Author 丨 Pastoral
Edit 丨 nuts
Even though weibo accounts have been banned, Wang Sicong is still at the top of social media.
Recently, Wang Sicong's name once again rushed to the first place in the Weibo hot search list, but this time it is not associated with the earth-shattering remarks, nor the lace scandal with celebrity Internet celebrities, but his own Wanda industry.
According to the national enterprise credit information publicity system, on August 29, Dalian Wanda Group Co., Ltd. underwent industrial and commercial changes, and Wang Sicong has resigned as a director. The next day, the entry "Wang Sicong is no longer a director of Wanda Group" quickly appeared on Weibo's hot search.
The move also sparked speculation from the outside world as to whether Wang Sicong had completely distanced himself from the ranks of Wanda's successors, after all, Wang Jianlin had publicly stated that his son was not interested in taking over his own class, "He felt that it was too hard to manage more than 100,000 people." ”
Compared with Wang Sicong, another rich second-generation Zhang Kangyang in the business circle is still on the road to succession, last July, his father Zhang Jindong stepped down as chairman of Suning Tesco and handed over the baton to Huang Mingduan, an Ali executive, whose last insistence and effort was to send his son to the position of director.
These two top rich second generations in the business world have also inadvertently affected their life trajectory because of the rise and fall of their respective family properties.
1
Young owners who prefer e-sports
As the former discipline inspection committee of the entertainment industry, Wang Sicong's 2022 was not dashing, and in the first half of the year, like the majority of Shanghai people, they were silent at home, and after shelling a pharmaceutical industry on Weibo, they ended up being punished with silence, and then simply blew up the number.
Zhang Kangyang has had a tougher time this year, when he and his father, Zhang Jindong, were chased around the world and just lost a lawsuit in July, when the Hong Kong High Court ordered Mr. Zhang to repay a $255 million (about 1.7 billion yuan) loan to an overseas syndicate.
But the incident goes back to the previous years, and the two second generations can still have their own independent business territory.
Wang Sicong and Zhang Kangyang have a big common hobby, that is, they have great enthusiasm for e-sports, and both of them have invested in domestic e-sports clubs and achieved good results in professional competitions.
Among them, Wang Sicong founded the IG Club in 2011, and in 2018, the IG League of Legends branch won the League of Legends Global Finals championship, becoming the first Chinese e-sports club to win this honor, which caused a huge sensation at home and abroad.
Suning Holdings' Cultural and Creative Group also entered the field of e-sports in 2016, and also chose the League of Legends project with the strongest e-sports specialization at that time to form an SNG team, and Zhang Kangyang served as the top person in charge of Suning E-sports Club.
At the 2020 League of Legends Global Finals, the Suning team representing the Chinese LPL region finally reached the final all the way to the final without being optimistic, and won the good result of the runner-up.
However, compared with e-sports, Suning's greater achievements still come from the field of football, which is also the most successful sector of Suning's Suning Sports Industry Group, in 2015, Suning fully took over the former Jiangsu Guoxin Sainty Football Club, and won the Chinese Super League championship in 2020.
In addition, Suning Sports also acquired the traditional Serie A giants Inter Milan overseas, with Zhang Kangyang as the president of Inter Milan, and in the 2020-21 season, Inter Milan won the Proud One championship in the first four rounds.
Compared with Zhang Kangyang, Wang Sicong has rarely had a voice in the commercial field in the past two years, and the Panda Live broadcast he founded officially collapsed in 2019, and wang Sicong himself was even listed as an executor due to some contract disputes.
In addition, The Banana Project Cultural Development Co., Ltd., which Wang Sicong founded in Shanghai in 2015, also resolved to dissolve in April this year, and the company's status was changed to "deregistration".
2
Suning Wanda, one retreat and one advance
Although under the leadership of Zhang Kangyang, Suning's e-sports and sports sectors have achieved good results, how much commercial value can be converted into the superficial hilarity, and how much help can be brought to the parent company Suning Group, which may be an economic account that needs to be carefully calculated.
Especially for Suning, which has been stretched with funds, it has long been difficult to support some marginal businesses that cannot be profitable.
In 2021, Jiangsu Suning Football Team, which had just won the previous year's Chinese Super League title, announced that it would cease operations, and the defending champions of the top league would be disbanded the following year, which also created a strange story in international football.
The root cause is that the Suning Group behind it has long been mired in debt.
