THE CHINA SHARKS??

She’s Shanghai-pretty, wears stiletto heels and still has all her teeth.  What’s Denise Li doing in the teal and black jersey of the San Jose Sharks?

In fact, it’s the jersey of the China Sharks, as well--China’s only professional ice hockey team--and Denise Li hired on last month as COO (Chief Operating Officer) of the China Sharks, who play in the new 6,000 capacity stadium in the suburbs of Shanghai.

The link between the China Sharks and NHL’s San Jose Sharks is one of the least known sagas of the 2008 sports world.  In 2007, the San Jose Sharks franchise signed a deal with the China government to manage the decimated national hockey team for four years, in return for naming and commercial rights.  The ’07 Season was a trial run, with the China Sharks winning three of their twenty-five games.  The ’08 Season will be different—the China Sharks got Denise Li.

Hockey in China

”My mission?  I want to deliver something good to China.  Since World War II, China has seen so many sorrows,” Denise said a few days before the Beijing Olympics.  “This last year was hell—so many died in the snow storms, the big train accidents, and then the Sichuan Earthquake.  It’s time for the Chinese people to stand up again.”

This COO has a daunting task:  Educating China’s 1.3 billion residents about the sport of ice hockey, which slid into disfavor and near-oblivion from a height in the 1980’s, when China’s fellow-Communist relationship with Russia brought in Russian teams and money for hockey.  The San Jose Sharks rescued the last professional hockey team, bringing North American sports organizational genius and management, a Sharks coach and several players, money, and negotiating membership for the team to join the Asia Hockey League, whose other member teams are Japanese and Korean.

“So why are the San Jose Sharks sticking their clubs into China, so to speak, when there’s lots of expansion room in North America?”  We asked Charlie Faas, the San Jose Sharks’ CFO.

The Yao-Ming of Hockey?

“Hockey in China is where basketball was ten years ago,” Faas says.  He imagines a future when the NHL (National Hockey League), like the NBA, will be a fully global brand.  “We now own hockey in China.  One-point-three billion people.  If we can monetize that . . . “   The CFO’s voice drifts off, in wonder.  “And think of Yao Ming.  If we can find a hockey Yao Ming . . . now there’s the Holy Grail.”

Faas defines the task of the China Sharks COO, which reports to him.  “One.  It’s sales.  Sponsorships.  Appealing to ex-pat companies and Chinese companies who are going national.  Get on board!  Sponsor a dashboard at the rink or your company logo on the helmets, the video boards.  Two. It’s P.R.  Introducing the local media to the action—hockey practice sessions, interviews with leading players.  Three.  Building a fan base.  Four.  TV.  Home games will be televised and the Sharks need sponsors to pay for the coverage.”

Sourcing a Great COO in China

Faas gave TKO Phoenix a list of his requirements for a COO in early spring, 2008.  Then he flew to China for a battery of interviews at the Shanghai office of the TKO affiliate.  These interviews further refined his requirements before he chose Denise out of a second round of candidates.

Denise admits she knows nothing about hockey.  “But I didn’t know anything about American Express and kiwifruit either.”  Over a six year period in the Eighties, she established the American Express credit card in a country that had never used credit cards.  A few years later, she successfully built Zesprix into the top brand of kiwifruit in Greater China and Singapore.

“She stands head and shoulders above the competition,” Faas says.

The China Penguins?

But still, the challenge is daunting. Faas describes the difference between a China Sharks game and a game at HP Pavilion in San Jose:

“Same time periods, same ice, same teal and black jerseys.  But here the Sharks are winning and we have 17,900 screaming fans.  In Shanghai . . . right now, a couple hundred show up for a game and we may not be winning.  People don’t eat on their laps in China; they sit around tables in the bleachers and look at the game between bites.  We won’t break even for awhile,” he says.

But Denise Li is bullish about the China Sharks.  “The word I want China to think is PASSION.  Lots of positive energy.  Hockey is right for China now.  And Chinese people think the shark is smart.  It’s a powerful animal in the sea,” Denise says.  “’China Penguins’ would never have worked over here.”

Best Wishes,

Ken Reed
President

Click the shark for a 5 minute action video of the China Sharks in English.

Click the shark to connect to the China Sharks Webpage.