Stars come out to shine in Shanghai

From singer/actor Kris Wu getting trash-talked by NBA legend Tracy McGrady to Chris Bosh making a long-awaited dunk off an assist from celebrity entertainer Wu Chun, the Chinese version of Hollywood colliding with the NBA rocked the city of Shanghai on Saturday.

The atmosphere at the Oriental Sports Center was electric to say the least as 15,000 fans packed the arena to watch their favorite celebs battle with NBA stars and local professionals in the 2018 Super Penguin Ultimate Game.

The third edition of the event, initiated by Chinese internet giant Tencent in 2016, brought together a glittering mixture of pro players, pop singers, actors and comedians.

Former NBA All Stars Bosh and McGrady each led teams that included 17 of the country's top celebrities and two Chinese pro players.

The game also featured a halftime performance from Rocket Girls 101, an 11-member pop group from the Chinese reality show Produce 101.

Highlights included a massive dunk by Bosh, who hasn't played an NBA game since February 2016 due to a blood clotting condition, along with McGrady's long 3-pointers and Kris Wu's improvisational post moves.

The final score - 61-60 for McGrady's Team Blue - was almost incidental.

"The organization and promotion of such a celebrity game caters to the growing public demand in China for crossover sports entertainment," said Ewell Zhao, general manager of Tencent Sports.

"I'd like to use the word 'event' instead of 'game' to describe it because it's not just a simple basketball match," added Zhao.

"First and foremost, it's a platform for sports and entertainment stars to show off their basketball skills and charm the fans.

"It's also a platform for the year's hottest acts. This time we invited the Rocket Girls 101, the most popular Chinese girl group, to star in the halftime show. To get them involved shows that the event stays close to what the young audience craves."

From McGrady's perspective, the event offers a great opportunity to expand the influence of basketball to people who may not be familiar with the sport.

"There are many fans of the entertainers who might not be fans of basketball," he said.

"They will become fans of the sport because of the collaboration between the players and the entertainers.

"To have this joint venture to spread this type of basket-ball around will bring more and more fans and an awareness of the game."

Tencent, which operates popular Chinese social networking apps Wechat and QQ, knows full well that the star power of entertainment icons can raise basketball's profile, as demontrated by the inclusion of Chinese-Canadian singer/actor Kris Wu in Saturday's lineup.

Wu has more than 37 million followers on Sina Weibo, China's version of Twitter, and is appeal to young people, particularly women, was evidenced by the huge number of female fans in the stands.

According to Zhao, the online audience for live broadcasts of NBA games on Tencent's platform used to be 88 percent male and only 12 percent female.

Thanks to the increasing influence of the celebrity event since 2016, that ratio has shifted to 70-30 while Saturday's on-site attendance was almost a 50-50 split.

As the country aims to develop sports into a new pillar of economic growth, stimulating public consumption in experience-centered services by hosting more sports-entertainment shows is the key, said Lin Xianpeng, a sports industry professor with Beijing Sport University.

"When we can enjoy a show like this in such a nice venue every week whenever we want, just like going to watch a Hollywood movie, the growth of the sports sector might be compared with the likes of United States," said Lin.

China is rolling out a national strategy unveiled in 2014 to expand the gross value of the sports industry to at least 5 trillion yuan ($728 billion) by 2025.