Image source @ Visual China
Wen 丨 Sports Industry Ecosystem, Author 丨 Song Xinyu, Editor 丨 Yin Hao Male Luo Da
The "double reduction" landed, and the discipline-based off-campus training institutions represented by New Oriental and Xueersi began to transform. The sports industry sees an opportunity, with many practitioners believing that "in non-disciplinary education, sport is definitely the first choice for transformation".
Therefore, under the double background of "double subtraction" and promoting students to carry out sports, capital runs to enter.
For example, on September 21, Beijing New Oriental Quality Growth Center announced a cooperation with Nie Weiping Go Dojo to launch a children's Go course. At the same time, according to the report data of CCTV Finance, since the release of the "double reduction", more than 33,000 sports and art education and training institutions have been added, nearly double the growth in the same period last year.
Go, once a niche field, has come to the center of the popular stage by chance.
Under the "double subtraction", Go gallops. Can this niche industry take this opportunity to enter the broader mass market?
<h2>01. The history of the development of the Go education market
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How the system of vocational education and enlightenment education go hand in hand has always been a major problem plaguing the Go industry.
In sports, Go is undoubtedly an "alternative". This game, which was born out of the sand table, was almost only popular among the scholars in the early days, and it was not until after the Ming and Qing dynasties that it gradually spread and began to develop in the folk. So at the same time, for a long time, this is a sport that belongs to adults and even the elderly.
The era background of the domestic animation "Go Boy" is set in the Ming Dynasty, and the crowd that can be clearly seen playing Go in the film is mainly adults
In the personal douyin, the famous chess player Gu Li once said: In the past, Go was more of a hobby and a way for people to grow up, rather than becoming a way of children's education in the form of "subjects".
That changed in the late 1980s. Influenced by the Sino-Japanese Go Tournament (1984-1996), a large number of Go enthusiasts were added to China, and their next generation became the first "Go teenagers" in the true sense of New China.
In 1998, Wu Zhaoyi, Wang Jianhong and Zheng Hong, three professional chess players, jointly founded the first Go training institution in China, "Sanjiudan" dojo, which is mainly open to young students. Although due to operational problems, the dojo lasted only one year. However, full-time students are mainly grouped according to level, and the instructors take turns to review the game, supplemented by the "dojo mode" of doing questions, playing scores, and collective research, which has become a template for the Go education and training industry and has continued to this day.
In the following years, Nie Weiping professional chess players have successively established Go dojos, and the names of professional chess players have a natural appeal and brand endorsement for chess players and parents, and small chess players from all over the country rush to these dojos to learn chess, for example, ke Jie, the current eight-crowned king, is the first professional chess player representative trained by the Chinese dojo system.
With the development of the dojo, the group of "Go Teenagers" has gradually expanded, and the overall strength has further increased. As a fixed-stage tournament that leads to the ranks of professional chess players, the number of entries is increasing year by year. But to this day, the number of places in the annual fixed section is still only maintained at about 20 men, and most of the chess players who fail to rush the section must face the choice between academics and chess.
In fact, many chess players who fail to play the stage but have a professional level have taught Go as a profession that can make a living, and even opened their own Go training institutions. These institutions, together with the dojo, formed the earliest prototype of the Go training market in China, but their main purpose is still to cultivate and transport professional players, rather than the popularization and education of Go.
Teacher Xu, who taught Go at the Shijingshan Chess Academy in 2002, told Krypton in an interview that when he entered the industry, the boundaries between Go training for enlightenment education and vocational training were blurred, and most of the teachers in institutions were fixed shifts, from enlightenment to graduation.
The so-called "graduation" is, in most cases, the chess ability reaches a higher level in the amateur - amateur 5 stages. Therefore, although almost 95% of parents are enlightened, they will eventually let their children try to take a career path.
However, even if a small player successfully sets a section and is promoted to a professional chess player, it is still rare for a player to support himself by playing chess. Under the imbalance between supply and demand, the early Go dojos and training institutions were unable to change the historical process of Go education. Since then, as more parents have a recognition of the threshold for engaging in professional Go, and turn to the attributes of Go quality education, under such market demand, Go training has gradually expanded from the initial emphasis on professionalization to the exercise of logical thinking ability and the cultivation of overall awareness - "Go enlightenment" came into being.
