LeSports
The business, the turning points, and the decisions behind them.
01 / WHAT IT BUILT
What the company did
LeSports was the sports arm of Chinese conglomerate LeEco, founded in 2014. It focused on sports-event operation and content streaming, spending heavily on broadcast rights for the NBA, English Premier League, Chinese Super League, AFC Champions League and Major League Baseball. At its peak it was valued at 21.5 billion yuan after its 2016 fundraising.
02 / LeSports FAILURE REASONS
Failure factors
SCMP reported LeSports HK, arm of cash-starved LeEco, closed because of overdue rent; a marketing manager confirmed the rent cause, and a sports-rights firm had filed a High Court winding-up petition to liquidate assets after broadcast failures.
Parent LeEco described as cash-starved; unit closed over overdue rent.
Winding-up petition by sports broadcast rights company seeking liquidation of assets.
03 / EVENT HISTORY
Events in the structured record
- Liquidation
Harris J granted a winding-up order against Hong Kong Sports Industrial Development Ltd (formerly LeTV Sports Culture Develop (Hong Kong)) on unpaid sports-rights debts over US$32M; SCMP separately reported the HK pay-TV channel closed 15 Mar 2018 over overdue rent amid the petition.
04 / CONTEMPORARY REBUILD ASSESSMENT
Difficulty of rebuilding this project today
Material for this section is being gathered and checked. It will appear here once ready.
Overall assessment: Not completed
05 / CAUSAL CHAIN
How the factors connect
- 01
Raised 8.4 billion yuan in two funding rounds in 2015 and 2016; parent LeEco took about 4 billion yuan of it.
- 02
By end of 2016, fees for more than half of its acquired broadcast rights were unpaid; announced a major restructuring with 10% layoffs in December 2016.
- 03
In 2017 lost the Chinese Super League rights (sold to Suning Sports) and the $100 million AFC Champions League contract was terminated over payment defaults.
- 04
Failed to go public by December 31, 2018, triggering share-buyback guarantees to investors; LeSports shareholders filed arbitration cases seeking buybacks.
- 05
No public loss figure was disclosed.