For Chinese businessmen, there hasn’t been any other World Cup like the most recent one in arousing so much expectation for profits. However, things turned out not to be so simple. The World Cup tournament finally ended on Sunday with the Brazilian people celebrating their team’s fifth title, while Chinese businessmen had difficulty expressing their own feelings after checking the outcome of their business campaign during the one-month World Cup finals. The result was to remind them that, in a sports event like the World Cup, when the world’s best players are fighting for individual and national glory, and every soccer fan is praying for the success of their beloved team, while shrewd businessmen the world over are fighting for profits, the primary task for Chinese businessmen was to recognize accurately the business rules as well as the art of business marketing. In other words, in terms of how to earn this “smart” money, Chinese businessmen, like the Chinese soccer team, still have a long way to go.
Tourism: Failed Journey to the World Cup
The disputes and the market losses triggered by the traveling price lead to the failure of the journey to the World Cup. From the high-price tickets for games at the beginning, to the high expenses for group travel to South Korea or Japan at the middle stage, and finally to the big reduction sale for match tickets at the end, Chinese travel agencies were never satisfied with their business. Instead, gradually, they became embroiled in a nightmare they wish they could now forget. However, once the arrow is released, it can never be recalled. All of these travel agencies have to keep going in such difficult times, hoping that other tourism packages will enable them to recoup their losses. Nevertheless, all the prospective tourists finally turned to following the games on television or via other media, thirsting for answers to many enigmas involved in the high suspenseful plots of the tournament. Where travel agencies had been crowded on other days, now there were only a few travel-lovers interested in traveling. It is indeed surprising that the World Cup Finals led to an off-season either for overseas or domestic travel. All in all, many Chinese travel agencies missed the boat.
Souvenir: Transient Life
As for various kinds of World Cup souvenirs, they were doomed to suffer the same fate as the failed travel agencies. The unexpected results of the most promising teams’ dropping out early ensured a transient lifespan for many souvenirs. Take the French T-shirt as an example: the original price was 140 yuan (US$17), but quickly dropped below 100 yuan (US$12) due to French team’s disappointing performance in the first round. The businesses involved moaned that they had been too confident to believe in France, the resigning world champions. Meanwhile, in this most odd of World Cup tournaments, even those FIFA-appointed souvenir selling counters could never have enough nerve to keep on selling their souvenirs. The reduction sales campaign began early when it would not normally have been expected until much later on. According to these businessmen, they purchased many commodities, but never imagined that their shelf life would be so brief.
Giant TV Screens: People Attracted, Business Fell into Oblivion
During the World Cup, giant TV screens had been built in many marketplaces in Beijing, covering the whole progress of the World Cup live for the first time. A salesperson at a mall beside a TV screen in Xidan said: “As soon as the World Cup kicked off, except for food, nothing will sell during the game; all the customers get together around the screen to watch, without paying attention to our commodities.” To attract more customers, a store even launched a new promotion campaign, which promised that if the Chinese football team scored, full refunds would be paid on goods bought prior to the goal. Much to the businessmen’s disappointment, even such an attractive policy couldn’t attract many customers. After all, most people were there just to watch the game, not for shopping. A manager said that the football match was being broadcast, almost all those present had no intention of buying anything.” All those businessmen who had expected to make high profits from the World Cup ironically ended up longing for the event to finish.
Media: Providing a Free Lunch Without Gaining Any Profits
Last month, throughout the whole 30 days when the World Cup was staged in Japan and South Korea, for newspapers, it was the “morning” time that counted, and for TV, it was the evening time block that won in the overall media marketing campaign. More than 4 million copies of newspaper were distributed in Beijing by various companies, either at subway or bus stations. However, no newspaper wanted to publish its post-tournament accounts. Actually, apart from buying more “eyeballs” than normal, over 40 to 50 million yuan (US$4.8-6 million) in investment brought almost no profit at all.
There was no relief even for the TV stations. From the beginning of the World Cup, many local TV stations dispatched many correspondents to South Korea and Japan as frontline reporters to cover every aspect of the tournament, while many editors back home in China were also fully engaged in the special coverage. However, ironically, except for CCTV who earned a profit of 450 million yuan (US$54.35 million), other local TV stations all became losers in this battlefield. According to insiders, although about 96 percent of people watched the World Cup via TV, the stations never imagined all their hard work would produce such meager results.
Bar: Unspoken Embarrassment
“Our business is not that good, the main reason is that sometimes there are only a few floating customers,” a manager of a bar in Sanlitun bar street complained. On average, the bar expects to serve three different batches of people per night, but for the World Cup, there were less than half the normal crowd. According to common practice, if guests come to stay in the bar for over four hours, then the bar can hardly earn much profit. Even worse, while the world was going crazy over the World Cup, if the bar is occupied by soccer fanatics, other customers will be scared away by their boisterous behavior and will seek quieter havens for their entertainment, said the manager. According to the manager of a bar at the west gate of Chaoyang Park, the checked-out income for this month’s business was lower than other normal month. Besides bars, many restaurants also suffered the same experience. A prime example can be found in beverage’s selection, high-quality or high-priced wine or liqueurs are no longer people’s best choice; instead, cheap beers become their favorite liquid accompaniment throughout the game.
Soccer Lottery: It Should Have Made More Money
The World Cup Finals actually did become an arena for “dark horses,” at the same time, making the soccer lottery more attractive than ever before. This should, then, have been expected to reap big profits, but didn’t. Due to the lack of human resources and techniques, and being affected by some loopholes in the soccer lottery’s rules, the commercial opportunity hiding behind the World Cup was not well tapped. The planning of lottery drawing and announcement usually follows the arrangement of the game schedule, which meant a somewhat week-long waiting for the result. Many impatient game players were finally unable to bear such slow pace, and turned to other lottery games. Although new guessing approaches have been put forward, such as the guess for the big 8 and big 4, it still couldn’t meet many lottery fans’ demand. Meanwhile, the comparatively boring methods of the soccer lottery made it much less attractive among many other gambling approaches. There is no doubt that this suspense-packed World Cup provided the soccer lottery with a very charming platform, however, poor promotional strategies proved to be a loss maker.
Advertisement: Soccer Stars Decide Its Win or Loss
From May 31 to June 30, whenever you turned on the TV, led by their coach Bora Milutinovic, the Chinese soccer team players including Yang Chen, Jiang Jing, Li Tie, Li Weifeng, Fan Zhiyi, Sun Jihai… all become shinning representatives for a series of commodity brands, like the air conditioners, tape repeaters, beers or other beverages.
However, after the team’s pitiful failure to enter the second round of the World Cup without a goal to its credit, the aura surrounding the players quickly dissipated. Excitement becomes debate, expectation becomes censure, all inevitably creating many side-effects to the commodities represented by the various stars. The hotly broadcasted advertisements finally stopped and at this time, businessmen finally learnt that it is still too risky to package Chinese soccer stars for their brands via advertisements.
(china.org.cn By Feng Shu, July 3, 2002)
