That year's "burning oil" and the current "chilling" is a stark contrast, the Chinese Super League team's "consumption relegation" is self-evident.
01 Every cloud has a silver lining.
"Consumption relegation" is not only a team, but the whole Super League.
On March 1, when it was still cold and warm, the 2024 season of the Chinese Super League kicked off.
Although the market is quite favorable, even Chengdu Rongcheng Phoenix Hill Stadium first round attendance has reached 40,088 people, but compared with the "Golden Dollar Era", the commercial value of the Chinese Super League has dropped a lot. In short, the sponsorship of Chinese Super League teams is not selling.
The most intuitive performance is that the Chinese super sponsors have decreased. Compared with last season, Ping An of China, Hutu Auto Repair, Tencent Sports three years of gold owners to reduce. Compared with the 2022 season, Mengniu, Laoshan Beer and DHL, these rich and powerful sponsors of SAIC.
This season's Chinese Super League sponsors list
The title sponsor has also changed from Ping An to China Resources Yibao. According to media reports, CR Yeebo's title sponsorship price is about 100 million yuan per season, the same price as Ping An's title sponsorship of the Chinese Super League last season. However, compared to the 1 billion yuan for five years in 2022 when Ping An renewed its contract with the Chinese Super League, the amount of the Super League title has undoubtedly been halved.
At the beginning of last year, the person in charge of the Chinese Super League sincerely said that the Chinese Super League could not blindly pursue big sponsors, but also welcomed some small sponsors of 8 million or 10 million dollars. It can be seen that the brand appeal of the Chinese Super League is not as strong as before, and there is not much room for choosing sponsors.
The entire Chinese Super League can not sell the price, the teams to pull sponsorship can only further "consumer downgrade".
However, in my opinion, this "consumption downgrade" is not necessarily a bad thing. In the era of the golden dollar, the commercial value of the Chinese Super League and even the various teams is generally high, and there is also a lot of foam in the Chinese soccer market. For example, in 2015, the Olympic power with a high price of 8 billion yuan for five years to obtain the broadcasting rights of the Chinese Super League. From the perspective of Zhuge Liang's hindsight, the quality of the products exported by the Chinese Super League is obviously sorry for this price. In addition, the price of player transactions is inflated.At the end of 2016, Zhang Chenglin, who has little experience in the national team, joined Guangzhou Evergrande at a sky-high price of more than 100 million. Now, looking back at the deal, they are not only surprised and ridiculous, but can even read magic from it.
So in my opinion, the Chinese Super League's "consumption downgrade" is to return to rationality, so that the overall level of the league is basically affordable to the business investment. As much water as possible in the bowl. The "real estate league" game has proved to be unsustainable. The clubs themselves do not have the ability to generate blood, and rely entirely on blood transfusions from their parent companies. Instead of a professional league, it is more like a corporate league. At the same time, with the development of the times and changes in the situation, the mines planted will always explode.
From the experience of low-level European leagues (after all, the Chinese Super League cannot compete with the Big Five in terms of size and capacity), living on your own endeavors is the normal state of professional soccer. However, we always stare at the teams of the European giants and our eyes are filled with tall sponsors. When we look down the road, we realize that most of the sponsors of the various smaller teams are small local businesses and small store owners.
However, you have to know that these local colorful small businesses and small shopkeepers, is the medium between the team and the fans, is the economic foundation of the team rooted in the local. As the head of "Moonlight in the Lotus Pond" said: "The founders of our store are all from Cangzhou. Everyone has loved soccer since childhood. Now they can contribute to their hometown's soccer team. We are very proud."
02 If the foundation is not strong, the ground will shake
In the league, the national team is always on the same wavelength.
In the Chinese Super League "consumer downgrade", the Chinese team sponsors are pitifully small. In the match with Singapore, the national soccer team's sponsors are still the old four: Nike, Ping An of China, Mengniu, Yibao, the lack of the highest level of sponsors.
According to past experience, the preliminaries should be a good opportunity for enterprises to hype their brands with the help of the national football team, but this year the competition for the national football team's "advertising space" is too cold and quiet, which is really unexpected. Of course, according to the disclosure of the CFA official website, there are three other national football partners, but they are small to reach the level of "on the board". Even so, the Chinese team has only seven sponsors, let alone compared to the strongest teams in Asia. Thailand has three more sponsors than us.
