On the evening of April 26, as the Liaoning men's basketball team lifted the 2021-22 CBA championship trophy, the "five-year competition plan" formulated by the CBA League five years ago came to an end. Perhaps it is the own arrangement in the dark, the first year of the "Five-Year Plan" regular season is 38 rounds, and finally the Liaoning Finals swept Guangsha 4-0 to win the championship. Today, in the last year of the "plan", the CBA is also the 38 rounds of the regular season, and the finals are also Liaoning sweeping Guangsha to win the championship.
In five years, the CBA has undergone tremendous changes under the leadership of Yao Ming and others, in addition to the increase in playoff places, the addition of video playback centers and other changes, the reform of the game format, player contracts, and foreign aid salaries are also significantly different from the past.
The format of the contract has changed dramatically, and the CBA has changed greatly in five years
The "Five-Year Plan" was launched by the CBA League in 2017, mainly for the CBA's five seasons from the 2017-18 season to the 2021-22 season schedule, format, foreign aid policy, player contracts, foreign aid salaries and other aspects.
Among them, the reform of the format has attracted the most attention. Previously, the CBA regular season was fixed on Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays, only special circumstances will hold a certain or two games at other times, and the three-day game arrangement every week not only cannot meet the daily viewing needs of fans, but also causes fans to be embarrassed in choosing each round of games on one day. After the change of format, the regular season was changed to every Tuesday and Sunday, which enhanced the viewing experience of fans. In the post-epidemic conference system, in addition to the intermittent period, there are competitions every day every week. At the same time, the number of regular season games has also increased, from 38 rounds in the 2017-18 season to 46 rounds in the 2018-19 and 2019-20 seasons, and then to 56 rounds in the 2020-21 and 2021-22 seasons. However, because the Bayi men's basketball team withdrew from the CBA in the 2020-21 season, and this season was due to reasons such as making way for the national team and the epidemic, the last two seasons of the CBA's "five-year plan" did not meet expectations.
The playoffs are also markedly different from the past. Before the 2017-18 season, there were only 8 CBA playoff spots, that is, the top 8 teams in the regular season entered the playoffs. After the launch of the Five-Year Plan, the top 10 teams in the regular season in the 2017-18 season entered the playoffs, and the top 12 teams in the regular season from the 2018-19 season entered the playoffs. The first round of the playoffs added 10-in-8 or 12-in-8 playoffs, followed by the quarter-finals, semi-finals and finals, which also brings more points to the playoff competition.
Player contracts and foreign salaries have also changed significantly from the past. In terms of player contracts, the CBA used the "Standard Contract" from the 2018-19 season, dividing the contract into five types: rookie contract (category A), protection contract (category B), regular contract (category C), maximum salary contract (category D) and veteran contract (category E), stipulating the training fee, and then upgrading it later, adding new provisions such as "clarifying the ownership of the registration right of players who play abroad". The CBA's move is to ensure that more teams retain the top card and lay the foundation for the development of the league. In the past, xinjiang, which has a lot of money, frequently grabbed people with high salaries, but the teams that were forced to lose their main forces were helpless. After the "Standard Contract" was launched, it clearly stipulated the signing age and age of each type of contract, the minimum salary and the exercise of priority after expiration, and the 3 maximum salary places per team also basically guaranteed that each team left the core. Over the years, although the CBA has also seen heavy transfers such as Wang Zhelin, the flow of top stars is extremely limited. After zhou qi refused a maximum salary contract in Xinjiang last summer, he eventually missed this season's CBA league and chose to play in Australia.
At the same time, the CBA introduced a salary cap and a maximum salary (25% of the salary cap base value) from the 2019-20 season, and player contracts that exceed the maximum salary amount cannot be registered. Due to the impact of the epidemic, the CBA salary cap and the maximum salary continue to decline, and the maximum salary of local players this season is only 6 million yuan before tax, and the past two seasons are 8 million yuan and 9 million yuan before tax, which alleviates the pressure on many small and medium-sized clubs, but it is a huge loss for local top stars whose annual salary exceeds 10 million yuan or even reaches 20 million yuan in the past. Although the CBA 2018-19 season still has a "yin and yang contract" between Delekhei and the Qingdao men's basketball team, after heavy penalties and the active cooperation of the participating teams, the coverage of the "Standard Contract" is getting wider and wider. This season, a total of 377 domestic players signed the Standard Contract (2021 Edition) and successfully registered, accounting for 96.42% of the total number of registered people, 15 of the 20 teams have achieved full coverage of the Standard Contract, and only 5 teams in Zhejiang, Shanxi, Liaoning, Guangdong and Beijing have not been fully covered because the original contracts of only 14 players have not expired.
