At the beginning of the season, among the seven teams playing in different locations, Shanghai Harbour and Shanghai Shenhua have set Dalian Sports Center Stadium and Jinzhou Stadium as their home grounds respectively. Meanwhile, five teams - Beijing Guoan, Shenzhen, Hebei, Cangzhou Lions and Tianjin Jinmen Tigers - have made Haikou their home ground for the time being. Guoan is actively negotiating with Rizhao in Shandong Province, expecting to move their home ground to Rizhao, while Shenzhen is also in urgent negotiation, aiming to set up their home ground at Nanhai Stadium in Foshan. According to the agreement of the Chinese Super League this season, if a team wishes to change its home stadium in the second stage of the game, it only needs to apply to the organizer two rounds in advance. Therefore, the possibility of Guoan and Shenzhen leaving Haikou for the second phase of the competition cannot be ruled out.
Although the Chinese Super League (CSL) is gradually resuming the home-and-away system, crisis is still lurking. As we all know, with the end of the golden dollar soccer era, many clubs in the Chinese Super League have different degrees of salary arrears, and even individual clubs even basic operations are in trouble, such as Chongqing Liangjiang Athletic Football Club has announced the dissolution. Before the start of the season, the Chinese Super League had stipulated three phased repayment of salary arrears time nodes, requiring the repayment of 30% of the total amount of salary arrears before July 31, or will be deducted three points and prohibited from registering new players in the second transfer window. At present, a number of unpaid clubs, including Guangzhou City, have submitted to the CFA the unpaid salary repayment form signed by the relevant personnel. Wuhan Changjiang, which has been in the spotlight for a long time, paid a portion of their wages on August 5, and the players have already embarked on an away trip to Meizhou, hoping that the club can avoid the penalty of being suspended from registering players in the winter window.
At present, a number of Chinese Super League clubs have difficulties in promoting diversified share reform due to past debt problems, and it is difficult to maintain the long-term operating funds of the clubs, which is a major hidden danger for the sound development of the Chinese Super League. Recently, Evergrande Group, which has a tight capital chain, has issued an announcement announcing the return of the land use right of Evergrande Football Stadium, and the project is expected to lose 1.255 billion yuan. In order to attract new investors, Meizhou Hakka Club, the promoted horse in the Chinese Super League, has listed the club's first team in the Southern Joint Property Rights Trading Center sports industry resources trading platform, priced at 90 million yuan to 100 million yuan, which is the first Chinese Super League club to put its equity into the property rights trading center. At present, it seems that the only way to ensure the sustainable development of the Chinese Super League is for Chinese Super League clubs to realize a comprehensive share reform. The Chinese Super League fixture schedule to take into account the cost of travel, the last four rounds and the World Cup "collision". Of the 18 Chinese Super League clubs, 11 have returned to their home stadiums, and another 7 have failed to return to their home stadiums, mainly because the clubs belong to the area of the mega-city, which had a large-scale epidemic, and the epidemic is still in fear, so the epidemic prevention policy is still very strict, and the relevant departments in the area are reluctant to approve the Chinese Super League such large-scale sporting events. In addition to the reasons for local approval, there are also individual clubs that are reluctant to return to their home stadiums due to their own severe financial difficulties. Restoring the home-and-away system would increase the club's transportation, hospitality and home security costs, so they prefer to go to a neutral home in Haikou. In a neutral home, the tournament organizer can advance the cost of food and accommodation, thus alleviating the club's financial crisis.
As a matter of fact, when the Chinese Super League was formulating the second phase of the schedule, in addition to ensuring as much as possible the fair participation of the teams from the competition point of view, but also to a certain extent in order to help the teams as much as possible to save the cost of travel under the system of home and away matches. This season's Chinese Super League schedule is mainly in accordance with the 18 clubs double round-robin home and away game system, a total of 34 rounds throughout the season, but in order to reduce the teams in the travel due to the excessive number of flights, away from the far distance brought about by the pressure of travel costs, so it can not fully follow the previous year's law of a home and an away, individual clubs can not be fully realized in one home and one away schedule arrangements. But even so, according to the current schedule, the last four rounds of the Super League is still inevitable with the Qatar World Cup "crash".
Currently, there is a huge difference in climate between the north and south of China, which is an objective factor that must be considered for the home and away match system. Currently, the Haikou area is in the hottest stage of the year, the humidity and sultry times may make Beijing Guoan and other northern clubs can not adapt. It is for the consideration of the climate difference is too large, the current national security is still in full communication with Shandong Rizhao, hope that this season's home fell in Rizhao, so that the players can be free from the Haikou climate hot suffering. The Shenzhen team also does not want to Haikou area as the home field, they prefer to be located in Foshan Nanhai Stadium.
