Big coffee talk | The Pain of Three Towns Reflects the Current Situation of Chinese Football Stock reform is a false proposition
Author: Ma Dexing
Number of characters: 5009
Recommended reading time: 15 minutes
The Chinese Super League officially entered a brief truce after the 24th round of the strike on August 27, but Chinese football did not stop there. On the afternoon of the 28th, Wuhan Three Towns Club released a briefing through the official social platform, which once again set off waves in Chinese football. Although the briefing clearly conveys three meanings, there is only one core point, that is, the club's share reform is now in trouble.
In addition to a few clubs such as Shanghai Shenhua, Zhejiang and Henan, which officially announced that they had completed the share reform, and a very few clubs such as Shanghai Port, which were not affected by the share reform for the time being, most other Chinese Super League clubs have encountered more or less trouble in promoting the share reform, or have stopped moving forward, or have declared that the share reform has failed. Where is the Super League going? Where should China's professional football reform go? This is actually the most headache of Chinese football at the moment!
(1) Bad environment and atmosphere are not conducive to development
Although the current Chinese Super League, including the Chinese League A and China B leagues, is still proceeding normally, there has been no further news about the club share reform led by the Chinese Football Association since the beginning of last year. But in fact, I believe that whether it is a higher management department or ordinary people, it is very clear that the "anti-corruption and anti-gambling" currently underway is not an end, but only a means or way, and the ultimate goal may be for the better development of Chinese football, so that Chinese football can improve its own standards, whether it is at the national team level or the professional league level, which can ultimately meet and realize the people's expectations of Chinese football. To some extent, Chinese football at this stage is precisely in a more chaotic period.
On the one hand, this chaos is reflected in the management methods and models and management systems of Chinese football, and it is precisely because of this chaos that the outside world generally believes that "anti-corruption and anti-gambling" is very necessary, and it is necessary to purify the "dirty phenomenon" in Chinese football and straighten out various relationships. It's just that this year's Chinese Super League and China League A and China B Professional League have been reported from time to time with various negative news, which to some extent actually reflects that Chinese football is still not fully on track.
On the other hand, it has been ignored by relevant parties for a long time in the past, that is, the public opinion environment and atmosphere of Chinese football are getting worse and worse, the status of the Chinese football industry in the whole society is getting lower and lower, and people engaged in the football industry are also more and more emotional that "life is not timely". Because the same is engaged in football, it is a profession with a high social status abroad, even if the competitive performance is very average, but it also has a good social image. But open China's online platforms or media, all the news surrounding Chinese football is almost either "black" or "evil", it seems that Chinese football is "heinous" in all strata of Chinese society and should disappear completely. But even so, how can it explain that after this year's Chinese Super League fully returns to normal, the average attendance rate can exceed 20,000 per game, is it that the people who pour into the scene to watch the Chinese Super League are all "heinous" social people?
There is a serious split between the orientation of public opinion and the reality, and the bad image of Chinese football also discourages people who are interested in the development of Chinese football, for fear that they will bring immeasurable negative social image and impact to themselves because of their involvement in Chinese football. However, compared with the pharmaceutical industry and field, which is also carrying out anti-corruption, the evil of Chinese football is only a small thing. On the one hand, relevant parties are strongly advocating that more children enter the green field and engage in football activities, but on the other hand, the news surrounding football is always negative images such as "fake gambling black". So, as a parent of a child, why is he willing to let his child get involved in this "black" and "fake" sports? It's normal to choose to stay away.
What can further prove that the current Chinese football has no status and dignity is that, according to the news released by the Wuhan Three Towns Club, the club has zero debt, and agrees to transfer 100% of the equity of the Three Towns Club held by it without compensation at zero consideration, and is willing to continue to provide the base built by its investment of more than 100 million yuan to the club free of charge. In this case, the new investor has not been clear at this stage, which is really shameful, not to mention the football people or fans in Wuhan and Hubei, but also to make other Chinese football people, people who really care about China.
(2) The pain of the three towns reflects the entire professional football
Back in Wuhan, the three towns were ready to stop the capital injection itself. This is actually a situation that is easy to predict, and with the reporter's understanding of the current reality of the Chinese Super League clubs, it is the three towns in Wuhan that stop injecting capital today, and tomorrow it will be the turn of the Baoqi, because all Chinese Super League clubs are the same situation, that is, private enterprises are facing the survival of their own enterprises under the current Chinese economic environment and atmosphere, especially most of the parent companies behind these Chinese Super League clubs are small real estate companies.
