Yao Ming'S Business Path After Retirement

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But for an athlete, retiring is also a matter of time, especially after the 9 season of NBA, the injured Yao Ming.

An early guess is that the top athlete Yao Ming, who is the richest man in Forbes's list of Chinese celebrities for 7 consecutive years, will continue his considerable commercial value after retirement, and how will he pform it?

Retirement means people walking tea cool?

Among Chinese athletes, Yao Ming can calculate the ability to absorb gold most, and is also one of the athletes with considerable commercial value.

According to statistics, Yao Ming's commercial contract is worth up to $150 million, including Reebok, Coca-Cola, apple computer, China life, McDonald's, VISA and so on. The annual endorsement income is about $21 million.

Combined with the statistics given by Forbes every year, from 2002 to 2010, Yao Ming's professional income and commercial endorsement revenue were collected from NBA to 2010. The cumulative income in the past 9 years has exceeded RMB 2 billion yuan.

However, after Yao Ming's injury, different opinions about his commercial value have been pouring out. Most of them are not optimistic about Yao Ming's signing of the endorsement contract. Many even believe that Yao Ming's contract renewal will be greatly affected.

"Sports is the present."

Zhu Xiaoming, President of Tai Du sports marketing company, told reporters that the commercial value of athletes is directly proportional to the exposure rate. "Injuries make athletes lack sufficient opportunities to expose, reduce the degree of concern, and even more after retirement. The commercial value of athletes after retirement is maintained for 2~4 years."

However, CEO Zhang Qing, a key sports consulting company in Beijing, believes that athletes' value includes three aspects: Athletes' competitive value, commercial value of athletes, and the indirect social value of surplus athletic value.

The disappearance of athletic value after retirement does not mean the disappearance of commercial value.

The life cycle of athletes can be divided into four stages, namely, professional competence, individualized development, comprehensive performance and professional spirit.

Zhang Qing believes that at the last stage, the formation of the inner spiritual stage of athletes becomes its intrinsic intangible value during the peak period, which also prepares athletes for retirement to form sustained commercial value.

In his view, although Yao Ming's direct income, the professional income and the business endorsement income may be reduced, but when he forms the personal brand value, and turn it into commercial value, it may form another commercial peak.

However, "that will be the value of Yao Ming's business operation as an ordinary businessman, rather than his commercial value as a sports star."

Zhu Xiaoming said.

"Whether we can continue or even surpass the original commercial value after retirement is decided by three factors," Zhang Qing said. The first is the athlete's personal will and the next stage of development.

Some athletes may be on the road of commercialization. Some athletes may be more willing to engage in social work, such as physical education.

The second is the system architecture of its asset management and development team.

Third, whether the external business environment is suitable.

Brand management of career

There is no doubt that the commercial value of athletes after retirement is closely related to the accumulation of their business value during their career.

Zhang Qing believes that "to achieve maximum value in the process of athletes' career, we need to build and manage various personal brands.

In his view, the above values of athletes' career stage are: competitive performance, development potential, external image quality, exposure rate, personal reputation, market base of the projects they engage in, and personal experiences and events that attract the public.

As a successful basketball player, Yao Ming relied on his own strength. As a success of commercial symbols, Yao Ming relied more on his team, the power of Yao team.

The Yao team, founded in 2000, is Yao Ming's business planning team and the main pioneer of Yao Ming's commercial empire.

During the previous career of Yao Ming, Yao team played an important role in the selection of brand names and the investment of Yao Ming.

Zhang Mingji, the director of Yao team, once said, "when Yao Ming just landed on NBA, the positioning was younger.

Later, through various planning, he has just entered the NBA's "Leng Qing Qing" to become a well-known American "made in China".

Even former US President Clinton evaluated Yao Ming as "China's largest single export to the United States".

While fully developing personal business value, Yao Ming also does not forget to give back to society. He also set up Yao fund, which is mainly engaged in various kinds of public welfare activities such as helping students to teach and promoting youth health and welfare. Many NBA China Charity competitions have been launched.

