Netease sports report:
On October 20th, the State Council issued "Several Opinions of the State Council on Accelerating the Development of Sports Industry and Promoting Sports Consumption", which caused great repercussions in the sports circle. Many practitioners feel like a spring breeze, thinking that this marks a clear shift from gold medal sports to national sports in China, but some analysts believe that this just reflects the urgent need to accelerate the development of sports industry in China. Qingdao Zhongneng Group, which has been committed to professional football for ten years, has not only built its own model in China football, but also tested the water in advance in the sports industry. The sports culture company established last year assumed this important role. From cooperating with Qingdao Sports Bureau to carry out national sports dance and ballroom dancing invitational tournament, Qingdao mountaineering and walking, to independently undertaking large-scale events and group activities, Zhongneng has already had a mature model and rich experience in the sports industry with the help of football.
Compared with the national sports strategy in the past few decades, the biggest difference in the Opinions is that it aims at concepts such as industry, national fitness and sports consumption, and even puts forward a quantitative goal that sports consumption will reach 5 trillion in 2025, and does not regard "winning glory for the country in international stadiums" as the ultimate goal of developing sports. From this perspective, the government’s goal is clear and firm. "Grasping the potential industries" is one of the plans made by the Opinions for the future sports industry. It requires that football, basketball and volleyball should be taken as the starting points to accelerate the development of collective projects with wide popularity, high attention and large market space, and promote the development of the industry in depth. This seems to be a portrayal of Zhongneng’s development to the sports industry with the help of the football platform. National sports, campus football and international competitions have become the main brands of Zhongneng Culture and Sports Company.
Campus football, which has been attached great importance to from the State Council to the grassroots in the past two years, is once again interpreted as a core issue. As a small and medium-sized club, Qingdao Zhongneng has not achieved brilliant achievements like Evergrande and Luneng, but it has opened up a new mode of survival for small and medium-sized clubs with the perseverance of investing in professional football for ten years and the development of youth training system and campus football. Zhongneng Club not only trained a large number of available talents for national brands at all levels, but also established a standardized reserve echelon and campus football system. The club’s U9-U19, 7-echelon system has become one of the few clubs with complete echelon construction in professional leagues; Zhongneng Club has also signed contracts with nearly 70 primary and secondary schools in Qingdao, with a selection base of about 60,000 campus football talents, making it the club with the largest number of campus football schools in China. At present, the club continues to increase the construction and investment in the youth training system on the basis that the number of coaches at the two levels of youth training reaches 45 and the accumulated investment reaches more than 4 million. Now, the competition for youth training coaches is in full swing, and Zhongneng will invest more than 3 million yuan each year to hire high-level coaches to ensure the talent training of campus football and echelon. After visiting the echelon of Zhongneng Club and the construction of campus football, Wei Jixiang, secretary of the Party Committee of Foot Control Center of the State Sports General Administration, praised Zhongneng’s work in youth training.
Qingdao football has a profound connotation, and Zhongneng Club has made great efforts to train young people, but the hardware facilities such as football field are far from meeting the needs of training and competition, which has seriously affected the competition results and talent training. The Opinions call for the improvement of sports facilities. Governments at all levels should make overall plans for the construction of sports facilities in combination with the development of urbanization, rationally lay out the layout, and focus on building a number of small and medium-sized sports venues, public fitness activity centers, outdoor multi-functional stadiums, fitness trails and other venues and facilities that are convenient for the people and the people. Revitalize existing resources and transform old factories, warehouses and old commercial facilities for sports and fitness. At this point, Zhongneng Club started its operation last year. It not only solved the hardware problems that plagued the echelon and campus football by itself, but also enriched its experience through some international competitions and national sports. In 2012, Zhongneng Club and Qingdao Sports Bureau jointly held the National Sports Dance and Ballroom Dance Invitational Tournament, cooperated with Licang District Government to hold the National Fitness Walking Conference, cooperated with Qingdao Sports General Association to hold the mountaineering conference, etc. In 2013, it held the invitational tournament with the Bundesliga giant Wolfsburg in Sanya, and cooperated with Zhidan County in an all-round way.
At present, Zhongneng is planning to build Qingdao International Hushan Football Cultural Park and Football Cultural Creative Base, and plans to build it into a new landmark of football culture, a sports fashion gathering area, a sports creative industry platform and a national leisure sports center. Zhongneng hopes that through its own hard work, it can promote the great development of Qingdao’s sports culture industry, make it a bright spot of Qingdao’s emerging industries, make the world’s "football culture movement tide" surge in Qingdao, and lay the foundation for building an international football city.
