Le Holdings was one of the sponsors for the CBA (Chinese Basketball Association) All-Star Game 2016 held on January 16 to 17, at Dongguan, South China's Guangdong Province. Photo: CFP

Le Sports, the sports arm of China's leading online video provider Le Holdings, has received funding of $1 billion in its series B financing round, a media report said on Monday.

The series B funding is the biggest investment so far in China's sports entertainment industry, Chinese technology news portal tech.sina.com.cn reported.

A press conference will be held next week by Le Sports to announce the completion of the financing, and other details such as the identity of the investors are expected to be disclosed at that time, the report said, citing sources close to the matter.

Le Holdings declined to comment on the report when contacted by the Global Times on Monday.

But analysts said they expect Le Sports to continue spending heavily on media rights for sports events with the new funding.

"The main purpose of its series B financing is to purchase copyright resources so that the company can continue to pursue its strategy of building a complete sports ecosystem," Chen Wei, an analyst with Beijing-based investment consulting firm ChinaVenture, told the Global Times on Monday.

Officially established in March 2014 on the basis of the former sports.letv.com, Le Sports aims to create an "eco-sports company" that runs athletic events, offers a content platform, serves smart devices and provides other value-added services.

Le Sports holds the rights to more than 200 sports events covering 10,000 matches, according to information from the company's website.

The latest round of financing took place just nine months after Le Sports raised 800 million yuan ($123.17 million) in its series A financing in May 2015, which valued the company at about 2.8 billion yuan at that time. Yunfeng Capital, a private equity firm established by Alibaba Group Holding's Jack Ma Yun, as well as Wanda Investment, a firm controlled by Wanda Group Chairman Wang Jianlin, were the lead investors in that round.

As a result of the series B funding, Le Sports' valuation has been boosted to $4 billion, according to the tech.sina.com.cn report.

To some extent, the relatively sharp increase in the company's financing and valuation represents recognition by the capital market, Chen said.

From the profit model point of view, sports entertainment sites will be able to realize gains as paid streaming-­video sites mature, he explained, noting that Le Holdings has built up a relatively big base of paying customers in recent years.

Since finishing its series A financing, Le Sports has been investing heavily in the athletic sector. Just in January, the company announced a strategic partnership with US-based Major League Baseball (MLB) to hold exclusive media rights in China to broadcast MLB games for three years beginning in January 2016.

On January 25, it announced plans to pay 39.2 million yuan for 56 percent of Sodasoccer, a Beijing-based soccer-oriented data company. And on January 28, it acquired sports broadcasting platform zhangyu.tv for 300 million yuan.

In the same month, Le Sports renamed Beijing Guoan Football Club, a professional soccer club, as Beijing Guoan LeEco Team under a strategic partnership.

But Le Sports is not the only Internet company that's betting big on sports.

For instance, Alibaba set up a new sports business, Alibaba Sports Group, in September 2015, which is expected to integrate e-commerce, media, marketing, video, home entertainment and cloud computing to form a sports platform that will participate in different aspects of the professional sports industry. Those aspects include sports copyrights, sports media, events and ticketing, the company said in a press release.

And in June 2014, Alibaba purchased a 50 percent stake in Guangzhou Evergrande Football Club, another famed professional soccer club in China. In late December 2015, Suning Commerce Group Co acquired Jiangsu Guoxin-Sanity Football Club.