Sydney: Australian Rules football team Gold Coast Suns said Friday they were pushing to be the team to face Port Adelaide in a showcase game in China next year.
The Australian Football League (AFL) and Chinese property developer Shanghai Cred last week signed an agreement with Port Adelaide about a potential game in China in 2017.
The Australian newspaper reported Friday that the AFL Commission had approved Gold Coast over other interested clubs including Melbourne, Collingwood and Greater Western Sydney.
Queensland state's Gold Coast is already a hub for Chinese tourists, and the Suns were a "logical" fit for the game, club chairman Tony Cochrane said.
"The Gold Coast has tremendous ties to China," he said in quotes on the club's website.
"Not only in terms of tourism but with billons of dollars worth of Chinese money being poured into the Gold Coast community in terms of new facilities and new hotels and other investment opportunities."
Cochrane said the club would be "pushing as hard as we can to try and get the China game up".
Australian Rules football is the latest foreign sport to pitch itself to the world's second-largest economy.
North America's National Basketball Association (NBA) already holds a pre-season game in China each year while rugby and other sports are keen to attract fans in the massive market.