Censorship on the Pitch: China’s Blackout of Spanish Football

When Real Madrid secured a comfortable 3-0 victory against Racing Santander, with goals from Kylian Mbappé, Jude Bellingham, and Yan Diomande, millions of football fans watched across the globe. Millions in China, however, were greeted by a blank screen. State broadcaster CCTV simply refused to air the match. The transgression that prompted this blackout did not occur on the pitch, but on a French talk show set.

Mbappé had made the mistake of admitting on The Bridge that the internet meme making him laugh the most featured his own face superimposed onto a dictator resembling Mao Zedong. In the eyes of the Chinese Communist Party, comparing a highly paid French footballer to the founder of the People’s Republic is no laughing matter. The reaction from Beijing was swift and predictably autocratic. China Media Group, the parent company of CCTV, promptly suspended all broadcasts of Spanish La Liga matches, while several domestic brands severed their lucrative endorsement deals with the French star.

What followed was a masterclass in corporate submission. Apologies were demanded, and apologies were dutifully delivered. Mbappé expressed regret for his ill-judged remarks, acknowledging that he had hurt people in China and Chinese communities worldwide. Real Madrid and La Liga hastily followed suit with their own formal apologies. Beijing's Foreign Ministry announced that it took the footballer's apology seriously, yet state television has notably refrained from announcing when Chinese audiences will be permitted to watch Spanish football again.

The sensitivity of the regime regarding Mao remains absolute. The dictator, who led the Communist Party to victory in the civil war and died in 1976, oversaw the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution—disastrous campaigns that resulted in famines killing tens of millions and violent purges throughout society. Yet within the modern apparatus of the Party, his image remains sacrosanct.

European football executives are now discovering what American basketball officials learned years ago. In October 2019, the NBA found itself excised from Chinese television screens for a full year after Daryl Morey, then general manager of the Houston Rockets, posted a tweet supporting pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong. Morey, too, backtracked after fierce criticism from Chinese fans and commercial partners.

For state censors in Beijing, pulling the plug on multi-million-dollar sports properties is a routine demonstration of political leverage. The message to foreign athletes and entertainment empires remains simple: access to China's consumer market comes at the price of ideological compliance.

Written by Thorben Thiede thorben.thiede@alpineweekly.com