In addition to the excessive heat in the Haikou area, the issue of severe cold in the north at the end of the season must also be treated with caution. Given that the last round of the Chinese Super League has entered December, and the north of China (such as Jilin and other places) in November has been extremely cold, not suitable for outdoor games. Therefore, in the closing stage of the season, the northern teams have to play consecutive away games in the south for a long time. For example, Changchun Yatai's schedule is very typical, they once had to seven consecutive home games, followed by seven consecutive away games. The club cautiously pushed forward the home opening program, Henan temporarily open 30% of the audience Although the Chinese Super League resumed the home and away system, but as of now, the real clear statement from the first game of the second stage can be open to the public ticket sales, allowing the audience to enter the club or a few clubs such as Dalian and Henan. Most of the return home clubs are still in consultation with the local epidemic prevention department of the specific methods of spectator admission, the initial only open a few places, is expected to follow the gradual release of the spectators into the field. Of course, there are also individual financial pressure on the club due to the inability to pay the home security costs, after comprehensive consideration, simply continue to empty the game. At present, Dalian people, Shanghai seaport, Shanghai Shenhua three teams' home stadiums are located in Dalian's Puwan Stadium, Dalian Sports Center Stadium, Jinzhou Stadium. Dalian currently introduced a fan admission policy is open to the number of spectators in each home can not exceed 20,000 people, and within six months was diagnosed as a confirmed case of the crowd is not allowed to enter, and the provisions of the regulations are in accordance with the relevant provisions of the city of Dalian epidemic prevention. A temporary parking lot will be built in Dalian for fans to park their private cars and fan buses. Local bus companies will provide fan buses free of charge, while the visiting team's fan team will need to report their activities in advance with the visiting club and the home match organizer.
Zhengzhou Navigation Stadium, the home ground of Henan Songshan Longmen FC, will open 30% of the spectator seats in the 11th round of matches, with casual tickets priced at RMB 50, RMB 100 and RMB 150 respectively. Real-name ticket purchase, real-name admission, strictly in accordance with the requirements of epidemic prevention and control measures such as code scanning, temperature measurement, wearing masks, double-code checking and other epidemic prevention and control measures. Ticketing small program after the opening of the ticket caused fans crazy rush tickets, once into a paralyzed state, can be seen in the away from the Chinese Super League matches after two and a half years, the Chinese Super League fans are eager to get back to the home to watch the game of the kind of warm atmosphere. At present, Guangzhou City and Meizhou Hakka have made it clear that the 11th round of home matches will not be open to fans for the time being. And home temporarily located in Haikou district of the Shenzhen team has also made it clear that the home games are not open to the public for the time being. In fact, for some of the financial pressure on the club, they need to calculate the home ticket sales and security costs of the two accounts, if found that the security costs may be greater than the potential box office revenue, then temporarily not open to the public ticket sales from a purely financial point of view is undoubtedly more cost-effective. Cities that have seen sporadic outbreaks in the recent past may also want to follow the advice of their local epidemic authorities and try to control the size of their crowds.
The biggest hidden problem of the Chinese Super League clubs is that the past era of gold dollar soccer led to high debt, so that now want to promote diversified share reform, the high debt burden (mainly player salaries) so that potential investors are afraid and hesitant to move forward. Currently, only a few teams, such as Shandong Taishan and Henan Songshan Longmen, which rely on state-owned enterprises, have successfully completed their shareholding reforms and have relatively stable financial chains. Most of the share reform stalled state of the club is mostly because of the past debt burden is too large, the original investors and potential investors in how to deal with the club's old debt problems can not reach agreement, Chongqing team is simply because the share reform stalled and announced the dissolution.
Before the start of this season, the Chinese Football Association (CFA) and the preparatory group of the Chinese Football League (CFL) issued a notice on April 3 on the work related to the Chinese Super League (CSL), Chinese First Division (CFA) and Chinese Second Division (CSB) clubs for the 2022 season, which explicitly requires that "no new salary arrears shall occur in this season for the clubs, and the problem of arrears of salaries shall be resolved in three phases, i.e., not less than 30% of the total amount of arrears of salaries to be resolved by July 31st this year; not less than 70% of the total amount of arrears of salaries to be resolved by October 31st; and all arrears of salaries to be resolved by December 31st. The clubs that have not completed the repayment by the corresponding time will have to pay the outstanding wages in full by December 31st. Clubs that fail to complete repayment by the corresponding time will be subject to different levels of penalties such as banning the registration of players in the second transfer window of the 2022 season, deduction of league points, relegation or disqualification from access." Solving the problem of salary arrears is only the first step in defusing the Super League, and if you really want to realize sustainable development, you must push forward the clubs to realize diversified share reform in the future. Take Guangzhou City Club, for example, where the problem of unpaid wages is more prominent. Due to the inability to pay for home security costs, Guangzhou City's 11th round of home games will not be open to the public. Previously, Guangzhou City was once rumored to be successful in its shareholding reform, when Fortune Group and local Guangzhou state-owned enterprises such as Guangzhou Automobile, Urban Construction and Yuexiu reached a framework schedule for shareholding reform. However, the three state-owned enterprises have since discovered in their due diligence on the club that Guangzhou City's actual debt is much larger than the initially communicated debt scale, which has surprised the state-owned enterprises a bit, and have re-demanded that Guangzhou City must resolve these off-balance-sheet debt issues.
