Raducannu has received a new business endorsement, this time Porsche, a luxury car brand owned by German Volkswagen.
Since last year's Wimbledon, I have been following Raducano.
I followed her because of her eye-catching achievements and because she was half Chinese. Radulkanu's mother is a native of Shenyang, and in the past few years she would return to Shenyang for a vacation and play ball, and it is said that some people in Shenyang tennis circles have communicated with her.
After winning the US Open last year, Raducano became famous overnight, and everything after that was natural and logical. She came to 23rd, up 332 places from the beginning of the year.
Also rising sharply is business endorsements. In addition to Nike shoes and Will Victory rackets before becoming famous, Raducano signed the American luxury jewelry brand Tiffany in the same month that he won the Grand Slam. The following month, she signed the French fashion brand Dior, which is said to be an endorsement fee of 2 million pounds, which is amazing in terms of gold absorption ability and speed.
Last December, Raducano signed two more major business endorsements, one for Evian Bottled Water in France and the other for British Airways.
Presumably because the new sponsors need to spend time looking at the candidates and negotiating, Raducanu has not heard of a new endorsement contract in the first two months of this year.
After just two months of silence, Raducano has two major business endorsements this month, one is The British telecom giant Vodafone, and the other is the German luxury car brand Porsche mentioned at the beginning of this article.
In this way, Raducannu currently has at least 8 endorsements. For a 19-year-old young player who has just won a Grand Slam, it's a great achievement to get so many well-known business endorsements.
So, what about the results of the U.S. Open in Raducano?
From last year's US Open to today, Raducannu has participated in a total of 8 races, of which 4 are a round trip, 3 stops are only won 1, and the remaining 1 stop is only won 2. It can be said that after the end of the US Open fairy tale, Raducannu has been beaten back to its original form on the Tour.
In addition to her 5-8 record after the US Open, Raducano also suffered injuries, spraining her buttocks in Guadalajara and grinding blisters on her Australian Open hands.
As I said in my Article on March 24, blisters on the hands are a problem that players rarely have during the game. The only explanation is that she has practiced too little, and her hands have not yet worn out calluses, think of Nadal's hands wrapped in tape! Looking at the hands of these superstars, you can see how far away Raducannu is from them.
On June 6 last year, Radulcanu made her first WTA Tour fixture, and her tour experience is less than a year old, and she obviously can't fully adapt to the intensity of the Tour. The aforementioned sprained buttocks and blisters on her hands are evidence of the lack of intensity of her training and competition.
It stands to reason that commercial value is closely related to exposure, and for tennis players, exposure is closely related to on-court performance. Raducannu's results were very bland after winning the US Open, so why did the sponsors still praise her so much?
The more reasonable explanation is that the sponsor is optimistic about Raducannu's future and that she can achieve good results in the future. It's a bit like buying a stock on the stock market, where the sponsor signs Raducanu and pays a high endorsement fee, similar to spending money on the stock of Raducano.
Why are some companies with mediocre performance, but they are sought after by the market and their stock prices are very high? The main reason is that investors are optimistic about the company's future growth space.
If the player's game bonus ratio on the field is taken as the company's earnings per share, then the player's commercial endorsement income is equivalent to the market price of the stock. The market price of a stock divided by earnings per share is the price-to-earnings ratio, and a higher price-to-earnings ratio indicates that the stock is more sought after by the market. By the same token, the higher the ratio of a player's commercial endorsement revenue to match bonus income, the more popular the player is with sponsors and the general public.
I did a statistical analysis in July 2020 that compared several tennis stars' tournament prize money and commercial endorsement income over the past year to come up with the ratio of commercial sponsorship revenue to tournament prize money (similar to the price-to-earnings ratio of stocks). The prize money for the contest comes from data published by the ATP and WTA websites, and the commercial endorsement revenue comes from the Forbes website, as shown in the following figure.
According to data released by the WTA official website, Raducano's prize money for this year's competition is $178,298. In addition, she is out of the third round of the ongoing Miami Open and can receive $54,400 in prize money. In this way, Raducano's total prize money this year is $232,698.
I did not find the amount of endorsement income of Raducannu this year, and estimated that the ratio of her commercial endorsement income to the prize money of the competition should not be less than 15, which means that her "price-to-earnings ratio" is about 15 times.
The reason why Federer has a very high "price-to-earnings ratio" is because of his impressive achievements and super popularity accumulated over so many years. There is a clear gap between Raducano and Federer, and her high "price-to-earnings ratio" is obviously mixed with the sponsor's "high gambling" component. I think that based on the current results of Raducano, her high endorsement income is "inflated".
In stark contrast to Raducano, kregitkova, last year's French Open women's singles and women's doubles champions, did not have such high popularity and endorsements. Why was Raducannu able to sign so many endorsements in a short period of time?
I think this has a lot to do with her external image, British nationality, and Mixed Chinese-Romanian descent. In addition, British women's tennis has not seen a Grand Slam champion for many years, and the British Tennis Association also needs to use Grand Slam titles to boost domestic tennis popularity. It is also possible that Raducano's parents, both of whom are in the financial industry, have extensive investment experience or are helpful in the development of their daughter's business value.
Like the stock market, stock prices are ultimately supported by the company's growth and actual performance. Although in the short term, the stock price may be pushed up by the hype, but in the long run, the stock price will always return to a normal and reasonable price.
In the end, professional tennis players still have to rely on achievements to eat, if you rely solely on looks, by creating topics or gossip to attract attention, popularity will certainly not last long. In this regard, the Canadian Bouchard is the best example, after winning the Second Place at Wimbledon in 2014, Bouchard's performance has plummeted, and if she can't play, she will be abandoned by the market, and it will not help to let her toss on the sidelines.
The Tennis Tour has a 52-week rolling points system, which requires athletes to have a consistent and stable performance, otherwise the points and rankings will decline. The U.S. Open title instantly allowed Raducano to gain 2,040 points (40 points in qualifying, 2,000 points for the champion), and it also allowed her to lose 2,040 points in an instant.
Radulcannu currently has 2699 points, ranking 13th in singles. Such a ranking gives Raducannu the freedom to participate in all competitions, and also has the opportunity to enjoy the benefits of the first round of bye, as well as to avoid high-level seeded players in the first few rounds, which should be the most favorable time for her to increase her score.
On the other hand, if she can't have a prominent performance before this year's US Open, then after the US Open in September this year, she will be deducted huge points, and her ranking will fall to about 100. Losing her high rankings, she may have to start in qualifying in many events, and the difficulty of making results will be greatly increased.
Naomi Osaka, for example, is currently down at 77th, but her situation is markedly different from Raducannu's. After all, Naomi Osaka is the winner of 4 Grand Slam titles, and her decline in ranking is mainly due to the lack of participation, followed by the decline in competitive status due to psychological reasons.
As long as it returns to normal, Naomi Osaka is expected to steadily recover in the rankings. Therefore, Naomi Osaka is often regarded as a "seed bomb" in the signing table, while the current high ranking Radukanu is like a seeded player who is more likely to be upset.
For Raducano, the most important thing for Radukanu is to maintain the stability of her results and rankings, which requires her to have a consistent performance on the field. Since the market and the stadium can instantly win a person, it can also make her fall silent quickly.
After Barty retires, the competition pattern of the women's tennis world will be more open, and there is a great possibility of returning to the chaotic world of the Spring and Autumn Warring States. I don't know if the young Laducanu will grow into a peony with a national color in the chaotic world, or will it become a short flower that "zero falls into mud and dust"? (Source: Tennis House Author: Yun Cirrus Yunshu)