From June to August this year, China's productivity levels are going to plummet, while profits in the sports media industry soar.

All the major periodicals and TV networks are drooling over the prospects of cashing in on the Athens Olympics, European Football Cup, and the Asian Football Cup.

The Asian Cup will be particularly hot in Chinese media because it is is taking place in China.

Countries in the Asian Cup finals are: Bahrain, Indonesia, China, Qatar, Jordan, South Korea, UAE, Kuwait, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Iran, Japan, Oman and Thailand. The matches will be broadcast live, written about, and endlessly discussed by everyone from business executives in Shanghai and peasants on Gangmen County between July 17 and August 7.

The newspaper in the best position to take advantage of this hot sporting summer is Titan Zhoubao (Titan Sports, pictured above) is the leading sports newspaper in China both in terms of sales and editorial authoritativeness. Most of the content is about football. Other sports covered include basketball, tennis, ping pong, volleyball, and Chinese chess, in other words, mainstream sports in China. If it's not in Titan Zhoubao, it's not mainstream. Just over half of the news covered is local, just under half is foreign, with an emphasis on football and basketball for the non-Chinese news.

The headline of the issue pictured above is: Lifan raises 'ghosts': there is definitely someone who sold the game.

The story is about a Chinese Premier League football match between Chongqing Lifan and Sichuan Guancheng. Lifan lost 4 - 0; the article alledges that a Lifan player must have taken a payoff to give the game away.

The other headline is Champions come back, about the Lakers making it to the finals of the NBA chanpionship. There is also a teaser for a special section about the 2004 European Cup in Portugal starting June 12.

The pictured issue (June 9) has the unfortunately-named Kaka as its cover boy. Kaka (Ricardo Izecson Santos Leite) is a Brazilian who plays for AC Milan. The coverline is Kaka says: Schevchenko will represent me in China. Schevchenko is another AC Milan player; the team came to Shanghai to play a friendly game against Shanghai Shenhua last weekend. Amazingly, the Milanese lost 2 - 0 to Shenhua.

Soccer Weekly contains a lot of original content (the story on Kaka is original reporting). Each issue has in-depth features, high quality pictures and syndicated stories from France Football magazine, the Spanish sports newspaper Marca, and the Argentinian Olé. Soccer Weekly also has Chinese correspondents in England, Spain, Germany, Italy and Japan.

All this original and quality syndicated content makes Soccer Weekly one of the best and most successful magazines in China. The Titan Group also published Quan Tiyu (All Sports), a general sports magazine, and Touzhu (Lottery), a magazine about China's state-controlled sports lottery.