Sports Big Business No. 2813, welcome to pay attention to the leading sports industry information platform
Wen | Zhang Tan
Sports big business reporter
What is it like to be popular overnight?
On February 15, Su Yiming, who turned 18 three days away, won the gold medal in the men's snowboarding men's big jump final at the Beijing Winter Olympics, Which was China's first snowboarding gold medal, and Su Yiming also became China's youngest winter Olympic champion.
Soon, his Weibo fans soared from less than 100,000 to 1.46 million, and film and television-related hot searches such as "Outsmarting the Little Plug of Weihu Mountain" and "Han Geng's Grandfather" also continued to emerge, and people hoped to understand the teenager who did not have a weak crown from more dimensions and explore what interesting stories are behind his success.
The latest hot search number is "Su Yiming's agent refuses 100 endorsements a day", behind this slightly exaggerated number is the huge commercial potential of this 17-year-old teenager. We try to understand the story behind Su Yiming's "overnight fame" from the process of his growth at the speed of light, and which forward-looking brands are the first to take the lead in the global news event of the Winter Olympics.
Behind the championship podium: love + talent + hard work
The previous snowboard men's slope obstacle course skills won silver, and the scoring factor made Su Yiming regret missing the gold medal. But after the game, Su Yiming still maintained a good attitude: "It is more important to have fun."
In the first two rounds of the big jump final, Su Yiming scored 89.50 points and 93 points with two 1800, and cleanly and beautifully scored a total score of 182.5 points. With the mistakes of other opponents in the third round, the gold medal was locked up before the third round was made. At the moment when he learned that he had won the gold medal, the camera was given to Su Yiming and coach Yasuhiro Sato, who started the big jump, and both remained calm.
But behind this calm, Su Yiming not only has extraordinary talent, but also has the hard power improvement obtained through years of hard work.
Su Yiming ascended to the Olympic podium
On February 18, 2004, Su Yiming was born into a well-off family in Jilin City, Jilin Province. In an era when the popularity of skiing in China was still very low, Su Yiming's luck was that her parents were both ski enthusiasts, and she was able to follow her parents to the ski slopes at a very young age. In 2008, Su Yiming began her skiing career at the age of 4.
By the time Su Yiming was 9 years old and starred in the role of "Little Plug" in the movie "Wise Tiger Wei Mountain", the skiing level had surpassed most adults, which was the main reason why he got this opportunity.
Cultivated from an early age into a hobby of skiing, so that su Yiming in the future can work towards the goal after starting a professional ski career, and can also endure the loneliness and boredom of training.
Su Yiming's coach Yasuhiro Sato once said that Su Yiming was very hard at the age of 14 and endured more training than his peers. In Yasuhiro Sato's view, it usually takes about 10 years of training to train a high-level athlete, but Su Yiming became the world's top athlete in only three and a half years.
Su Yiming himself also revealed on social media platforms that when he trained the hardest, he once skied 4 skis a week, while the average professional player would only skate 2-3 pieces a month.
In 2016, GoSki had a discerning eye and signed Gu Ailing and Su Yiming at the same time
Lai Gang, founder of GoSki, who signed Su Yiming and Gu Ailing as image spokesmen as early as 2016, once said that in his view, although the success of Gu Ailing and Su Yiming is often attributed to "talent", the love from the heart is the most important reason why they can stand out in the long and hard training.
Su Yiming in 2014
Open Su Yiming's Weibo records many years ago, you will see a teenager who has loved skiing since childhood, starting from love, step by step to the highest stage of professional skiing. In his photographs, there is no bitterness, only the joy of skiing. And this point is precisely what teenagers who take professional sports as the road to development are worth learning.
Su Yiming in 2016
As early as 2012, when Su Yiming went to Japan to study skiing, his excellent qualifications attracted the attention of Yasuhiro Sato. In 2018, Su Yiming was selected for the Chinese national training team and began to practice skiing with his current mentor Yasuhiro Sato. Despite his qualifications at a young age, Su Yiming's efforts are the direct reason for his success.
In a recent interview, Yasuhiro Sato once said bluntly that when Su Yiming was just selected for the national training team, there was still a certain gap in strength from the top Japanese players at that time, but Su Yiming's subsequent progress was very rapid.
In 2019, 15-year-old Su Yiming won her first international competition: the snowboard slope slalom title at the New Zealand Ski Open.
In 2020 and 2021, Su Yiming won almost all the national official competitions in the slope obstacle course and the big jump.
