She’s passionate; she knows hock- ey,” Andress said. “She’s built programs and she’s an asset as a coach for the Chinese team.”
Recently, former NHL coach Mike Keenan was named the head of Kunlun’s men’s team, and the club has hired several notable former hockey stars, including Bobby Carpenter and Phil Esposito, to help build its program. According to the International Ice Hockey Federation, China has 1,101 hockey players among a total population exceeding 1.3 billion.
“There’s no doubt about it; it’s going to increase the fan base and appreciation of our game,” Andress said, citing a Toronto Star article that said 22 million Chinese viewers watched Game 1 of the Stanley Cup final between the Pittsburgh Penguins and Nashville Predators.
Even if NHL ratings in China are rising, the sport has yet to embed itself in the fabric of the nation.
Last year, the Kunlun men’s team had to relocate to Shanghai, almost 800 miles away, where crowds sometimes amounted to only 700 or so fans, many of whom received free tickets. The Globe and Mail reported from a game last year that concessions “were sold from a small table that included three Snickers bars and three plastic cups of caramel popcorn.” Foreign bank rules also made payments to players difficult.
Ngok founded the private equity company Golden Brick Capital Management and China Environmental Energy Holdings. His investment portfolio includes companies that produce mobile phone content; television networks; internet providers; and web browsers.
The Chinese have recently shown a propensity to invest and expand their imprint on sports companies from the West.
Next season, the NHL will hold preseason games in Shanghai and Beijing. While international teams often offer athletes opportunities for additional income, substantial growth for a sport is not always guaranteed. For years, WNBA players have competed internationally in the winter for greater salaries than what they make in the United States. Many of those teams are owned by wealthy businessmen more interested in owing a sports team than in expanding the reach of women’s basketball.
Andress said that her league had methodically assessed the risks of expanding to China and that authenticity from Kunlun Red Star in building women’s hockey was “extremely important for us.”
Kunlun Red Star will travel for blocks of games in North America. The other teams will fly to China at least once.
The CWHL just celebrated its 10th season and has featured some of women’s hockey’s greatest players. Andress has championed slow and steady growth; while players have gone unpaid, she has formed partnerships with NHL teams and the NHL Players’ Association, as well as companies such as Molson Coors. The National Women’s Hockey League, which recently completed its second season, had to deal with financial setbacks last season. Both women’s leagues will be without national team players for Canada and the United States next season as they prepare for the 2018 Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea.