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"We don't dare to answer the phone now. There are too many misunderstandings. (Our) training first depends on whether the child wants professional training out of interest or vacation training, and it also depends on the needs and plans of the parents. Vacation training is divided into 10 days, 20 days and 30 days. The price varies in winter and summer vacations and every year. It is determined according to the overall training market, and some are high and some are low." August 13, 2024Chen Meng(University of Science and Technology of China) A coach from a table tennis specialty school said this when a reporter from the First Financial Daily inquired about the relevant situation.

According to the admission brochure, classes are divided into four types: kindergarten group, primary school group, junior and senior high school group (single recruitment direction) and junior and senior high school group (high level direction). The training fee is 4,000 yuan per month, which is 48,000 yuan a year. Cultural classes are taught in the morning, and English is taught starting from the first grade.

After inquiries, the First Financial reporter found that the school has been established for two years and its prices this year are medium among private schools in Qingdao: some private schools charge as high as 98,000 yuan; in addition to table tennis, some tennis schools charge about 40,000 yuan a year.

However, it is known from public information that the special school has no direct relationship with Chen Meng. The company directly related to Chen Meng is another company registered by Chen Meng's parents, which registered the "Chen Meng" trademark as early as 2012 and the "HOPE WANG" trademark in February this year. Registering a name trademark is a basic operation to protect the rights of star athletes. For example,Zheng QinwenIn December 2023, he applied for the "Zheng Qinwen" name trademark and portrait trademark.

Establishing specialty schools and clubs, as well as starting a business to build a sports star’s personal sports brand, is basically one of the more common choices for active or retired star athletes.

A senior industry insider believes that if young athletes such as Chen Meng and Zheng Qinwen start a business again, their background is still in the stage of pulling back between the two tracks. There are many dimensions to measure the significance and value of the 40 Olympic champions, but from the perspective of the sports industry, we should jump out of the narrow "eyeball" economy of "hundreds of millions of income" of their personal brand value, and pay more attention to whether they can promote the market development of related sports projects, whether they can attract more capital to enter the sports industry, expand the influence of their respective projects, and benefit more people. Enjoying the happiness brought by sports is also an important dimension.

Olympic champions start their own businesses

China Business News learned that the Chen Meng (University of Science and Technology of China) Table Tennis School was sponsored by Chen Meng Charity and caused a huge sensation in Qingdao when it was first established.

"Professionals do professional things, teaching is teaching, and (we) are not good at explaining anything." The coach told reporters.

Public information shows that Chen Meng (USTC) Table Tennis Specialty School was jointly established by USTC (Qingdao) Affiliated School and USTC Qingdao Affiliated Experimental School under Beijing Kuangao Education Group and Qingdao Xinmengtong Table Tennis Sports Club, which trained Olympic champion Chen Meng. According to Qichacha, the club was founded by Chen Meng's mentor Dong Xi in 2019 with a registered capital of 30,000 yuan. The club is a talent training base for Luneng Table Tennis Club.

The school is located on the fifth floor of the comprehensive gymnasium of the Affiliated School of the University of Science and Technology of China (Qingdao). The training venue covers an area of ​​2,000 square meters, and the hardware facilities are comparable to those of national-level training venues. Its vision is to provide professional talents for colleges and universities, provincial and municipal teams, the national youth team, the national junior team, and the national team. Since its establishment, the school has trained outstanding students who have not only won gold and silver medals in major competitions of the school, but also three players have been selected for the national team.

The real connection with Chen Meng is the Qingdao Menghaiyuan Cultural Communication Company founded by Chen Meng's mother. At present, the company has only registered two trademarks, "Chen Meng" and "HOPE WANG". The former is a necessary action because there have been incidents of athletes' names being registered in recent Olympic Games.

"As an intangible asset of the company, registering such trademarks is the most normal operation for athletes, not to mention Olympic champions. After retirement or transformation, the brand value of sports stars is very important," said Hu Shunqiang, founder of North Star Capital.

From Li Ning, the gymnastics prince who became a brand tycoon, to Li Dashuang, Li Xiaoshuang and Zou Shiming, and then to the Olympic championXu XinThe first trendy table tennis hall under their personal brand was unveiled in Pudong. They are all living every stage of their lives seriously. Some have achieved commercial success, while others are still groping.

"If we look closely, we will find that athletes who choose to start their own businesses also bear the mark of the times. In addition to entering the core parts of the sports industry, such as the mature market-oriented clothing and equipment fields, the first generation of entrepreneurs also entered the real estate industry; the second generation of athletes are more diverse, including personal brands, clothing and shoes, clubs, and the establishment of sports industry funds. They are basically in the process of exploring the marketization of some content industries in the 'sports industry'. Retired athletes who enter the financial circle play a leading role in the industry itself." Hu Shunqiang said in an interview with a reporter from China Business Network.

Capital once spent a lot of money to "chase the ball"

As the most typical case of Chinese athletes' entrepreneurship, "Li Ning" was selected as one of the top ten most valuable clothing brands in the world in 2023, with a brand value of up to US$3.065 billion.

"But it would be difficult to copy Li Ning." Hu Shunqiang said that every era has its own "heroes" and their circumstances are different.

As one of the most outstanding athletes of the 20th century, Li Ning founded the Li Ning Company in 1990.

In that year, the "sports industry of the modern market system" was still in its infancy. In 1993, the then State Sports Commission issued the "Decision on Deepening Sports Reform", which put important topics such as the professionalization of sports and the reform of the competition system on the agenda.

