BEIJING — Super Bowl Sunday arrived in China's capital at daybreak Monday, but by kickoff it was standing room only at the Goose 'n' Duck, a British-style sports pub near sprawling Chaoyang Park in east Beijing.
The vast majority of the nearly 350 football fans who braved the frigid morning temperatures were expatriate Americans, many already with beer in hand despite the hour.
But in one corner of the two-story complex was a rabid group of Chinese fans watching the English-language broadcast with the help of two Mandarin-speaking commentators, perched on stools with microphones in hand, who had been hired by the National Football League.
The party, along with a gathering in Shanghai, was one small part of a six-year effort by the NFL to sell its sport in a country where the league has struggled to find a fan base.
Even at its own Super Bowl party, the challenges the NFL faces in China were on full display.
Although the Super Bowl was broadcast nationwide by state-run CCTV, Chinese authorities put it on a 30-minute delay, so organizers of the NFL party piped in a live feed from a Philippine satellite broadcaster. And though local fans were enthusiastic, they frequently stared blankly at TV screens during complicated penalties and on-field rulings.
"The NFL has a lot of work to do in China," said Hong Liu, a 50-year-old Pittsburgh Steelers fan from Beijing who began following the sport while attending college in western Pennsylvania.
The NFL's struggles in China have come despite an increasingly affluent youth culture hungry for international sports, and the league's major push, begun in 2003, to make China its fifth foreign target market, after Britain, Japan, Canada and Mexico.
The league opened a Beijing office two years ago with grand plans to stage an exhibition game between the Seattle Seahawks and New England Patriots before the 2007 NFL season. The plan included an effort to recruit Chinese rugby and soccer players to perform as place kickers.
But the game was scrapped as part of an overseas retrenching that also saw the league shut down its struggling NFL Europe league. The sport has had difficulty persuading Chinese national broadcasters to televise games live.
NFL executives acknowledge that they face an uphill climb without the advantages enjoyed by basketball -- an Olympic sport with an international Chinese star in Houston Rockets center Yao Ming -- and soccer, still China's favorite sport.