Turning back the clock to 2015, Beijing successfully bid for the 2022 Winter Olympics. Su Yiming, who is only 11 years old, has a dream in his heart: to participate in the Winter Olympics held at his doorstep and win glory for the country!
For the sake of the Olympic dream, Su Yiming also gave up a lot.
At the age of 9, he starred in Xu Ke's "Wise Tiger Mountain", and there are many film and television child stars
In addition to skiing, Su Yiming also likes music and fashion, and has excellent English and Japanese skills, and has accumulated a lot of acting experience since he was young.
It is said that the reason why Xu Ke, the director of "Wise Tiger Mountain", chose Su Yiming in 2013 was that he needed a child who could ski to play the role of "little plug" in the play, and Su Yiming, who had excellent skiing ability and good image, got the opportunity.
Su Yiming played Han Geng's grandfather in "Wise Tiger Mountain"
Another report said that the original crew was also worried about Su Yiming's lack of acting skills, but the young Su Yiming was also very talented in acting, completed the crew's tasks well, and emerged in the show business circle. Another memorable clip is that originally everyone was worried that Su Yiming's skiing was too slow to catch up with everyone, and even "Can you ski?" in the play. But the truth is that Su Yiming's skiing speed is difficult for other actors to catch up with.
With her performance in "Wise Tiger Mountain", Su Yiming was shortlisted for the Best Newcomer at the 35th Hong Kong Film Awards, but unfortunately finally passed by the award. However, being able to enter the big list for the first time in film and television is also a recognition of Su Yiming's acting skills.
After that, Su Yiming also starred in the movie "Rock Boy", as well as TV series "Lin Hai Snow Field", "Born on a Brilliant Day", "His Highness the Wolf", "Beijinger in Beijing" and other film and television works.
Su Yiming starred in "Rock 'n' Roll Kid"
The famous director Xu Zheng and the teenager Su Yiming
If the young Su Yiming once had many tracks in front of him, now he has perfectly reached the top of one track, but also maintains competitiveness in other tracks, and he is about to turn 18 years old, and he still has a long time to compose his own life legend, whether in the field of sports or other fields.
And such an all-round Su Yiming, like the "frog princess" Gu Ailing, whom he has known since childhood, has both competitive strength, entertainment circle and fashion circle of brilliant resume, making them the perfect image spokesperson in the brand's mind. Gu Ailing has sponsored "soft signing", and with Su Yiming's victory, "Veneer Teenager" is also becoming a new idol for the whole people.
The Beijing Winter Olympics won 1 gold and 1 silver, and Su Yiming rose to a million fans to become a new idol
The 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics has successfully blown up an ice and snow boom, bringing ice and snow sports that have swept some European and American countries to China, and is also expected to reshape the vision of China's national sports choices.
Compared with the more popular "three balls" in the past, more and more cool and highly playable projects have taken root in China with the opportunity of the Winter Olympics. The world's most popular "three balls" and other projects, in China's fan base has gradually become saturated, and many "Z generation" young people, than traditional sports, more like extreme sports and e-sports.
The emergence of a new generation of sports idols such as Su Yiming and Gu Ailing is not only expected to bring fire and ice sports, but also hopes to set a new benchmark for the idols of "Generation Z" young people with their own versatility, and drive fan groups to try more niche sports and explore the fun of more sports.
In the traditional "three balls" and other projects are difficult to appear Yao Ming-level national idols, entertainment circle rectification, minors' games "limited play" environment, Gu Ailing, Su Yiming and other sportsmanship, fashion temperament, outstanding talent and global vision of the new winter Olympic champions, naturally become the new era of sought after the role model.
Data show that within 10 days after the opening of the Winter Olympics, Gu Ailing, Wu Dajing, Gao Tingyu, Xu Mengtao, Liu Jiayu and other ice and snow athletes had a total of more than 25 million douyin fans. Among them, on the day that Gu Ailing won the gold, her vibrato rose by 4 million fans in a single day.
According to the statistics of Sina Sports, on February 11, the number of Su Yiming's Weibo fans officially exceeded one million, and during the Winter Olympics, Su Yiming rose by 910,000 fans in just one week or so, increased the number of interactions by 720,000, and made 63 hot searches on the list... And all this was before Su Yiming successfully won the gold.
As of press time, Su Yiming's Weibo followers have reached 1.467 million. On the day of winning the Beijing Winter Olympics snowboarding men's big jump championship, a total of 44 related topics appeared on the hot search, and the topic of "Su Yiming Gold Medal" detonated the whole network; the total number of super talk interactions reached 1.6 million. During the Olympic games, Su Yiming rose to more than one million fans.
