According to Japanese media reports on February 18, a highly controversial table tennis player, Zhang Benzhihe, has signed a contract with the world's top brokerage company IMG. In this regard, many fans have questioned: Is the commercial value of Zhang Benzhihe so high? So let's talk about this topic together.
As we all know, Zhang Benzhi and his parents are from Sichuan, China, and his mother Zhang Ling has even entered the national team and participated in the World Series, but has not achieved particularly eye-catching results, and later moved to Dongying to live, and gave birth to a son and a daughter in the local area, that is, Zhang Benzhihe, Zhang Benmei and brothers and sisters.
Due to his achievements at the age of 13, Zhang Benzhihe's bonus and signing have become an important source of income for the family, especially after signing a contract with Toyota, and his value has soared, which is not comparable to ordinary table tennis players.
As early as 2019, some people estimated that Zhang Benzhihe's annual revenue reached hundreds of millions of yen, which is equivalent to 8 million yuan - as we all know, table tennis is not a very successful sport for commercialization, and Zhang Benzhihe's achievements have been very impressive, enough to "stand out from the crowd".
It is precisely because of the sufficient financial support that Zhang Benzhihe can get the best training environment in his own home, while taking into account the study of cultural knowledge, and was also admitted to Waseda University last year, which can be said to have received good news both inside and outside the arena and became a proud person among the Chinese.
In fact, before Zhang Benzhihe, there were many Chinese naturalized Japanese table tennis players, even including Wei Qingguang (now known as Wei GuanQingguang), a member of the first olympic champions of national table tennis, but their popularity obviously did not reach the level of Zhang Benzhihe and the current level, for many reasons.
First of all, Unlike Wei Qingguang and Haiwei Yoshida, Zhang Benzhihe was born and raised in Japan, and is essentially a Japanese ethnic minority, not a naturalized player, so Japanese society recognizes him to a higher degree - despite the controversy, Zhang Benzhihe has obviously integrated into the country.
Secondly, the naturalization of former Chinese table tennis players in Japan mostly belongs to two situations: first, Wei Qingguang, who has been famous for a long time and went after retiring from the national team; second, Yoshida Haiwei, who has not made achievements in China. In either case, it means that their threat to the national table tennis is relatively limited, and their achievements after going to Japan will not be very large (He Zhili is slightly different).
But Zhang Benzhihe's best age for his career is in Japan, and he is also the player who has broken through the main layer of the Chinese men's team in recent years, and has attracted much attention because of the issue of nationality status - whether it is a good reputation or a bad reputation, at least his fame is indeed large, which is an undeniable fact.
Before that, another Japanese player also signed for IMG, and she was Yoshijun Ishikawa, who is very familiar to everyone. As a representative of Japanese women's table tennis after Ai Fukuhara, Ishikawa Yoshijun is popular not only in Japan, but also in China and other parts of the world, so it is normal for her to be favored by top companies.
With the retirement of Mizutani Hayabusa, the representative of Japanese men's table tennis is Zhang Benzhihe. In particular, Zhang Benzhihe is only 18 years old now, and may participate in 4 Olympic Games in the future, so it is also a long-term investment for IMG, as for what will be the return?
Let's just wait and see what happens!