The reason for this is that I think the National Football League sign is a bit of a "wild card" for businesses. The traffic of the national soccer team is like the sea breaking the dike, but it can have a positive or negative impact on the business, depending on their life. Xiaoqin Sea Cucumber used to be one of the contracted sponsors of "Team China". Unfortunately, the business suffered a traffic backlash. As a result, it was despised by the whole Internet and was directly knocked into the public opinion pits...
Of course, the national soccer team sometimes gives back to its sponsors, too: in 2001, the national soccer team reached the World Cup. At that time, the main sponsor Philips gained a lot of attention. They also took advantage of the heat to organize a celebration party for the national soccer team's success, which was broadcast on many TV stations across the country, further enhancing brand awareness.
But there are so few opportunities for the national soccer team to be proud, and sponsors are unlikely to be as lucky as Philips. The most important thing for the national soccer team to attract new sponsors and retain current sponsors is to maintain its own bottom line of performance, so that the businessmen's huge investment has a relatively stable income expectations.
With clubs fighting for sponsorships all over the world, it's no surprise that the national team, the endpoint of China's soccer problem, is facing a decline in sponsors. If the national team wants to return to the old days when sponsors flocked to them, they must wait for the Chinese professional soccer league system to be truly healthy, blood-producing and independent. Without quality soil, sweet fruit will never bear fruit.
After the clubs start to cooperate with "small but solid" sponsors, we may find a new way to professionalize Chinese soccer. By that time, the strength of the national team will be improved, and perhaps the national soccer team will have the opportunity to give back to the sponsors with a lot of positive traffic.
03 The way forward, back to the masses
In fact, the sponsorship of the Cangzhou Lions by "Lotusland" is not an example. Many professional teams have already reached cooperation intentions with local enterprises. As mentioned earlier, the 4S store that sponsored Tianjin Jinmen Tiger is a local store, and Jinan's local milk tea "Granting Tea to People" has also entered Shandong Taishan's list of sponsors this season. The famous wine of the Central Plains, "Dukang, the Ancestor of Wine", has directly purchased the naming rights of the Henan team...
Super League teams are heavily sponsored by local businesses. In fact, this is a demonstration of the qualitative changes that have occurred as a result of the entry of regional corporate sponsors into soccer. At lower levels of the league, the sponsorship of soccer by local liquor, agricultural and sideline products, restaurant chains and other industries is nothing new.
The linkage between local companies and local teams can give local fans a stronger sense of belonging, thus improving the fit between the team and local fans, and really making a team a local "image spokesman" and "defender of honor". The "Defender of Honor". From an economic point of view, with soccer as a link, sponsors are more likely to expand the influence of local fans, promote the businessmen to shape a good image, improve the quality of service, and truly realize the win-win situation of the soccer economy.
In my opinion, Chinese professional soccer should not learn from the giants of European soccer. After all, they are in the upper reaches of the soccer industry. Because their strength determines their status, we certainly can't envy them and their tall international brand sponsors.
On the contrary, the target of Chinese professional soccer should be the low-level teams in European countries. After all, low-level teams in Europe, like their overseas counterparts, are a "downstream industry" that provides high-quality players for the big teams. We have successfully exported talents to European soccer like the low level teams in Europe or the K-League and J-League. Being able to send players to the top five leagues is a success!
After finding a place in the soccer industry chain, we should adopt a corresponding way of survival. Rooted in the local community, and deeply tied to the fans is the most correct way. After all, soccer is fundamentally "from the masses", to develop well, we must "go to the masses".
As the British anthropologist Morris wrote, "Why soccer?" He said that humans have lived through millions of years of tribal life and that tribe is ingrained in our genes. Awakening it requires a key. That key is soccer. Foremost among the characteristics of the soccer tribe is the fans' identification with the clique and their extreme loyalty to the supporting team.
This discussion also explains the depth of the popularity of the village game, which is a localized manifestation of the fact that team sports such as soccer are rooted in the society and the cultural identity of the community. This "soil-grown activity" has also become a local social symbol and cultural identity that is both distinctive and uniform from village to village.
According to the arguments of anthropologists and the actual situation of Chinese soccer, in order to do well in soccer, it is really necessary to return to the masses, provide emotional value to the audience, and allow more and more local people and enterprises to integrate into the local team, so that the team can take root here and grow into a pillar of strength in the soil of their hometown.
A $500,000 sponsorship for a foot spa really isn't much, and I can only hope that this spark is one of the sources of the wildfire that will start a prairie fire in the future.