In 2021 alone, Suning's loss will exceed 40 billion yuan, ranking first in the A-share market loss list.
Suning has long been difficult to sustain in the field of sports, and it has been reported that Suning's investment in sports once exceeded 20 billion yuan, including the high price of winning the broadcast rights of Europe's top leagues in China, but it has not brought profits to Suning for a long time.
In addition, the last straw that crushed Suning was the collapse of Evergrande's real estate empire, in 2017, Zhang Jindong once became a white knight and invested 20 billion yuan in Evergrande Real Estate, but with the subsequent plunge of Evergrande Real Estate, Suning's 20 billion was instantly adrift.
In the face of such a big defeat, Suning Young Lord also did not have the ability to save the building.
However, what makes Zhang Kangyang feel fortunate is that while Suning has sold the sports industry in a big way, Inter Milan, of which Zhang Kangyang is the president of the club, is not on the list of sellers. This comes from Inter's own hematopoietic ability, and the excellent results have brought a lot of ticket revenue and appearance fees to the Serie A powerhouse.
In the 2019/20 season, Inter Reached revenue of 423.7 million euros (equivalent to 2.9 billion yuan), which is the second highest level of revenue generation in Serie A and 14th in the world.
However, at the same time that Suning withdrew from the sports industry in a big way, Wanda Group began to return to the football world, and in 2019, Wanda announced its return to Chinese football, not only taking over the former Dalian Yifang Football Club, but also signing a contract with the Dalian Municipal Government to support 10 primary schools to build campus football base schools.
However, these actions do not have much to do with Wang Sicong himself, and more may come from Wang Jianlin's personal football feelings, Wang Sicong once said on the Internet that people who engage in football are stupid.
3
The second generation disappeared from public view
Wang Sicong did not inherit his father's love for football, nor did he inherit Lao Wang's accurate sense of smell for the business environment, and it is difficult to call it a good ending throughout his past high-profile entrepreneurial experience.
Among them, the most influential Panda Live, its operating company Panda Interactive Entertainment raised about 2 billion yuan in four years, which was also a breeze, but then it went to bankruptcy and liquidation, and after the end of the Thousand Broadcast War, there was not a brick and a half left.
Even after the collapse, Panda Live only counted the technical service fees and copyright fees owed, and the debt exceeded 200 million. Wang Sicong himself even received five consumption restriction orders because of this pen mess.
Compared with Xiao Wang, Lao Wang's business methods are obviously more sophisticated, especially in the past few years, the crazy sale of hotels and cultural tourism projects, which once made the outside world think that they had seen jokes, but now they are amazing.
In 2019, Suning spent 2.7 billion yuan to purchase 100% of the shares of 37 department stores held by Wanda Department Store. The time point of this transaction is actually the end of the Wanda sale and the eve of Suning's big defeat.
This year, although there are still nearly 10 billion net profits on the books of Suning Tesco, most of them come from the financial skills of selling shares and assets, deducting these non-recurring gains and losses, suning Tesco's actual net profit in 2019 was -5.71 billion yuan, down 1488.82% year-on-year.
In the next two years, Suning was unable to maintain positive earnings on the books.
In 2019, Zhang Kangyang, as the youngest president in the history of Inter Milan Football Club (27 years old), officially entered the executive committee of the European Football Club Association (ECA), and if the Suning Sports Industry Group behind him can continue to provide support, the young Zhang Kangyang is likely to stand in a higher position in Europe.
But with the deterioration of Suning's financial situation, Zhang Kangyang has been difficult to invest more in Europe, according to local Italian media reports, Zhang Kangyang told management in July this year that Suning will not leave Inter Milan, but shareholders will not inject capital into the club, sacrificing the core players self-sufficiency is the only way at present.
Zhang Kangyang's current situation is actually somewhat similar to the situation that Wang Sicong ran out of funds for live broadcasting a few years ago, although he did not usher in the assistance of his father, but the essential reasons are not the same, one person is unwilling to put money in, one is really no money.
In 2022, the two also have a big thing in common is that they no longer appear on social media in a high profile, Zhang Kangyang's Weibo stopped updating after May, and the most recent Weibo was also crowded with salary messages from former Jiangsu Suning Football Club players.
As for Wang Sicong, he has completely ended the story of "Net Red Little King", and after leaving the venture capital circle and the public opinion field, Wanda Dashao's life is still simple and boring.