The Wanda Sports Group has filed for an initial public offering in the U.S. The preliminary value set in the filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission is $500 million. The Chinese company's considerable brand portfolio in sports includes Ironman, the Rock 'n' Roll Marathon series and the Cape Epic mountain-biking race. In fact, it claims to be the world's top company in triathlons, mountain biking and running by both revenue and number of events in 2018. In that year, Wanda owned or held the rights for more than 20 world championships, among them the Fifa World Cup in Russia and the IIHF Ice Hockey World Championship. Wanda Sports is a business unit of the Dalian Wanda Group, which is headquartered in Beijing and controlled by a Chinese billionaire, Wang Jianlin. The conglomerate claims to have closed out 2018 with assets of 625.7 billion yuan renminbi (€80.7bn-$90.3bn) and revenues of RMB 214.3 billion (€27.6bn-$30.9bn). Wanda itself, according to the SEC filing, had revenues in 2018 of $1.29 billion, up by about 21 percent year-on-year. Its profit, however, was down by about 30 percent to $62 million. Dalian Wanda will retain a majority of the total vote if the IPO on the Nasdaq Global Market is approved.

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