According to the progress schedule of the share reform framework at that time, the share reform should be completed by July 31st. But now that deadline has passed, but there has been no breakthrough in Guangzhou City's share reform. The good news is that Guangzhou City has successfully submitted the outstanding salary repayment form with players' signatures before the first time point of July 31 to resolve the outstanding salary, and has temporarily survived the disaster. Guangzhou Evergrande Football Club, another representative of debt-ridden gold-dollar soccer, has struggled to control its players' wage bill this season, and has long since lost its shine. in the evening of June 4, Guangzhou's majority shareholder, China Evergrande Group, announced that the company had decided to surrender the land-use rights of the Xiecun district plot in Guangzhou's Panyu District, where Guangzhou's 80,000-player home stadium was planned to be constructed, and that the transferee would pay a total of about 5.52 billion yuan of the The transferee will pay a total of approximately RMB5.52 billion for the refund of the transfer premium, which will be utilized for the Group's debt repayment. Upon completion of the transfer, Evergrande will no longer hold any interest in the land parcel.
Public information shows that at the beginning of 2020, Evergrande had obtained the right to use this piece of land with a total area of 499,100 square meters at a price of 6.813 billion yuan, and Evergrande plans to use this piece of land to build the Evergrande Football Club's home stadium which can accommodate at least 80,000 people, and at the same time, with a variety of commercial culture and tourism projects, with a total planned investment of 12 billion yuan, which is scheduled to be completed and put into use at the end of 2022. Evergrande chairman Xu Jiayin personally designed the "parallel lotus" soccer club design program was once on the Internet to cause a hot debate, plans to make the stadium become the world's largest, the highest grade, the most complete support, the highest technological content, the highest number of seats of the international top professional soccer club. On April 16, 2020, Evergrande Football Club officially started construction. However, the construction of the stadium has since come to a standstill due to Evergrande Group's tight financial chain. Now, Evergrande has decided to return the site, and given that the construction of the stadium has already commenced, the transferee is willing to continue to utilize the constructed works of the soccer club site block within the site, and the transferor will be compensated for the relevant construction costs of RMB 2,092 million it has already invested in such constructed works, as agreed in the original contract. However, even so, Evergrande will record a loss of approximately RMB1,255 million for this land transfer.
Throughout the Chinese Super League clubs, many teams are in debt because of the previous gold dollar soccer, there is no debt pressure is only a very few, and the Chinese Super League promotion horse Meizhou Hakka Football Club has publicly stated that they have never owed wages, and has never been in debt. However, with the promotion of Meizhou Hakka to the Chinese Super League, the investment cost of the club is destined to rise in the future. Therefore, Meizhou Hakka Football Club also saves for a rainy day and hopes to introduce new investors. Thus, under the promotion of Meizhou Sports Bureau, the equity of the first team of Meizhou Hakka Club will be on the shelves of the sports industry resources trading platform of the Southern Joint Property Rights Trading Center. This move is aimed at promoting the club's equity diversification and share reform, which is the first Chinese Super League club to put its equity into a property rights trading center.
Meizhou Hakka club first-line team valuation of more than 300 million yuan, but in order to attract investors, the team's share price discounted for 90 million to 100 million yuan. Meizhou Hakka boss Wei Jinping said, from 2021 to date on the team's investment of about 1.2 billion or 3 billion yuan, but in the valuation does not require the calculation of the previous investment, his requirements for investors is, as long as the team does not leave Meizhou, all conditions can be negotiated. And, Meizhou Hakka emphasized that the team has never owed wages, and there is no debt, so investors do not need to have any worries.
Right now, the Chinese Super League to restore home and away, not only from the box office revenue and other perspectives to allow clubs to increase revenue, more importantly, with the recovery of the fan market and media exposure, is expected to allow clubs in the business development and to attract investment and other levels of the gradual out of the doldrums. Previously, by the resolution of the board of directors of the Chinese Super League, from the 11th round will open more advertising rights, including the game uniform advertising space to 5, training uniforms and warm-up uniforms open advertising space, etc., these initiatives will, to a certain extent, increase the club's business development resources, and temporarily alleviate the current situation of the club's financial chain tension. In short, the Chinese Super League over the past three years due to the epidemic and fell into an unprecedented trough, but from a positive level, the troubled Chinese Super League clubs are expected to become investors in the eyes of the "investment value of the depression", once the Chinese Super League through the home and away matches to gather popularity to restore the commercial value of the clubs will certainly help accelerate the reform of the shares. Of course, the complex process of share reform for this season's Super League is far from water to quench the thirst of the near, the rest of the season, the clubs must work hard to open source to ensure that the successful completion of the season's matches, and this is undoubtedly a schedule of matches and the World Cup collision is a greater challenge, the Super League, how many clubs can successfully cope with this challenge?
