Using nickel(II) acetate-2,2'-dipyridyl complex as template and N-vinyl-2-pyrrolidone (NVP) as coordinate functional monomer, a new kind of metal-complexing template molecularly imprinted polymer (MIP) was prepared. The results of equilibrium binding experiments in aqueous solution showed that the MIP had higher binding capacity for nickel(II)-2,2'-dipyridyl than the non-imprinted polymer with the same chemical composition. The influences of metal ions and pH of solution on the recognition performance of MIP were investigated. The binding characteristics of MIP were evaluated by the Scatchard analysis with one-site and two-site binding equations, respectively. The results on substrate selectivity of imprinted polymer revealed that MIP had better binding affinity for template among the tested compounds.