winter olympics. the beijing games are less than three months away and china has a great deal at stake. so far no country has declared a boycott. beijing isn t the only one with big money to lose here. u.s. companies look to china for a big chunk of their revenue. the u.s. sports business institute told cnn back in 2019 that the chinese market makes up at least 10% of the nba s profits. that number is expected to rise to 20% by the year 2030. and athletic brands depend on china for big money as well. in 2018, nike made some $6.2 billion in china. that number rose 21% from the previous year, and it s much higher than in north america. nike saw just a 7% increase in sales here over that same period. all of this just scratches the surface of money to be made in china.
Less than two years removed from his NBA playing career, Kobe Bryant held court at an April 2018 forum on the USC campus that drew a standing-room-only crowd of about 2,000 people to Bovard Auditorium.
They weren’t there to hear Bryant, the five-time NBA champion, discuss his 20-year career with the Lakers. The students in attendance were there to hear him talk about business.
“You have to sit and ask yourself: What is truly going to get you up in the morning, and what’s going to keep you up at night?” Bryant advised the attendees. “When you find what that answer is, you stay true to that. I’ve built a . personal brand, which is great, but that is not where our focus is going to be for the next 50 years.”