Is Australian football China's next sporting craze?

Team China players during a previous visit to the Adelaide Oval in South Australia, in 2014. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

The delegation will hold a promotional event in Shanghai on June 24, where it wants to promote its three-year, multi-million dollar sponsorship deal with Chinese billionaire and Shanghai Cred founder, Gui Guojie, to the wider business community.

Port Adelaide will also play an official AFL game in Shanghai next year, while it already sponsors a Southern China AFL league and the country's national team: Team China. The club even recruited that team's captain, Chinese-born Chen Shaoliang, to its development squad.

Thomas says the next step is further expanding interest in the sport, to Beijing.

"It's established in Southern China, to a degree," he said.

"A strong AFL presence in these centers is important to us."

So too is attracting supporters at a young age.

On Friday, Port Adelaide officials signed an agreement with the Guangdong Garden School, where Australian rules football will be taught to children.

"We're using that as a pilot to be able to roll it out to other schools," he said.

"If you can get AFL into schools, it's the best place to develop knowledge about the game."

Port Adelaide management and players will return to China for a training camp in December.

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