China's Wanda Group and FIBA, the International Basketball Federation announced a long-term business partnership in Beijing on Thursday.

Over four FIBA Basketball World Cup cycles, up to 2033, Wanda will be FIBA's worldwide exclusive partner for the sale and marketing of global sponsorship and licensing rights. It will cover all FIBA-sanctioned activities including the FIBA basketball World Cups, the men's and women's Continental Cups, as well as the FIBA women's basketball World Cups and Youth World Championships.

This is another one of Wanda's cooperations with an international sports association after it became a top sponsor of FIFA in March of this year.

The company is prepared to announce football-related cooperation this July: Wanda will invite some national level teams from abroad to China to hold a practice-run match which will be in lieu of the modes and scale with which events such as the World Cup and Asian Cup are conducted, which they plan to achieve in the near future, the Paper.cn quoted information from some insider.

Wanda plans to create a "World Cup" in China and turn it to a regular competition system, according to the insider.

Wang Jianlin, chairman of the Wanda Group has said the future goal (of the company) is to gradually include the competitions possessing international influence into Wanda and these events must be in China.

Wanda began to establish its role in the sports industry with a 20% stake acquisition of the Spanish football club Atletico Madrid for € 45 million in January 2015. In February 2015, it purchased the Swiss sports marketing firm Infront Sports & Media along with a group of other investors for $1.19 billion (£780m). After the acquisition of the World Triathlon Corporation (WTC) in August 2015, Wanda Sports has become the world's largest sports management company.

Wang Jianlin has said that the company's sports will basically take shape in 2017 and will host a series of events.