On October 10, the Chinese Super League will hold a bidding meeting for 16 clubs’ home LED billboards in Shenzhen, with five well-known domestic companies participating in the competition. Among them, Lehman, whose contract expires at the end of 2016, is still on the bidding list. Starting from 2017, the winning bidders will basically become “sponsors”.
According to the Chinese Super League’s bidding plan, in addition to sponsoring LED billboards for the home stadiums of 16 Chinese Super League clubs, participating companies will also sponsor part of the cash. The Chinese Super League does not set a lower limit or upper limit for annual sponsorship funds. During the bidding, companies participating in the competition use 5 million as a bidding unit. A bidding unit gets 5 points, and the company with the highest points will win the bid.
This means that the Chinese Super League has also started a money-making model on LED billboards. Compared with the Lehman era, this is a disruptive change. In 2012, when Lehman became the LED sponsor of the Chinese Super League, it sponsored more than 40 million LED billboards for 16 Chinese Super League clubs. Correspondingly, Lehman received 12 minutes of advertising time.
Based on the original value of the Chinese Super League’s commercial sponsorship, the cost per minute of advertising time is 1.5 million to 3 million. Based on the initial value of the LED billboards, Lehman almost recovered its own costs in the first year and made money in the following four years.
After the Chinese Super League became more and more valuable, the Chinese Super League chose to buy back advertising time from Lehman for the greater benefit of the 16 clubs. Since 2014, the Chinese Super League has used 15 million to repurchase 10 of Lehman's 12 minutes every year. In 5 years, Lehman not only had no losses as a sponsor, but also made a lot of money through 12 minutes of advertising time, exceeding 100 million yuan.
Now, when the contract between Lehman and the Chinese Super League expires, it coincides with the great era of the Chinese Super League. The Chinese Super League has also started its own money-making model, subverting the cooperation method with Lehman and changing it to "LED billboards + cash sponsorship". Seeing the great situation of Chinese football, I hope that more LED companies will sponsor the Chinese Super League. In the end, five companies, including Lehman, were shortlisted to participate in the bidding meeting on October 10. Among the five companies, four are listed companies.
Why do listed companies favor the Chinese Super League? The main reason is that they hope to add the concept of sports sector so that the company can expand its market business further. Driven by national policies, companies committed to the sports industry may enjoy the dividends of the policy, and may also bring greater development opportunities to the company by getting involved in the sports industry. Therefore, listed companies account for 80%.
The more companies that participate in the bidding, the more money the Super League will make. For example, if bidding is conducted in units of 5 million, Company A, which is the first to bid, bids 5 million. Company B must bid up to 10 million if it wants to participate, Company C needs to bid up to 15 million, Company D needs to increase its bid to 20 million, and Company E needs to bid 25 million to compete in the first round. According to this order, in the second round, if you want to continue to participate in the bidding, you must bid at least 30 million, and so on. The more rounds there are, the more success you get, the more you secretly rejoice.
Of course, LED sponsors still enjoy a certain amount of advertising time, but this time has dropped sharply from 12 minutes in the Lehman era to 3 minutes.
ANNA