Colleges are constantly on the hunt for new ways both to engage a student body and a business community through athletics, and with a growing globally diverse population at least two schools are looking east to try and match the excitement of college athletics, maybe some brand connections, and their evolving student bodies together….by using the digital space to broadcast games in…Chinese.
Temple University in Philadelphia, with a growing Asian student population, is holding auditions to have students call some of their men’s basketball games in Mandarin for the rest of the season, following the lead of the University of Illinois and Dayton University, who launched similar programs earlier this year. With basketball continuing to explode in China, and the student population of undergraduates streaming into American Universities from China expanding every year, the effort is smart, low cost, buzzworthy and pretty promotable.
Their broadcasts will be streamed on Owl Sports, the official website of the athletic department, and the highlight reels on YouTube and Youku – China’s version of YouTube following the lead of the other two Universities. Now finding broadcast talent who can deliver a professional broadcast might be a challenge in many cities, but for large urban areas the risk is probably smaller, and it also feeds into a new genre of young broadcasters who can emerge into a new market. They announcers down the line don’t have to be Chinese, they only need to speak Mandarin fluently, and finding a bilingual mix, and bilingual mix, in broadcasting is certainly worthwhile for anyone looking to enter into the media.
The Chinese experiment also raises another interesting entrepreneurial question, why don’t more college and universities stream games in multiple languages? With the Latino population also growing, there would seem to be a niche for not just a global audience but also for an audience across North America who might get hooked on a local native or a national college or University broadcasting in Spanish. There could also be brands that may want to tie into Spanish language promotions as well, not to mention once again, that some young new multilingual voices could arise from the project.
Can Chinese language broadcasts take hold for colleges as ways to engage a world thousands of miles away? If tied to a strategic marketing and recruitment initiative, along with maybe a tour of the country down the road which would make the project experiential as well, it would have a shot of reaping benefits.
Regardless, the Owls and the other schools are smart to dip into some low-cost and buzzworthy broadcast waters as a way to support and grow an engaged student audience now and in the future. Whether it’s a trend remains to be seen, but for now, it should be one to watch, or at least listen to.
