'Samaranch Cup' basketball masters to ignite grassroots fever for sports in Fujian

The Samaranch Cup Asian Basketball Masters Invitational is expected to help promote mass fitness across China, while giving the already booming sports industry in the hosting region another boost, organizers said.

The tournament, a multi-format basketball competition for amateur players, will be co-organized by the Samaranch Foundation, Xinhua News Agency, and the municipal people's government of Jinjiang, Fujian province, from Oct 2-6, according to the tournament's launching ceremony on Saturday.

The tournament is expected to attract about 100 teams, involving an estimated total of over 10,000 players, across Asia to compete in the juniors' five-on-five format and the adults' three-on-three group, respectively, in Jinjiang, a city known for its grassroots passion for basketball and burgeoning sports equipment manufacturing sector.

Olympic education seminars, charity events on campus, Asian basketball summit and culture and tourism promotional fairs, among other sports and cultural activities, will be held from the sidelines of the tournament, according to organizers.

It will be yet another mass sports promotion event initiated by the Samaranch Foundation, a non-profit foundation registered in Beijing in 2012 in memory of the late former International Olympic Committee president Juan Antonio Samaranch.

The foundation has hosted a series of grassroots sporting events across China to help promote accessible sports for juniors and the elderly, such as badminton, tennis and gas volleyball over the past decade.

The partnership with Xinhua, through the agency's News & Information Center, will further expand the influence of such sporting events to a wider audience globally, according to Juan Antonio Samaranch, son of the late IOC chief of the same name and founder of the foundation.

"One of the founding reasons for the Samaranch Foundation is to promote sports activities throughout China, and no matter what we do, if we don't communicate, it wouldn't make sense," Samaranch, also a vice-president of the IOC, said during a news conference to launch the tournament on Saturday.

"So the partnership we are presenting today to organize the first tournament makes a lot of sense. And with the experiences we have together, we are going to have an extraordinary success."

According to the agreement, the co-hosts are going to organize the tournament three years in a row in Jinjiang, and Xinhua will provide full coverage of the event on all media platforms, counting on its proven expertise and rich experiences covering all the world's major sporting events.

"We will build an experienced experts' team and leverage on all the resources and networks available to help present the tournament to an international audience, push forward with China's mass fitness campaign and promote Chinese culture," said Bian Ling, deputy director of Xinhua's News & Information Center.