Sports Big Business No. 2876, welcome to pay attention to the leading sports industry information platform
Wen | Kouyong
Sports big business reporter
The 25 goals conceded by the Super League team in the four games of the two rounds of the AFC Champions League refreshed the audience's understanding of Chinese football, and the development of Chinese football once again fell into a trough.
Who would have thought that the most powerful chinese football was 20 years ago. The 2002 World Cup in South Korea and Japan, the first match between the Chinese team and Costa Rica, was the first World Cup match in the history of the Chinese team, and now the World Cup qualification has become a luxury.
However, e-sports has skyrocketed all the way, with the 2021 EDG winning the League of Legends Global Finals championship, e-sports has reached an unprecedented height, carnival, shouting one after another, but compared with the football field, it is true that e-sports has achieved more gratifying results in recent years.
Some scholars have predicted that e-sports may replace football in the future. Over the decades, esports has grown from the screen to the world and into a new profession, and now has a large audience, multiple professional events, strict competition rules and an increasingly sophisticated athlete development system.
Compared with the liveliness of the esports circle, the football circle has always been in place. If today's Chinese football remains the same, the prospects will only be darker, but e-sports and football are not either-or contradictory relationships.
Esports gives traditional sports a new attribute
If we sort out the development process of Chinese football and Chinese e-sports, we will find that in the past 10 years, the development trajectory of Chinese football and e-sports seems to be the same, but in fact it is very different.
Before 2010, League of Legends entered by the east wind of DOTA, during which various live broadcasts, leagues, and mobile game versions of League of Legends began to rise. After Evergrande took over in 2010, Chinese football also began a golden period, but it neglected youth training and opened up new markets.
The storm in the European Super League has been boiling over. Real Madrid helmsman Florentino has said that the reason for supporting the European Premier League is that football is declining in its appeal among young people, and e-sports and games have made many young people reluctant to watch football matches. Juve President Agnelli has also said before that today's football leagues are not attractive, and young people do not like to watch football at all, and they all go to play games.
According to the Chinese Football Association, there are only 8,000 registered football professional players in the mainland, while the football association counts less than 100,000 football population. At the same time, as of 2020, the number of Chinese netizens will reach 980 million, and The number of Chinese game users will reach 665 million, of which about 430 million are e-sports users. Compared with the football population, the esports mass base is a world of difference.
Coupled with the poor performance of Chinese football in recent years, the Chinese Super League has been devastated after the fading tide of gold dollars, and Chinese football in a vicious circle has appeared weak in the face of thriving e-sports.
From the network-wide brush screen of IG's championship in 2018 to the boiling of the optics valley of EDG's championship in 2021, the carnival of colleges and universities, and even CCTV news are reported, the influence of e-sports can be seen.
The development of Chinese e-sports football and the development of Chinese football are affected by the World Cup, And China's FIFA e-sports has been given a certain degree of development space during the World Cup in Russia, of which the 2018 Jakarta Asian Games, e-sports has become an Asian Games performance project, live football has become one of the smallest, even if the non-FIFA version (non-FIFA official certification) of the football e-sports event, but also brought a benign impetus to the development of FIFA e-sports. Since then, soccer game tournaments have been unfolding across the country and have received enough attention.
The Chinese Football Association once formed a team to participate in the first FIFA E-sports National Cup in 2019, when a total of 20 national teams participated, divided into four groups, and the top two in each group advanced to the quarterfinals. The Chinese team was placed in Group B, with the same group of opponents as Mexico, Spain, the United States and New Zealand.
The preparation process for the Chinese team was not successful, and the performance of Chinese football in the virtual world green field and the real world green field was almost the same. On the first FIFA E-sports National Cup tour, the Chinese team won 2, drew 2 and lost 8, scored 15 goals and conceded 30 goals, and finally returned home in the face of various giants, and the final champion fell to France.