Foreign aid salaries and contracts are also constantly adjusting. At the beginning of the 2019-20 season, the foreign aid contract was uniformly stipulated as a partial guarantee contract, while unlike in the past, the foreign aid basically got a full guarantee or even a full guarantee contract for many years, which allowed the CBA team to grasp the initiative and greatly reduced the "thorn head foreign aid". Foreign aid salaries have also changed significantly from the past. Since last season, the CBA has also set a salary cap for foreign aid. This season, the foreign aid salary cap has dropped from $7 million last season to $5 million, and teams that exceed the salary cap are required to pay a correspondingly high adjustment fee. This has largely constrained the team to frantically introduce high-priced foreign aid at any cost, and the salary of foreign aid has also dropped compared with the past.
The impact of the epidemic is serious, is the CBA expanding?
If there is no epidemic, the CBA's "five-year plan" is bound to be more ideal than it is now. But the current fact is that the epidemic has been around for more than two years, and the CBA, which is extremely dependent on offline people, has also become difficult.
This is reflected in the declining dividends of CBA teams over the past three years. It is reported that the league dividends received by CBA teams in 2019 were 33.05 million yuan, which fell to 26.39 million yuan in 2020 and about 25 million yuan in 2021. There are almost no spectators, and many sponsors have withdrawn, which has also led to the increase in the losses of many CBA teams, and many private teams are becoming more and more tight. It is also for this reason that last summer, 15 teams issued a joint statement calling for a home-and-away resumption this season, in order to increase more revenue and increase the attention of the CBA.
But restoring home and away games has never been a simple task, although CBA officials have also said that they will try to restore home and away games in the third stage of the regular season. Realistically speaking, under the epidemic, it is not easy for the CBA to successfully hold a conference-based game, let alone restore the home-and-away game format for fans to enter. Once there is an epidemic, the CBA will inevitably press the pause button at any time, which will only hit the league harder.
But if the CBA is still a tournament system after that, how to allow more fans to enter the game when the epidemic prevention situation is good in the future? Are you considering placing the tournament in more divisions, especially in larger cities where the ball market is better? Or add some new events or gameplay? All the CBA leagues have to decide.
Five years ago, when the CBA launched the "five-year plan", it said that "there will be no expansion within five years", but the league also added at the time: "It is not ruled out that adjustments will be made according to market demand and shareholder requirements." This season, the Ningbo team entered the CBA as a new army to make up for the vacancy after Bayi withdrew last season, which seems to let the outside world see the possibility of CBA expansion.
However, the biggest obstacle to the CBA's expansion at the moment is the epidemic. Under the epidemic, the current 20 teams of the CBA are generally losing money, even if there are many NBL league teams eager to enter the CBA, many provincial and municipal fans without CBA teams are eager for their hometown teams to enter the CBA, but in view of the fact that the expansion requires a unanimous vote of the CBA shareholders' meeting, the expansion may further compress the dividends of each team, which also makes the future expansion of the CBA full of uncertainty.
epilogue
No matter how many questions and complaints there are, it needs to be admitted that the current CBA has made great progress compared with five years ago or when the Chinese Basketball Association was under the jurisdiction. In the past five years, the CBA, which has crossed the river by feeling the stones, has explored a lot of experience and is also trying its best to implement the "five-year plan".
But the repeated epidemics are unpredictable to anyone. Compared to the difficulties of the CBA when it first started five years ago, the epidemic is clearly better today. The CBA, which has been in trouble for more than two seasons, how can the losses be minimized in the future if the game system is still adopted? It will also be the number one conundrum facing the CBA in the future.