Since then, Go, as a training institution for youth quality education, has begun to become the new favorite of the market. Institutions, including the "dojo", have also begun to adjust their focus to focus on the enlightenment of young Go interests.
"In the case of the Go market, user demand can indeed be said to have shifted from vocational skills training to interest enlightenment." In 2018, when Nie Weiping Dojo and Google jointly launched the "Looking for a Little Pioneer of Go" activity, Zhao Zhelun, head of the market of Nie Weiping Go Dojo, said that the transformed "dojo" has gradually covered the whole industry chain from enlightenment to occupation, and vocational training and enlightenment courses have begun to develop in parallel.
Taking Nie Weiping Dojo as an example, the focus of its publicity in the enrollment brochure has changed since 2018
However, the objective fact is that dojos and traditional training institutions that focus on vocational training are still difficult to balance the two goals of vocational training and Go enlightenment. Professional Go institutions want to transform and do a good job of enlightenment, and even Nie Weiping Dojo does not think it is an easy task. "Vocational training and enlightenment are two completely different goals, and the difference in goals has led to two completely different audience needs and curriculum systems."
"I'm a master of Go, but I'm not a master at teaching Go." At the opening ceremony of the 2018 "Looking for a Little Pioneer of Go" event, Nie Weiping himself also said this frankly in response to this problem.
Although the infrastructure still needs to be improved, the domestic Go education market still has great potential. According to the "Analysis of the Development Status of China's Weiqi Industry and the Analysis of Market Investment Trends in China from 2014 to 2017" released by the Puhua Industry Research Institute of The Chinese Academy of Sciences, in the first three quarters of 2017, the size of the Go training market reached 23.132 billion yuan, an increase of 7.53% over the same period in 2016, maintaining growth for the fourth consecutive year.
However, corresponding to the same period in 2017, the market size of Chinese Go matches was 1.472 billion yuan, which is far from the training market.
Source: Zhongyan Puhua Industrial Research Institute
Behind this set of figures is the survival dilemma of Chinese professional Go players.
<h2>02, the dilemma of chess players
According to the data released by the China Chess Academy, there are currently hundreds of thousands of school-age children participating in the examination every year in the country, and there are more than 5 million small chess players who are learning Go in the country. However, in the registration list released by the China Chess Academy this year, there are only 788 professional chess players in China, and the number of active chess players is about 400.
The huge gap between 5 million and 400 people stems from the super difficulty of the fixed section of Go on the one hand, and on the other hand, a large number of professional chess players give up professional Go as their main business. As Ke Jie lamented on the show a few years ago, "The world champion took a few, but he still can't afford to buy a house."
The average income of professional chess players is indeed much less than the public thinks.
The earliest professional chess players, similar to other sports, relied on the sports team model, and the state provided the establishment, salary and subsidy. With the gradual demise of the sports team model, now professional chess players must register with a certain team (club, institution, chess academy) after the section is fixed. Although the club pays salaries to its professional chess players, the number is generally not high, mainly for the travel and registration fees of chess players.
In large-scale professional title competitions at home and abroad, although the prize money of the champion can reach hundreds of thousands or even millions of yuan, it is extremely difficult to win the championship, and the number of people who can qualify for this competition is limited. The scale of domestic competitions is about 32 people, as for international competitions, there are only 4-5 per year, and the number of participants belonging to Chinese chess players generally does not exceed 6, basically only the top first-line chess players can enter the competition.
At the age of 11, Gu Li was admitted to the Chongqing team, becoming the youngest paid player at the time and the last batch of professional chess players in China "within the system"
In addition, the most important professional Go league in China, the China Weiqi League, currently has a total of 16 teams participating, not counting the main players of about 50 people. Players usually sign a contract with the club to determine how much to win a game and give them nothing. Although the specific number of prize money will rarely be disclosed, according to Gu Li's introduction in his personal Douyin, the winning prize money of the main team members is on average at the level of "tens of thousands of yuan per game".
In fact, these fifty people and the Go professional income model behind them are basically all the income that Chinese professional chess players can earn through "competition". In addition, other chess players need to survive on the income generated by "education training" or the sponsorship of training institutions.
Therefore, the Go education and training market, which is not valued in the eyes of "laymen" or even chess fans, is actually the most profitable part of the entire Go industry.