After two years, the China Football Cooperation association is a member association of FIFA, which strongly supports and actively participates in the FIFA E-sports National Cup. On April 7, 2021, the Chinese Football Association announced that it and Tencent E-sports will jointly hold a national selection tournament and establish a training camp for the Chinese national e-sports football team. As the first traditional sports association to officially enter e-sports, the Chinese Football Association actively embraced e-sports this step is just right. (Extended reading: "Esports National Football Team" team up!) Chinese football wants to overtake in the game field)
During this period, the China Football E-sports League (CEFL), the largest FIFA professional event in China, hosted by Tencent Games and the China Sports E-sports League, came into being. How to attract more Generation Z young people to pay attention to football and traditional sports events, e-sports may be a good solution.
China Football E-sports League (CEFL)
On March 31, 2022, the 2021 China Golden Globe Awards Ceremony came to an end, and all the awards were announced. Wu Lei won the "China Golden Globe Award", the "China Golden Marshal Award" was won by Hao Wei, Zhu Chenjie won the "China Golden Boy Award", Wang Shuang won the "China Women's Golden Globe Award", and the "China Futsal Golden Globe Award" was won by Du Liang. (Extended reading: The 5th anniversary of the Chinese Golden Globe Awards, the football industry "breaking the game" needs more examples)
In the football esports sector, Manchester City Esports and Fan Chuang Hua won the "Football Esports Club of the Year" and the "Best Football Esports Mr. of the Year" awards respectively. At the same time, this year's Golden Globe Awards also joined the mobile game project for the first time, and awarded Lu Xiaolong the first "FIFA Football World E-sports Mr. Of the Year" award. The award further broadens the industrial fields covered by the Golden Globe Award, which is conducive to guiding more groups to pay attention to the football industry, so as to promote the diversified development of the mainland football industry.
Explore the future of football culture with esports
E-sports events, whether it is scale, number of people, or player participation, are gradually rising, gaining no less public attention than traditional sports.
The soccer games in e-sports, with the help of advanced digital technology, not only restore the high-quality digital football field, but also provide players with a realistic football competition operation experience, from the basic rules to the team lineup, from tactical arrangements to foul penalties, all of which can be reproduced on the digital green court.
It is precisely because e-sports can provide a digital competitive platform, so far, a large number of traditional football clubs have appeared in the domestic teams participating in FIFA e-sports events, such as Lyon, Paris Saint-Germain, Manchester City, Wolves and other overseas clubs, as well as Shandong Luneng, Guangzhou R&F, Chongqing Liangjiang and other domestic clubs. With the increasingly close exchange between traditional sports and e-sports, the development prospects of FIFA e-sports, football e-sports and even the entire sports e-sports are very impressive.
In the recent live esports Super League, Zhejiang FC won the 3rd season of the Live Football Super League. More importantly, this live e-sports team is one of the few teams in China to cooperate with professional clubs in the Chinese Super League. The Chinese Super League is currently at a low e-tail, but under the favorable background of e-sports entering the Hangzhou Asian Games, the pro-football super league has become a high-quality model for the deep integration of professional football and e-sports events.
Zhejiang FC won the 3rd Season Pro Evolution Soccer Super League
The IP of the football category, such as FSL, CEFL, and FCC (Professional Champions Cup), relies on football games to tap potential fans of traditional football from young people, thereby promoting the development of Chinese football culture.
Previously, Tencent E-sports and EA linked up with major high-quality content platforms to launch the "FIFA Love Program" to encourage the majority of football game enthusiasts across the country to show their personality and creativity. It has increased the exposure of football in the public eye, providing a way for more potential football fans to understand football and understand football.
With the support of such a background, e-sports has given more lasting power to the development of the entire football category. Similarly, traditional sports can also take advantage of e-sports to let more young people understand football culture. The addition of "Mr. Football E-sports of the Year" and "Football E-sports Club of the Year" to the 2017 China Golden Globe Awards shows the importance of football e-sports in the contemporary young fan base.
In addition, "FIFA Online4" has become the official project of the 2022 Hangzhou Asian Games, and the future of football e-sports has once again been given the opportunity to show. Football e-sports is constantly opening up the boundaries of traditional sports, innovating new models of football sports, further promoting the integration of traditional sports and e-sports, and will also provide new ideas for the development of China's sports industry.
Note: The images used in this article are from the Internet