What Is Wang Jianlin'S M&A Logic About Wanda?

At the beginning of 2015, Wanda acquired 20% of the shares of Atletico Madrid with 45 million euros, and won a seat on the board of directors of the club. This is Wanda's first formal investment in sports.

Atletico Madrid theoretically belongs to the sports industry chain I mentioned earlier C-end It was an accident to invest in Atletico Madrid. The chairman and CEO of Atletico Madrid are my friends. They said they hope to have a shareholder from China, and they gave Wanda friendship price. Atletico Madrid is one of the top five clubs in the world, and 40 million dollars gave me 20% of the shares, with a valuation of only 200 million dollars. This price is really too cheap. Atletico Madrid really needs to be valued. How can it get 500 million dollars.

If investing in Atletico Madrid is a friendly help, then we will be prepared to win the Yingfang. Yingfang is the second largest sports marketing company in the world and one of the largest sports media production and broadcasting companies in the world. Its copyright covers 25 sports Winter sports The field ranks first in the world. Most importantly, Yingfang not only represents all seven sports of the Winter Olympics, but also holds the broadcasting right of the Winter Olympics.

What is the real value of Wanda Sports for Wanda Group? I can explain that Wanda's enterprise chessboard is built on the background of current consumption upgrading. Whether sports, tourism, entertainment, shopping malls, or finance, these are the most valuable means for Wanda to control the flow of people. Wanda's urban complex covers more than 200 million consumers every year, What Wanda needs to do is to transform the consumption capacity of existing consumer groups into the company's products and services.

So, on the surface, I am buying the sports industry. In fact, on the deep level, we want to make tourism and other related industries bigger through the sports industry. For example, in 2016, we will launch two major international events in China, so it is likely that only our own travel company will have the right to operate this event, and our travel website will have the right to sell tickets.

Take the skiing events mentioned above as an example. By operating such a unique major event, we can design a product for our travel company. Now our Changbai Mountain Resort project is hard to get a ticket. Someone recently called me and asked me to book five rooms for the Spring Festival. I said I was in a hurry so early. Unexpectedly, Changbai Mountain had been booked up two weeks before and after the Spring Festival when the "National Day" came. That is to say, this place is very popular. If there is a world-class competition in January and February every year, it will be even more popular. If you want to go to the game, OK， That can only be done through our travel agency.

Another example is that we hold a world-class football game in China and invite world-class national teams to play. The advantage of this game is that it takes a long time. Five or six teams will stay here for a week when they come, which is a good tourism product. It will be very promising if tourism and sports are combined in the future.

In fact, in the end, many things are internally to make the business ecosystem bigger. In a word, my starting point and ultimate goal are to make our business ecosystem more and more mutually supportive. The reason why we invest in sports is that it is relevant to our business in my ecosystem.

Wanda will also have a series of sports events, which will be announced before and after the Spring Festival, so that you can really see the value of our acquisition of these companies and what we are doing. Wanda Sports Federation basically took shape in 2017.

Many western sports companies are controlled by families, so is Yingfang. At that time, the founder of Yingfang died, and it was possible to sell the company's equity. My first instinct after learning about this was that it was definitely a good opportunity. In fact, the whole process is not easy, because you have to negotiate from family to family. You need to let them know what the benefits of selling you are, and you need to tell the other party that they can also share the final value-added wealth, so as to persuade them to agree to sell the project to us.

In the process of purchasing Yingfang, I am also constantly learning about the sports industry, and my understanding and interest in this field are also deepening. It is precisely because of the purchase of Yingfang that Wanda's entire nerve in the sports field has been pried. We feel that we may make a difference in the sports industry.

Further down, we bought WTC. WTC is the world's largest triathlon operator and the most famous triathlon brand owner, accounting for 91% of the global long-distance triathlon share. In addition to being the event brand owner, WTC is also the event operator, operating more than 250 events worldwide every year.

The management of Ironman didn't want to sell it. It is an old brand with a history of 367 years. Its cash flow is very stable. Its business model is to sell the competition projects of the second year in advance every year. That is to say, only by paying all the money online can we obtain the competition qualification. So the company has always had net profits, almost without any debt factors and financial risks.

Fortunately, we bought Yingfang before. Yingfang's CEO and Iron Man's CEO were brothers. He told Iron Man about the benefits of Wanda, and finally luckily facilitated the transaction. Ironman bought it just at the right time. Now China is entering the running society, and there are more than 20 running competitions in China every year.

Iron Man is the kind I like very much Sports company It has its own event brand and operates the event at the same time. This benefit is great. It will always be yours. It can't run. From this point of view, it even has advantages over Yingfang. Although Yingfang is also the B-end, acting as the broadcasting right of seven ice and snow federations, it does not worry about selling these things, but there is a problem with the B-end. It is not the ultimate owner of the event. It has to be discussed again every few years, and it may not be given to you at that time.

So you can see that the logic of Wanda's investment in sports is to aim at the scarce resources in the upstream of the industry and buy companies with intellectual property rights. This is also one of the most important principles of our current sports investment.

In addition to Yingfang and Iron Man, my future goal is to constantly include the world's brand influential events in Wanda's name, and this event must be replicable in China. Next year, Wanda will have at least two major mergers and acquisitions.

For a long time, the upstream cake of the global sports industry has been basically shared by European and American companies. China's sports industry is very weak and has no voice in the international sports industry. Because you are a latecomer and latecomer, in fact, you can't eat meat. You can only drink soup.

For example, many people in China now play tennis. Several major cities in China have held major international tennis events, and the bonus given by individual events is higher than that of the five famous international tennis open competitions. However, these events are very difficult to manage. It is very difficult to invite stars to participate every year, and it is difficult to earn money. What is the reason? Because the five major tennis events have formed interest groups, the International Network Association will not develop the sixth largest event under their influence.

What Wanda is doing and what it will do next is to acquire B-end companies in the international sports industry as much as possible, so as to gradually expand China's voice in the world sports field.

For example, Yingfang has acted as an agent for the marketing rights and copyrights of the seven major individual organizations of the Winter Olympics, which will have a certain impact on our hosting of the 2022 Winter Olympics. To take another intuitive example, I was arranged to sit in the middle of the first row at this year's FIFA annual meeting. The second row behind me is the chairman of the football federation of all continents, because Yingfang is the main partner of FIFA. If we had not bought Yingfang, we would not have held a meeting in FIFA and the IOC, and then we would have won the attention of the other party.