More than 10 years ago, when the Chinese Super League began to enter the golden yuan era after the first wave of anti-gambling and anti-black sweeps, the outside world once joked that the Chinese Super League was called a "real estate league", because almost all of the parent companies behind the 16 clubs of the Chinese Super League are supported by real estate companies, and the parent company injects funds into professional clubs by obtaining various preferential policies from the government, especially after obtaining land, and then enters the "buy, buy, buy" stage, and from the beginning, it has plagued the self-hematopoietic function of the Chinese professional league. The managers of the Chinese professional leagues and even the managers of Chinese football at the time did not hesitate to break the rules and tailor many special policies for the sake of immediate interests, especially the impulse to perform, and even for the clubs that burned money. This further aggravates the chaos of professional football in China, coupled with the flickering of the so-called "football industry", the cognitive deviation of professional football will inevitably lead to a dead end in Chinese football. Think about how crazy the so-called Evergrande model, Huaxia model, and Quanjian model were back then, and now you know how pathetic they are.
What's more, football clubs are just a tool in the eyes of these capital owners or elites. Today, the real estate dividend has long been exhausted, and football clubs have inevitably become victims. In particular, it is no longer possible for a single private enterprise to support professional football clubs that need financial support. This also makes the most primitive topic of the operation and survival model of Chinese professional football clubs once again re-raised, when can the self-hematopoietic function of professional clubs really be established?
In other words, after 30 years of Chinese professional football, it seems to be back to the starting point, what should Chinese professional football do?
(3) "Share reform" is actually a "false proposition"
History often bears striking similarities. The three-year epidemic has actually further aggravated the difficulty of the development of professional football in China, making it more difficult for Chinese professional football clubs. Starting from 2022, the Chinese Football Association has clearly put forward the requirements for share reform under the requirements of relevant parties, that is, to change the current situation of Chinese professional football clubs relying on one enterprise, allowing more enterprises, especially local state-owned enterprises, to participate in it, and implement the "shareholding system" reform.
This is easy to remind the reporter of 1996, at the beginning of the professionalization of Chinese football, the Chinese Football Association convened a meeting in Beijing of the heads and general managers of domestic A clubs, during which he expressed the hope that each team could develop in the direction of corporatization, especially the form of choosing the shareholding system. Because the vast majority of domestic clubs at that time were in the form of cooperation between the local sports committee and an enterprise, this form could solve the team's financial problems in the short term. However, after one or two years of cooperation, due to the lack of agreement on funding, personnel and other issues, contradictions of one kind or another arose, and finally the group broke up, so that the club often presented the situation of "changing the banner of the king at the head of the city". Moreover, in the field of domestic economy at that time, the National Structural Reform Commission had clearly proposed that the shareholding system was the direction of the reform of large and medium-sized state-owned enterprises, and the choice of shareholding system by football clubs should be said to be in line with the general situation.
After 26 years, when Chinese professional football clubs once again raised the so-called "share reform" issue, of course, they returned to the starting point, as mentioned earlier. However, after more than 20 years of development, China's professional football club and more than 20 years ago when the professional football club was just starting out are two completely different concepts, because more than 20 years ago, the local sports committee (that is, the current local sports bureau) still has a certain say in the club, and now there is no say in the professional club, the capital is big, and the players, as employees, of course, only obey the orders of the capital. Of course, this is fundamentally different from the players who "grew up eating royal food" in the professional era, and the ownership also belongs to the capitalists.
Therefore, the so-called "stock reform" has become a false proposition to some extent, because in the current social and economic environment, state-owned enterprises and private enterprises may be difficult to compatible, not to mention that professional football itself is a money-burning sport, before China's professional football has not formed an effective business model and become a real "industry", let private enterprises burn money, and then let state-owned enterprises burn money, which is difficult to tolerate the current various systems and regulations of state-owned enterprises.
In fact, the reason why some clubs quickly made new moves when the stock reform was proposed at the beginning of last year, which was not unrelated to the relevant leaders of the local government, but once the leaders left or changed, there was no follow-up. Many Chinese Super League club stock reforms are difficult to sustain, precisely because of the change of local leaders. Therefore, the share reform hopes of Chinese professional football clubs should not be pinned on local leaders, but should be a kind of system construction, that is, it is necessary to formulate and issue relevant unified regulations at a higher level, institutionalize and systematize them.
(4) It is time for government to play its part
Frankly speaking, the professionalization of Chinese football has come to this point, and the Chinese Football Association, as the highest management department of the Chinese football industry, and the higher level of direct management have an unshirkable responsibility. But what role should the government play in the whole process of reforming the professionalization of football in China? Today, if the reform of professional football in China is to continue, this question must be answered, and it cannot be delayed. Otherwise, Chinese football may further cause more and greater negative impacts on China and even the entire Chinese society, which is not conducive to China's overall image in the world.