It was under this background that Chinese football embarked on the path of professional development, and the first wave of Chinese capital investment in the sports industry began. Of course, in the wave of Chinese football professional exploration, most of the stories of the "rich" of each era followed the trend. A reporter from China Business News once did a statistics, and found that half of the real estate, energy, and Internet giants that were once ranked in the top ten of the Forbes Rich List had been involved in the sports industry during their diversified development.

At that time, if a startup company like Li Ning wanted to grow rapidly, it mostly sponsored Chinese delegations or sports teams to conduct business, open stores, build brands, and then diversify its business, repeatedly seeking change amid controversy.

"Everyone is observing the professional development status of China's 'three major balls', especially football. After all, if you want to make a fuss about the content IP of the development of the sports industry, the football industry with 200 million fans is the weather vane. After all, the income from sporting goods and equipment once accounted for more than 70% of China's sports industry. In Europe and the United States and other regions, the larger proportion comes from the income from broadcasting rights and commercial development rights surrounding the event IP. With this as the core, it has created international brands of clothing, footwear and equipment. But this domestic weather vane is wavering, and some sports in some niche areas are also on the verge of trial." The above-mentioned senior person believes.

During this period, he became a national idol.Liu XiangTogether with Yao Ming, people can see the charm of "scientific training", "technological sports" and "professional sports", but event IP still cannot become the protagonist of China's sports industry. Most retired athletes who choose to start their own businesses are still in the field of sports equipment or training camps in their areas of expertise.

2009 was the year when the Chinese football world was hit by a storm of crackdown on counterfeiting and organized crime, and also the year when Chinese tennis began to test the waters. That year, the "Four Golden Flowers" went solo, allowing more people to learn about the highly commercialized sport of tennis.

"After 2014, there was the second wave of investment boom, which mainly came from the State Council's Document No. 46, 'Several Opinions on Accelerating the Development of Sports Industry and Promoting Sports Consumption', which proposed that by 2025, the total scale of China's sports industry will exceed 5 trillion yuan," said Hu Shunqiang.

What’s interesting is that the core that various capitals are focusing on is the football IP that has “risen” from the trough. Some major clubs’ investments in 2016 were as high as 1 billion yuan. The sports industries of major Internet giants involve mergers and acquisitions of clubs and the high-priced purchase of event copyrights. Some clubs have been valued at as high as 15 billion yuan, and most sports venture capital funds start with tens of billions of yuan.

Amid the boiling tide of Internet thinking, most of the figures are business tycoons and football stars, while retired Olympic champion athletes rarely appear in front of the media.

In 2015,KuramaPrince Xing Aowei and several friends in the sports world jointly established "Champion VC", an angel investment fund focusing on the sports industry; in 2016, "Queen of Table Tennis"Deng YapingHe announced the establishment of a sports industry investment fund named after him, with an initial scale of 5 billion yuan, mainly investing in sports events, venue operations, sports Internet and other fields.

The list of richest athletes still includes Li Ning, Yao Ming, Liu Xiang, Yi Jianlian and others. Except for entrepreneur Li Ning, the others are mostly calculated based on commercial endorsements and event income. The investment income of their personal business empires is not detailed.

"In the investment field, everyone should be similar. We also entered the sports industry during this period and established a sports industry investment management company. Our business has blossomed in all aspects, including football clubs, e-sports, outdoor sports, ski brands, etc." Hu Shunqiang said that some investments were trapped by listed companies, some investments entered at the angel investment stage and exited at the VC/PE stage, which was a mixed bag.

Sports industry investment becomes rational

In fact, after the Olympics, there was a discussion thatPan ZhanleWho is more likely to become the third national idol after Liu Xiang and Yao Ming, Zheng Qinwen or others?

Some believe it was Pan Zhanle, while others believe it was Zheng Qinwen. These two are also different representatives of the dual-track system. Pan Zhanle was selected and trained in a mature system, while Zheng Qinwen came from a market-oriented system. But the common point between the two is that both sports have a certain scale of consumer market. Unofficial statistics show that there are 80 million swimming enthusiasts and 20 million tennis enthusiasts in the country.

This is something that niche sports like fencing envy.

"Honestly speaking, I hope more 'Chen Mengs' can devote themselves to such special schools integrating sports and education for public welfare. We coaches can't even get into the school, even if it's free to enter and teach as an interest class. It's ridiculous to rely entirely on the club's own individual customers to select fencing talents." A coach of a fencing and tennis club in Shanxi expressed envy of the Chen Meng Special School.

He said: "The reason is simple, it is the same for any sport. Training once a week is just a hobby. To achieve results, you need to train at least two or three times a week, preferably five days. This shows that the administrators of this school understand the rules of talent training, and we have to give them a thumbs up for this."

For event IP, enthusiasts are the foundation of consumers, and if niche sports are to be promoted, selecting talents and "integrating sports and education" are good paths.

"We are looking at this Olympics as an investor, so we are relatively calm and rational. We are looking at events such as golf, street dance, and tennis. We are also talking closely with familiar companies in various fields, including projects of 'sports and education integration', to understand whether there is any new space." Hu Shunqiang said, "Compared to the past, we have become more calm and steady, and we maintain our passion and persistence in each sub-field. This is extremely valuable in the current environment where things are not going smoothly. Going slower and more steadily may lead to faster and better results."

(This article comes from China Business Network)