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Yesterday, August 27th, Beijing time, the WTT China Grand Slam ticket sales began, but once the ticket prices were announced, they immediately caused an uproar.

Although the official press release states that "ticket prices start from 88 yuan", I believe everyone understands the word "starting from".

As expected, 88 yuan can only buy tickets for the first round of qualifying. Once the official elimination round begins, the price of tickets starts to rise rapidly. In the finals, the price of tickets is even more shocking - even the cheapest E zone costs 888 yuan, and the inner field A zone is as high as 1688 yuan.

Even without considering how many people can buy tickets at the original price (you know the national conditions), the ticket price does seem a little high.

It is no wonder that many table tennis fans shouted on their personal social media that they could not watch the game and would not buy tickets!

For comparison, the ticket prices for the Chinese Super League Shanghai Derby that just ended were 380 to 880 yuan; the ticket prices for the upcoming League of Legends LPL Summer Finals were 388 to 1088 yuan; and the ticket prices for Andy Lau's concert in mainland China were 780 to 2580 yuan.

Also, the ticket prices for the WTT Singapore Grand Slam, which is of similar standard, are roughly in this range.

Considering that the table tennis hall can only accommodate a limited number of spectators, this pricing seems reasonable as the top commercial table tennis event.

So, why do table tennis fans think the ticket price is too expensive and shout slogans about not buying tickets?

In fact, this incident is indeed an unprovoked disaster for the Chinese Grand Slam - most table tennis fans are not really complaining about the high ticket prices, they are actually venting their anger at being used as "money-making tools" by the event organizers.

Audiences who have been following table tennis events should have some basic understanding of the invasion of the fan circle by the national table tennis team. If you don’t understand, you can refer to the author’s humble work:

All in all, a simple explanation is probably that among the fans who are really willing to pay for tickets to watch the national table tennis team, a considerable number of them are not attracted by the event, but simply want to support their favorite players.

Especially before and after the Paris Olympics, the three main female singles players' supporters were entangled in grievances...

And Fan Zhendong, who has long been unable to bear the harassment from the fan circle (at least he himself admitted in a TV interview that it was the fan circle's fault)...

This has made the national table tennis team's "anti-fan circle" a temporary "political correctness", although deeper questions such as "how to define fan circles", "what kind of behavior counts as fan circles", and "who is guiding fan circles" seem to be selectively avoided by everyone.

In fact, in the eyes of some die-hard table tennis fans, it is clear that the national table tennis team has blamed all its mistakes in youth training and management work in the past two years on the so-called "fan circle group" (although this group did do some bad things like hanging banners at the entrance of the General Administration), and has intentionally or unintentionally expanded the definition of the "fan circle group", and even subtly shown a trend of cutting off...

What is the result? Who will pay for the expensive WTT tickets? Will it be those "football experts" who only watch the TV broadcast?

All these actions made these die-hard fans feel betrayed and angry, especially when the promotional video of the WTT China Grand Slam was released online, this anger reached its peak.

In this promotional video, the lines of the other contestants are "See you in Beijing", but Sun Yingsha and Wang Chuqin's lines are "Come and buy your tickets"

Well, it turns out that the organizers of the event also know how to create CPs and stir up hype. Who are the fan clubs here?

And to be honest, in the eyes of table tennis fans, this way of eating is indeed a bit unsightly - when they want us to pay money, they use Shatou to appease the fans; when there is a problem, they say that the fan circle is influencing the national team?

Not to mention that just 10 days ago, the WTT officials just cheered for Moregaard and Chen Meng, and as we all know, these two defeated exactly...

This outrageous move really makes table tennis fans' scalps tingle, and no wonder they angrily said they didn't want to buy tickets.

Then again, the original purpose of WTT was to emulate professional tennis and further marketize and commercialize table tennis matches, in the hope that one day the influence of WTT's four Grand Slams will be equal to or even surpass the three major tournaments.