Before answering this question, it is first necessary to clarify the focus issues that have been controversial and even tried in the process of China's career reform process:
First, should the national interest be the ultimate goal, or should the maximum market benefit be the ultimate goal?
Second, should market forces dominate or state administrative forces?
Third, is it the government that implements specific operations, or the society that implements specific operations?
These points of controversy can be found in the "Overall Plan for the Reform and Development of Chinese Football" (commonly known as the "Fifty Articles"), but this may not be the case in reality. For example, the Chinese Football Association is the only legal organization representing the mainland to participate in international football organizations, and improving the level of football is the most important task, which represents the expectations and interests of the people. Since for a long time in the past, we simply took good and bad results as the only criterion for judging football, and the people valued the most that the Chinese team wanted to enter the World Cup and value the results, and no results is the attitude of the outside world to Chinese football today, so the Chinese Football Association has always hoped to have a "landmark result". From the perspective of the Chinese Football Association, is it wrong to strive to grasp the national team well and take all possible means to strive for the qualification? Is it not the hope that this will satisfy the wishes of the people?
But professional clubs are investors to pay to raise the team, to ensure that their interests in the market are maximized, the reason why Jinyuan football is rampant in Chinese football, relying on money to introduce big-name foreign aid, by improving performance to attract attention, so as to achieve the short-term maximization of publicity, maximize benefits, from the perspective of the market, is it wrong? Of course, everyone will say the big truth to investors, but the reality is just another matter, investors are more concerned about their own interests. Therefore, there will inevitably be conflicts and contradictions between the two, and the contradiction between "public goods" and "private products", which can be said to have arisen with the beginning of China's professional football reform and run through the entire history of China's professional football development in the past 30 years. To put it more highly, the contradiction between national interests and enterprise interests, national goals and enterprise objectives, is an internal contradiction, but also a kind of separation. From the G7 incident in 2004 to the difficult birth of the Chinese Professional Football Club Federation, these contradictions are actually prominent manifestations.
For example, it has been two or three years since the launch of the Chinese Professional Football Club Federation, but why has it never been approved by the relevant government departments? What works in European and American professional football may not apply to China. This is determined by our national conditions.
However, even in the highly professional European and American football world, the invisible shadow of the "government" can be seen behind it. Most tellingly, the Premier League has long been the envy of all walks of life, but the UK government made clear earlier this year that it plans to set up an independent football regulator to oversee the financial sustainability of men's football matches in England and have the power to block clubs from joining the breakaway league. The government has released a white paper on football management, confirming the establishment of a regulatory body in line with the recommendations of a fan-led soccer review in 2021.
In contrast, the current Chinese football has completely "separated" from the government and the current management system of Chinese society, because the Chinese football association is a non-governmental organization and social organization, although the establishment of a party committee and the leadership of the party group of the General Administration of Sports, but it is difficult to implement all-round supervision, because it does not have the corresponding jurisdiction of the government organization or department, but has to bear the corresponding responsibility. The current administrative system in China is the "principle of territorial management", and any industry and any field is checked and responsible at every level, starting from the grassroots districts and counties, to the city, then to the level of provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions, and finally to the central government. Among them, the role and role of the government is self-evident. However, only Chinese football is the exception now, after the separation from the local sports bureau (representing the government department), all the affairs of the local club fell to the Chinese Football Association, which formed a "management blind area" during this period. More importantly, the current Chinese Football Association cannot represent the first-level government, and in practice, local governments can completely dismiss it.
From another point of view, the operation of professional football marketization itself is inseparable from the market economy, but the fact of its development in the market economy, whether it is developed or developing countries, has repeatedly proved that the government has never given up the macro-control and management of the economy, not to mention that there is no "free" market economy without state regulation in today's world. The same is true in professional football, and even more so in Chinese professional football.
So, what's next for professional football in China? Especially after anti-corruption and anti-gambling. First of all, I am afraid that it should rise to the height and level of the ecological environment governance of Chinese football, re-optimize the ecology of Chinese football, and then combine the cultural construction proposed in the 14th Five-Year Plan issued by the central government, including regional cultural and sports ideological construction and development, around the construction of a socialist cultural power, a sports power, and a healthy China, and explore a new direction for sports culture construction, which is precisely the function and responsibility of local governments.
This is why the reporter insists that "it is time for the government to play a role and play a role in the development of professional football in China" again. It is difficult for a football club to negotiate with local governments to fundamentally solve the problem and help Chinese football out of the predicament, but it is more important to control and guide the next deepening reform of Chinese football from the aspects of policies and systems.