"For Yao Ming, the shaping of the all-round brand image during his career has also poured solid strength into his commercial value and laid a good foundation for his commercial road after retirement, which is also a reference for other athletes."

Liu Wei, a brand management expert of Lian Zhi Da brand management consulting company, said, but Yao Ming has particularity. He is like kung fu panda. Yao Ming is also a NBA player with Chinese elements and has unique commercial value.

"It's hard for Chinese athletes to do Yao Ming and Li Na."

Zhu Xiaoming said, first of all, not every athlete has enough courage and confidence to buy himself, relying on his athletic strength to support himself and his coach, business operation and other teams.

In addition, this is also related to the sports itself. Yao Ming and Li Na can achieve higher commercial value, because their sports basketball, tennis, football, golf and snooker are highly professional sports, and such projects as running, weightlifting, gymnastics and diving are difficult to support themselves and teams through match prizes and advertising endorsements.

Third, behind Yao Ming and Li Na, there is an international team in managing their personal brand and value.

The road of pformation after retirement

Although rumors of retirement do not confirm that after returning home this summer, Yao Ming's appearance is not only in the field of charity and environmental protection, but also highlights the charm of his non player status in different fields such as Shanghai motor show, Shanghai Cultural Forum, Boao forum, financial forum and so on.

As for the life cycle of athletes, the Yao team, who has prepared for a rainy day, also realized that Zhang Mingji, the head of the team, once said, "a few years ago, we began to let Yao Ming enter the new brand cycle.

The goal of this new cycle is to make the brand characteristics richer, more depth and reputation, not only beyond the sports field, but also beyond the sportsman's movement cycle.

For this reason, since 2006, Yao team has invested in the whale music network, Beijing Tongzhou Sunflower Hotel and California fitness Yao Ming club, which can be seen as the test of Yao Ming's pformation.

In 2009, Yao Ming bought the Shanghai men's basketball club as a long-term investment.

At present, Yao Ming has a number of websites, restaurants, real estate, stock markets, hotels and many other investments.

Evaluating Yao Ming's previous investments, Zhang Qing believes that "in addition to the acquisition of the Shanghai men's basketball club for more emotional factors, a few other commercial investments may be mostly from the perspective of the profit margin of business investment, and have achieved good commercial results.

"Yao Ming is a very clever way to turn the current business value into future revenue."

Zhu Xiaoming said that in 2006 and 2007, Yao Ming's brand value was still at its heyday. He changed the advertising contract part of commercial value reputation into some company's original stock or shares, which is actually preparing for retirement.

For the future of Yao Ming's commercial road, Zhang guessed that Yao Ming might have put more thoughts on training and competition and participated in business investment in a small amount of time.

In the future, when Yao Ming retires, his way of developing commercial territory may be completely different from that at NBA. When he has more time to do business investment and other things, he may invest more in the sports related industries through his professional players' smell, connections and resources, such as sports food, fitness clubs, sports real estate and so on.

Zhu Xiaoming also believes that a challenge is that Yao Ming has to manage himself well, and now he must manage more people in the enterprise team.

On the team, Yao Ming's original "Yao team" may be more about Yao Ming's personal brand management team. After retirement, the team may expand to be a more business team, with a team of enterprises, industry and equity management.

"In addition to being a businessman Yao Ming, he may have an identity as a public welfare ambassador and philanthropist, appearing on various occasions to compensate for the disappearance of the playground exposure."

Liu Wei thinks, because its future personal brand's commercial value is also related to its exposure.

"He may not be as direct as Lining to do his own sports shoes and clothing brand businesses."

Zhu Xiaoming speculated that, after all, the domestic and foreign brand competition in this field is very fierce, and the profit margin is also declining. The greater possibility is that Yao Ming will consider the way of personal brand authorization, just like the sports brand authorized to the operator, and the operator will develop, produce and sell the licensed brand products according to the agreed conditions.

Zhang Qing also said, "athletes' career may be short lived, but if he left an excellent brand and passed the spirit of sportsmanship to later generations, it may be the greatest commercial value of an athlete."