In the past "flame oil" and today "chilling", the Super League team's "consumption downgrade" phenomenon is obvious.
01 Every cloud has a silver lining.
The "consumer downgrade" is not just about one team, but the transformation of the entire Premier League.
The 2024 Premier League season kicked off on a chilly spring day, March 1st.
Despite the popularity of the markets around the world, with the Phoenix Hill Stadium in Chengdu's Rongcheng having 40,088 spectators for the first round, the commercial value of the Chinese Super League is not what it used to be in the "Golden Dollar Era". In short, the sponsorship market for Chinese Super League teams has shrunk.
The most intuitive embodiment is the reduction of Chinese super sponsors. Compared with last season, Ping An of China, Hutu Auto Repair, Tencent Sports and other three-year gold masters withdrew. Compared with the 2022 season, Mengniu, Laoshan Beer and DHL, SAIC Group and other companies with strong financial resources have also withdrawn.
This season's Chinese Super League sponsors list
The title sponsor has also been changed from Ping An to China Resources Jardine Matheson (CR Jardine Matheson). According to media reports, CR Yeebo's title sponsorship is priced at 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 Chinese Super League title has been halved.
At the beginning of last year, the person in charge of the Chinese Super League frankly said that the Chinese Super League can not blindly pursue big sponsors, but also welcome some 8 million, 10 million small sponsors. It can be seen that the brand appeal of the Chinese Super League is not as strong as in the past, and the space for choosing sponsors is limited.
The entire Chinese Super League is difficult to attract sponsorship, the teams have to further "consumer downgrade" to attract sponsorship.
But in my opinion, this "consumption downgrade" is not necessarily a bad thing. In the "Golden Dollar Era", the commercial value of the Chinese Super League and even various teams is high, and there is also a lot of foam in the Chinese soccer market. For example, in 2015, Olympic Power obtained the broadcasting rights of the Chinese Super League at a high price of 8 billion yuan for five years. In retrospect, the quality of products exported by the Chinese Super League is clearly not in line with this price. In addition, players were traded at inflated prices. at the end of 2016, Zhang Chenglin, who had little experience with the national team, joined Guangzhou Evergrande at a sky-high price of more than $100 million. In hindsight, the deal was surprising and absurd, if not a little unbelievable.
Therefore, I think the Chinese Super League's "consumption downgrade" is the return to rationality, so that the overall level of the league is basically affordable to the business investment. Fill the bowl with as much water as possible. The "real estate league" game has proved to be unsustainable. The clubs themselves lack the ability to produce blood and are completely dependent 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 potential crisis will always erupt.
From the experience of low-level European leagues (after all, the Chinese Super League can't match the size and capacity of the Big Five), surviving on one's own efforts is the normal state of professional soccer. However, we are always envious of the European superstar teams with eyes full of tall sponsors. When we look down the road, we realize that most of the sponsors of the smaller teams are small local businesses and shopkeepers.
But you have to realize that these small businesses and small shopkeepers, full of local characteristics, are the medium between the team and the fans, and the economic foundation of the team's local roots. As the head of "Moonlight in the Lotus Pond" said: "The founders of our store are all from Cangzhou. Everyone has loved soccer since they were young. 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 always resonates with the team.
In the Chinese Super League "consumer downgrade", the Chinese team's sponsors are also few and far between. In the match with Singapore, the national football team's sponsors are still the old four: Nike, Ping An, Mengniu, Yibao, the lack of the highest level of sponsors.
According to past experience, the preliminaries should be a good opportunity for companies 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 unusually cold, 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 too 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 the positive or negative impact on the business depends entirely on their lives. 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 abyss of public opinion...
Of course, national soccer teams sometimes give back to their sponsors, and in 2001, the national soccer team made it to the World Cup. At that time, the main sponsor Philips gained a lot of attention. They also took advantage of the heat to organize the national soccer team out of the line to celebrate the party, broadcast on a number of television stations across the country, to further enhance brand awareness.
But there are too 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 is not an isolated case. Many professional teams have already reached a cooperation intention with local enterprises. As mentioned earlier, the 4s store that sponsors Tianjin Jinmen Tiger is a local store, and Jinan's local milk tea "Granting Tea to People" has also entered Shandong Taishan's sponsor list 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 enterprises and local teams can make local fans have a stronger sense of belonging, thus improving the fit between the teams and local fans, and really making a team become the local "image spokesman" and "defender of honor". From an economic point of view, with soccer as a link, sponsors are more likely to expand their influence on local fans, promote the business to build a good image, improve the quality of service, and truly realize the win-win situation of the soccer economy.
In my opinion, the object of study for Chinese professional soccer should not be 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 big five 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 deeper reasons for 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, which is both differentiated and unified from village to village.
According to anthropologists' arguments and the reality of Chinese soccer, to do well in soccer, you really need to return to the masses, provide emotional value to the audience, and integrate more and more local people and businesses into the local teams, so that the teams can take root here and thrive in the soil of their hometowns.
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.