Twenty years after the gap between the white colts, the development of the Go industry is still an obvious gourd type, and only the tower base (training) and the top of the tower (top professional chess players) are the parts that can be called the industry.
<h2>03, education giants meet Go, 1+1> 2? </h2>
In November 2019, the China Weiqi Association held an important teacher training meeting and issued the Guiding Opinions on Carrying Out National Go Teacher Training (trial implementation), which raised the Training of Weiqi Teachers to a strategic level and concentrated on carrying out Weiqi teacher training in various forms. The goal is to train 10,000 Go teachers per year, starting in 2021.
Under the benefit of "double subtraction", the original institutions in the Go training industry have begun to expand. Li Gang, CEO of Yike Go, said that according to their survey of hundreds of Go institutions last month, more than 70% of them will expand in the short or long term.
So, under the "double subtraction", the entry of educational institutions and capital such as New Oriental and Xueersi really has the opportunity to completely change the Industry of Go?
The first problem that the giants have to face is the teachers.
Due to the particularity of the project and the dual-track training system of vocational training and enlightenment courses today, Go is different from the general sports education and training, and the requirements for teachers are very high. In addition to the need for individual teachers to maintain a certain level of chess strength, due to the different cognition of Go by children of different ages, the traditional "dojo-style teaching" is also difficult to form a set of product systems to adapt.
Therefore, in the Go education and training industry, there is almost no set of standardized teaching plans or curriculum systems. This requires teachers to invest a lot of time and energy to summarize their own methodology in a long period of teaching.
Among the two requirements, the former needs to constantly participate in high-level competitions, training, and then improve or maintain their own level through individual or collective review and summary; while the latter needs to study the psychological and cognitive abilities of its own students, that is, beginners, for the Go industry, which is basically a task that cannot be completed at the same time.
Therefore, professional chess players and amateur masters with high chess strength may not be able to become good teachers, and amateur chess players with slightly worse levels will encounter bottlenecks in the teaching process because of insufficient chess strength. Compared with the function of "teachers" who not only pass on skills but also teach "Tao", under this model, Go teachers are more like "coaches".
"Teaching ability is difficult to quantify, so chess proficiency was almost the only criterion for recruiting Go teachers for a long time." Teacher Xu, who has been teaching Go at the Shijingshan Chess Academy since 2002, told Krypton in an interview.
For new entrants such as New Oriental, it is not an easy task to recruit enough teachers in a short period of time. How to set salary standards has become the top priority of "New Orientals" - according to the information of New Oriental's recruitment of Go teacher supervisors and Go teachers, New Oriental has set a standard for Go teachers that is almost equivalent to its main business, the main teacher of children's English.
Comparison of the recruitment needs of New Oriental Go teachers and English teachers
Mr. Yu, who has been engaged in market development and teacher recruitment at a number of Go training institutions, said that "purely from the perspective of the salary level provided to Go teachers, it is higher than the original Go training industry." It can be said that New Oriental is trying to 'rob' teachers of resources in the market by increasing salaries. It is foreseeable that a considerable number of teachers will be willing to join, and at the same time, it will attract more amateur masters and even professional chess players to join."
However, Teacher Xu of Shijingshan Chess Academy believes that although the salary is good, New Oriental's requirements for the responsibilities of teachers are too high. In other words, the teachers who can meet the recruitment needs of New Oriental are themselves worth much higher than the salaries offered by New Oriental in the Go training industry.
"Unlike the subject class, which has its own theory and knowledge point system, Go is more like an application problem, relying more on the students' own experience and practice, and the guidance of the teacher, rather than the simple indoctrination of knowledge, so the experience and methodology summarized by the teacher himself are the core competitiveness of everyone." The salary given by New Oriental is far less than that of bringing personal trainers to earn more."
According to Krypton's consultation on the corresponding position, the relevant person in charge of some institutions said that "when formulating salaries, it is more about referring to the salary structure within the institution, not according to the original standards in the Go industry." To a certain extent, this can show that educational institutions do not have enough understanding of the Go education and training industry, and lack of specific investigation and research, and still use the past experience in the education industry to position.
However, Li Gang has a different view: "Although New Oriental's recruitment requirements are relatively high, practitioners of such a level in the market are more precious, but in fact, it is very reasonable, because the Go training market needs such standardized services."