But having ambition is one thing, and having a difficult start is another. Of the four WTT Grand Slams originally planned, only the Singapore Grand Slam was successfully launched.

Even various championships and challenge tournaments have been complained by players due to their tight schedules and low prize money.

If Liu Guoliang had not joined WTT and brought in Chinese cities such as Xinxiang, Lanzhou and Taiyuan as host cities to support the event, I am afraid that WTT would have found it difficult to survive the difficult times after the epidemic.

In the past two years, as the Singapore Grand Slam has gradually become normalized (it can be seen that the organizers should have made money), the Saudi Grand Slam and the China Grand Slam have also been added.

It can be said that from the players to the organizers, to the market, the "Chinese element" in the WTT events is almost indelible. In comparison, Germany, Japan and South Korea, which occupy the second tier in the world table tennis arena, seem to have little interest in the WTT events, especially the T League organized by the Japan Table Tennis Association, which has now achieved a balance between income and expenditure (although it makes very little money), and will not easily give up the lucrative Japanese market.

Against this backdrop, whether the WTT China Grand Slam can be successfully implemented is actually related to a series of subsequent developments of many people and many major plans in the Chinese table tennis world. No wonder the organizers put in some thought and did some "deviant" publicity.

However, as I have said in previous articles, table tennis has certain inherent limitations in broadcasting. On the road to commercialization, it is difficult to achieve the same as football, basketball and tennis where the bulk of the revenue comes from television broadcasting fees. Naturally, it is also difficult to regard the event IP as the core asset of the project.

That’s why the tickets look expensive, and the souvenirs are indeed expensive.

Honestly speaking, commercialization is a matter of mutual consent. No matter what the price is, as long as the product can be sold, people can only praise it for being a great skill.

Moreover, through the exploration over the past decade or so, the sports idol strategy launched by the national table tennis team can be said to have achieved huge success in commercialization - regardless of off-court factors, you must admit that the current commercial influence of the national table tennis team has indeed allowed the players to obtain income levels far exceeding those of their predecessors.

The question is, what is the cost?

The price is that the event IP can only rely on deep binding with star players, which also led to WTT's forced operation of assigning 0 points if the game was abandoned. After all, once the star players are gone, the attractiveness of the event itself will be greatly reduced.

However, the intensive schedule and relatively low prize money also make the WTT event unattractive to real big names. For example, Chen Meng and Fan Zhendong withdrew from the competition without hesitation this time (2,000 points). Especially for a veteran like Fan Zhendong who is full of injuries, the WTT event system is definitely not friendly to him - after all, if he wants to slack off to recover from his injuries and impact the three major competitions, he may not even get enough entry points by then.

However, for new generation players such as Sun Yingsha and Wang Chuqin, they are more accustomed to such a commercial environment.

At least, in CCTV's Champions Face to Face program, when faced with the question raised by the host about how they view their fans, Fan Zhendong and Sun Yingsha gave two completely different answers.

Not to mention, the popularity of the WTT event has in fact inevitably diverted the popularity of the domestic Table Tennis Super League (who still remembers the Table Tennis Super League in the past two years)...

Also, in order to set up a stage for the WTT event, the "World's Strongest Direct Tournament" series of IPs that the national table tennis team had worked so hard to create, which had good reputation and commercial effects, is now basically in a semi-abandoned state...

Therefore, this time the WTT China Grand Slam public opinion storm is not a simple public opinion event in which fans vent their anger. What it reflects is the hesitation of the Chinese national table tennis team in its future transformation.

Is it to be completely commercialized or to develop two legs in parallel?

There is also the newly cultivated market of die-hard table tennis fans. How should it be operated in the future?

How should the domestic Table Tennis Super League be integrated with the WTT event system?

Where will the existing youth training system in China go in the future?

These are critical issues that will affect the Chinese national table tennis team in the next ten or even dozens of years. We must be extremely cautious in how we proceed down this path.