Su Yiming has endorsed 12 major brands
Compared with Gu Ailing, who was already popular among domestic netizens as early as 2019, when he naturalized and returned to China, Su Yiming was relatively low-key for a long time before the Beijing Winter Olympics.
It was not until October 28, 2021, that Su Yiming became the first athlete in the world to complete the super difficult movement of Bs 1980 Indy Crail (Inner Turn 1980 Grab Board) in training in Austria, and gradually began to accumulate heat. This record was subsequently certified by the Guinness Book of World Records in January 2022.
Before that, Su Yiming was only considered a rising star by the international snowboarding industry, and when Su Yiming jumped out of this difficult move, he became a strong contender for gold at the Beijing Winter Olympics.
Guinness World Records certified Su Yiming's
Inner turn 1980 grab plate super difficult action
On December 5, 2021, at the Snowboard Jumping World Cup in Stimport, usa, Su Yiming won the championship for the first time in the final, making more people optimistic about the unlimited potential of this snowboard teenager.
As a "genius teenager" who became famous at a young age, Su Yiming became a signed skater of the famous snowboard brand Burton at the age of 7, and after his stunning debut in the boiling snow in 2019, he was favored by Monster Enegry and certified by the green claw on the helmet. You know, extreme athletes all over the world are proud to be contracted athletes for Redbull (Austrian Red Bull) or Monster Enegry (Devil's Claw), and to have these two logos on the helmet may make the referee's impression score a little higher in the game. Subsequently, Su Yiming and Gu Ailing became a member of the global Team Oakely, and the iconic big O logo on the snow mirror was also exposed with the increase in the popularity of the two.
In the domestic market, in addition to Goski, who signed a contract in 2016, Su Yiming was sponsored by Snow Lake Capital, KFC and Adidas in 2020, and in 2021, he successively reached cooperation with Qingyang, Buick, XiuLike and Yuanqi Forest. After shining at the 2022 Winter Olympics, he quickly became the latest spokesperson for Yili, the official partner of the Winter Olympics.
For Su Yiming, who turned 18 on February 18, his road to superstardom has just begun.
After Su Yiming successfully won the first gold, Su Yiming's business offers flocked to him. However, according to CBN, Su Yiming's agent, Yang Ran, director of Endeavor's brokerage business in China, said that he was not in a hurry to liquidate, and he was declining a large number of endorsements and interview invitations every day.
In the view of Su Yiming's brokerage team, before an athlete has become famous, "it is necessary to make a relatively large effort to promote his cooperation with excellent brands", but when he became famous in one battle, a large number of brands took the initiative to come to the door, at this time, they need to "protect the ATHLETE's IP" and consider more about their long-term career planning and personal development wishes. Yang Ran said that letting an athlete carry too much commercial endorsement will not only distract the public's limited attention, but also be cost-effective for businesses. "We hope that the brand can be bound to the athletes for a long time, and this kind of deep cooperation can let everyone see some of the things they insist on."
As for Su Yiming's new endorsement fee, the brokerage team is still evaluating, and will also make flexible choices according to the market's reaction. After all, Su Yiming is only 17 years old, his sports career has just begun, and the agency team can also consider his endorsement brand from a longer-term perspective. In a sense, for Su Yiming, this is also his commercial coming-of-age ceremony.
"Su Yiming's agent is busy refusing to endorse" on the hot search
In terms of judging the potential of athletes, Endeavor, a sports marketing giant with leading experience in the industry, discovered Su Yiming's value earlier and recruited him to lock in suitable business endorsements for him is only part of the brokerage business, in addition, it is necessary to provide all-round assistance in Su Yiming's training competition and learning life. Today, Su Yiming's commercial value has risen sharply, confirming the accuracy of Endeavor's judgment at the beginning.
In addition to Endeavor, the professional ski community GoSki has also long discovered the huge commercial potential value of Su Yiming and Gu Ailing. As early as 2016, the two became the spokespersons of GoSki together, which also made people marvel at the accuracy of their vision.
Filmed in 2017, the documentary "Juvenile Chronicles"
Today, when China pays more and more attention to all-round quality education, a new generation of teenagers have more superior material conditions to try "fresh" niche projects and obtain more "rare" "skill points" blessings.
For the Chinese sports industry, perhaps new era idols like Gu Ailing and Su Yiming will emerge more in the future, which is worthy of continuous exploration and cultivation by practitioners.
Note: The images used in this article are from the Internet