For example, the Yike Children's Platform, which has been developed since 2018, aims to systematize The knowledge of Go and develop a set of standardized content for teaching, teaching and research. "The enlightenment of Go and the low-level period are actually in the teaching period of basic knowledge, and the standardization of the knowledge system of the curriculum system at this stage is very important."
"According to our survey, more than 10% of school-age children in Shanghai are currently learning to enlighten Go, and the market capacity will be further expanded in the future after the 'double reduction', and this market is actually the most important market for New Oriental."
Yike Children's Platform has reached cooperation with thousands of Weijia educational institutions
For the discipline-based off-campus training institutions represented by New Oriental and Xueersi, they have natural advantages in the standardization of course products, the experience of teaching and research and teacher training, and the needs of users for large-scale enrollment. At the same time, many years of operation in education and training can concentrate superior resources and carry out more Go training methods such as games, experiences, and competitions.
More courses, teacher training, and standardized courses provide convenience to teachers, which can not only promote the development of Go culture and attract more students, but also bring more jobs, provide better incomes for amateur masters who fail in the chong section, and let the low-section professional chess players who serve as teachers have more energy and try to develop better on the career path. This can largely solve the parents' worries about the "cost performance" of the punching section, and increase the number and thickness of professional chess reserve talents.
In addition, the replicability of the templated courses of training institutions such as New Oriental allows second- and third-tier cities where the teaching force may be relatively poor can still enjoy a good teaching level and further complete the popularization of Go education and culture.
In the future, when competition between educational institutions is formed, the new generation of professional chess players will also become scarce high-quality "advertising" resources between each other. Institutions will be more willing to support chess players registered under their own umbrellas, so as to leave a better brand effect in the hearts of parents and students. Industries that are now very weak in the industry, such as Go media and commentary, can also be further developed with the popularization of Go culture.
But on the other hand, the giants who have entered the game are still a certain distance away from solving the problem of "education stratification" in the Go industry.
In general, Go is a program that requires professional training from an early age. According to statistics, the average age of the 13 world champions of Chinese Go after 90 is 11 years and 11 months. In other words, if you want to be able to have a better career development, the time span from enlightenment to punch is about 4-6 years.
Draft: ECO Krypton
However, according to the current curriculum planning given by educational institutions, most of the direction of Go education and training is still based on enlightenment and interest. Therefore, although the number of teenagers learning Go in China every year is still growing, the group of young professional players is somewhat in short supply. South Korea's post-00s player Shin Jin-hyun has won two world championship titles, while domestic post-00s players have not yet reached the finals of the World Series.
According to Goratings' latest "World Go Rankings", Shin Jin-tan is currently the first person in the world to play Go
According to the children's Go curriculum system currently given by New Oriental, Go is set up as a subject project with a learning ladder by distinguishing the level of knowledge points. The duration of the course at the enlightenment + education stage alone is 40 months, which is almost 4 years, and it takes 36 months to prepare for the rush.
Although such a ladder modular course content can maximize the promotion of Go culture, it does not occupy more of the daily time of students and expand the capacity and retention rate of students. At the same time, it may also make a considerable number of talented students miss the best time for development, which may be a "disadvantage outweighing the benefits" impact of China's professional Go talent training system in the short term.
In the past 30 years, whether it is a star project or a youth quality education project, Go has been deeply rooted in the hearts of many people, but due to the unclear demand for the overall Go education and training market, the dispersion of online and offline, and the lack of real head institutions and centralized publicity, the industry is not hot. The entry of traditional education giants such as New Oriental and the capital behind them can "ripen" the Go education and training market and promote the Culture of Go to a certain extent, thus feeding the entire Go market.
However, it should be recognized that any segment has its own unique needs, and This is especially true for Go education and training. On the one hand, Go education is not just what most parents think, and the traditional educational methods of educational institutions that sell anxiety and emphasize exams are difficult to achieve results. On the other hand, entering the Go education and training market is more the transformation attempt of education enterprises, rather than the result of long-term planning. Once it cannot become a breakthrough in transformation, or see the prospects for future development, these foreign capital may accelerate its departure from the Go education and training industry.
Then, for the industry without templates, the immature Education and Training of Go will inevitably usher in another round of reshuffle.