Beckham lights up Super League jerseys and destroys media doubts: When will Super League really become a career?

Beckham was appointed as the ambassador of the Chinese Super League.

Two news about the Super League became the hot topic of discussion yesterday.

One thing is quite exciting: David Beckham will become the international ambassador of the Super League. The football star with the highest attention and good reputation in the world will promote the Super League to the whole world through a series of media exposure, portraits and advertisements. As the behind-the-scenes promoter of this endorsement activity, CCTV IMG is a partner of American International Management Group (IMG) and a partner of Super League Company. Beckham's endorsement of Super League aims to promote the overseas copyright of Super League. Of course, because of the conflict with the Champions League, Beckham will not appear at the opening ceremony of the Super League in the new season, and his advertisements and portraits will not appear in domestic leagues, but it does not rule out that he will participate in some public welfare activities of China youth football.

The other is the grass-roots fans' spit on the Super League jerseys: Yesterday Nike officially announced the home jerseys of Super League 16 teams. Although Nike emphasized the technological content and environmental protection materials of jerseys, and said that the design of jerseys has classic elements representing the urban background and team culture, it is obvious that the slightly monotonous jerseys have not been bought by many fans, and have been frequently voiced in Weibo and various forums. Zhao Yiwen Junzhe, captain of Liaoning team, publicly expressed his dissatisfaction with the design of Liaoning team jerseys in Weibo. Although Zhao Junzhe quickly deleted Weibo and laughed at himself for "offending people, I will shut up for three days", this somewhat reflected the dissatisfaction of the outside world with the jersey design of the Super League team.

Of course, it is not just these two topics that have recently paid attention to the Super League. Including the industry punishment that the Football Association finally imposed on China football against gambling, Li Zhangzhu went to Dalian on suspicion of negotiating to coach Albin, Zheng Long, the core player of Qingdao Zhongneng, moved to Guizhou for tens of millions of yuan, and even the war of words between Guangzhou Evergrande and Korean media about "Evergrande canceled the warm-up match because of players' drinking" can be regarded as hot topics before the opening of the new season of the Super League. And everything, whether positive or negative news, projects the status quo of brand building in Super League.

Super League Company operates in a unified way.

In 2009, Nike officially reached an agreement with the China Football Association. At least in the next five or even ten years, all Super League clubs will use Nike brand jerseys and match balls, and Nike will also undertake all Super League clubs' clothing and equipment. Nan Yong, who was in charge of the China Football Association at that time, was once regarded as outstanding because of this big bill of $200 million in ten years.

But now, obviously, the management of China Football Association underestimated the development speed of Super League. Nike "buys out" the largest commercial platform in Super League with an average of less than 20 million dollars every year, which has not taken into account the factor of "extremely low cost performance of clothes and equipment" that has always made the club complain (all the equipment provided by Nike is calculated according to the market price, and if the club buys it by itself, it can get at least a discount of 30% or even higher, and a considerable part of the equipment is of poor quality. Some of Nike's high-end high-quality goods, which are never within the scope of supply), so this seemingly beautiful business contract has been implemented until the fifth season, but it has been widely criticized. The so-called "monotonous design, lack of personality" and other external complaints are more or less just the venting of dissatisfaction with this inferior contract by people in the industry, including the Super League club.

In fact, under the rule of the Super League, the value created for this signboard of the Super League is indeed limited. Take 20 1 1 season as an example, the dividends of each club are 365,438+10,000 yuan, which is absolutely a drop in the bucket compared with the actual investment of each club. The Super League claims that the income of the whole 20 1 1 season is more than 90 million RMB, and the club share only accounts for about 50%. Considering the low labor costs (many employees are China Football Association staff) and operating costs of the Super League, the dividend ratio of the club itself is extremely unfair. More importantly, in the case that the entire Super League club invests 200 million yuan and 300 million yuan a season, the annual revenue of Super League company is less than 1 billion yuan, and its market operation ability is really worrying. Moreover, in the past two seasons, Dalian Wanda Group has become the title sponsor of Super League, contributing more than 20 million title fees every year, which has nothing to do with Super League companies.

As the China Football Association (Foot Control Center) holds 34% of the shares, the Chinese Super League actually has the absolute right to speak. The remaining 16 clubs each own only 4% of the shares, which theoretically seems to have the energy of "jointly forcing the palace". But in fact, under the current football management system in China, it is difficult for Chinese Super League clubs to have autonomy when the separation of management and running cannot be realized and the professional league is in the foreseeable future. They can only sit back and watch the Super League, which is likely to become a "golden signboard" in the future, and continue to be dusty under the control of mediocre and even greedy Super League companies.

Collective loss of professional standardization

It is a positive attempt to let Beckham speak for the overseas copyright. However, as far as the branding of the Super League is concerned, the "star farce" of Shanghai Shenhua last season ended in discord between Drogba and Anelka and Shenhua, which is probably an irreparable loss of brand reputation after ten times of "Beckham endorsement". Because Shanghai Shenhua once talked nonsense and vilified hype, the damage to the Super League brand can be imagined.

Although investors like Zhu Jun belong to the category of "my boss is the best", in fact, the Super League lacks professional norms from top to bottom, from league management (Super League company) to club operation, to media reports, and even the behavior of fans.

Take the media as an example. Today, China's media influence and coverage have already surpassed the level of football in China and reached the most advanced level in the world. But in the whole media operation, there are still many negative hype and even fabrication. When the parties (Super League clubs or players) are backward in their own consciousness and don't know how to solve it properly, the energy of such false negative reports can easily radiate and cause damage to the Super League brand.

Under the unique internal and external public opinion environment in China, many negative events are bound to be followed up, especially foreign media, which are more willing to further ferment similar fan riots and star scandals. Perhaps in the eyes of most people, China football is always in the forefront of excitement, but the actual brand damage is difficult to bridge.

The overall brand awareness of the club is backward.

Under the control of the Super League Company, the commercial operation space left for the clubs in the Super League is really small, including the sales of stadium advertisements, and it is also restricted by the previously widely questioned "Lehman Optoelectronics" incident. The Super League Company snatched the best resources in various stadium advertisements. But even so, the Super League club itself has a lot of problems, the most obvious point is that it is indifferent to market awareness and does not attach importance to brand building.

A few years ago, the reporter had contact with the management of a super club. At that time, "brand" was mentioned in the chat. He suggested that the club should infiltrate into major primary and secondary schools, let players go to the campus irregularly to interact with teenagers, invite students to the club to observe training, experience life, cultivate their own fans and build brands. However, the management of the club refused on the grounds that "we are short of manpower" and "we are worried that it will affect the players' training competition".

In fact, all Super League clubs rarely appear in newspapers in similar public welfare activities and brand building, and no one inside the club is specifically responsible for public relations and brand matters. In the view of the management of most Super League clubs, it is the main content of "brand building" to let the media report less negative news about the team, but they seldom think of actively shaping their own brands from the front, which greatly affects the positive effect of the whole Super League brand.

Similar to Beckham's promotion of overseas copyright of Super League and publicity of Super League, it is of course a gimmick. But from a higher perspective, if the Super League can do a good job in the vast domestic market and keep the enthusiasm of domestic merchants above the Super League, it can already expand geometrically at the existing level-as we all know, the largest market in the world is now in China, which is even the global theme in the next 20 or 20 years, and football is no exception. If we have a super league with healthy and orderly organization, reasonable profit structure and wonderful games, it will be a super joke that the current season's income is less than 1 100 million.

What is certain is that, no matter from the macro environment or the logical level, with such a beautiful vision, the Super League will come one day calmly, and the timetable is in the hands of all those related to the Super League and China football.