The growth in the Chinese middle class is causing sports companies there to start concentrating on tennis. Peak, an unknown brand here, is a Chinese footware company with nearly $500M in sales, which built its business around basketball.
Peak just announced a five-year deal with the Sony Ericsson WTA Tour even though they acknowledge tennis is not yet generaly a big or well understood sport in China. However as indicated earlier, because their women tennis stars, Li Na and Zheng Jie are huge in their home country, its making many people think about playing.
The Peak tennis sponsorship deal is another very promising event for the fastest growing major sport.