Fifteen-year-old Boao Forum for Asia started its first ever sub-forum on sports on Wednesday, which attracted sports figures such as former NBA All-Star Center Yao Ming.

The sub-forum is focused on the soaring sports industry in China. The host country of the Forum used to take sports as public welfare programme, but more and more people have been starting to discover its economic potential.

"We have to change our traditional view on the sports in China," said Yao Ming, the owner of CBA club Shanghai Sharks.

"It was powered by only one engine and now we have four, so that's a much more complicated system."

Yao has been trying hard to push forward the basketball reform in China, but there is still a long way to go.

Chinese companies kept hot hands on sports industry last year. The TV broadcasting right of the Chinese Super League was sold at a price of 8 billion yuan (about 1.3 billion US dollars), far beyond expectation. Li Ruigang and his China Media Capital accomplished the biggest-spending investment.

"Eight billion is just a start," said Li. "There are so many things for us to do in the future. There has to be a healthy system behind it."

Sports media played a key role in the fast development of the sports industry in 2015.

"We learned a lot from NBA," said Tencent VP Chen Juhong, whose company bought NBA online broadcasting right for 500 million yuan (about 80 million dollars) last year. "So we have been more experienced and we are looking forward to a bigger stage."

The Boao forum, now on its 15th year, has been hailed as the Asian equivalent of the World Economic Forum in Davos.

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