Gan Liantong: Sponsoring the event is not a commercial return, hope more audiences will enter the stadium
In March 2012, the “Xingpai Cup” Snooker Haikou World Open was grandly held in Haikou. The sponsor and organizer of the game, Gan Liantong, chairman of Xingpai Company, was interviewed by media reporters. In the interview, Chairman Gan Liantong recalled the sponsorship process of Xingpai for the event, and said that sponsoring the event is not a commercial return. Finally, Chairman Gan Liantong called on more audiences to enter the Haikou World Open and feel the charm of snooker.
For this Snooker Haikou World Open, Xingpai completed the naming and main board work. However, Xingpai has always had a special liking for event sponsorship. Regarding the events sponsored in the past, Chairman Gan Liantong recalled, “Our company has established a factory in 1987. It has been 25 years since our company has sponsored countless events. We are number one. The second sponsorship was before the Beijing Asian Games. Afterwards, I sponsored a variety of events, which involved various levels, including competitions from institutions and enterprises, as well as top domestic competitions, including the world’s highest level competition we currently sponsor , I haven’t done any statistics, and there may be more than a thousand competitions. Since we sponsored this competition, our investment has been hundreds of millions for so many years. Through sponsoring the competition, our company has also been greatly developed in scale. ”
As for the most significant sponsorship in the early stage, Chairman Gan Liantong specifically mentioned the National Billiards Classic. “It can be said that every tournament we sponsor has its own highlights, but if it is meaningful, it must be We hosted the National Billiards Classic in the 1980s. The competition was held in the Asian Games venues. At that time, the world-renowned player, Hendry, was very difficult to get, and at that time we were still unknown and we didn’t know many things. New style, but after the first time we held such a large game, well-known players have invited to China, which played a very important role in the development of billiards at that time, and for our popularity, for our Xingwei The business has indeed taken a big step. Up to now, I still remember that the turnover at that time was not particularly large, only over 1 million. At that time, we gave out 600,000 yuan to do this competition. At that time, the investment was very large, but this investment played a vital role in the promotion of our star brand in the future, including the rapid development of the enterprise. So you said this should be the turning point. This is the main force in the past. Because many people didn’t know it before, it was indeed through this event that many people knew that our star brand is a well-known brand of billiards. Also know what kind of company this company is.
Regarding the significance of sponsoring the event, Chairman Gan Lianfang also put forward his own point of view. Xingpai Company has different ideas on the sponsorship of the game at different times. For example, in the initial stage of building a factory, it is difficult for us to imagine how many large-scale companies we can expand in the future. Because billiards is an unfamiliar project to the Chinese people, you do some advertisements, other sponsorships, and other promotions for unfamiliar projects. In fact, many of them are not clear, which is nothing. We actually want to make more people familiar with the rules of billiards through this event, and in the process of getting familiar with the billiards project, come to know our star brand company. At the beginning of the sponsorship, we should say that we want more people to understand the idea of billiards and the idea of Xingpai, which was the original idea. It should be said that after the rapid development of billiards in China, we have other ideas. For example, what you call investment and rate of return. For the sake of investment and return, our company has positioned itself as the largest sports brand in China in its products, which has an inseparable relationship with the promotion of sports events. Therefore, after 21 years of hard work, we are not only a well-known brand in China but also a well-known brand in the world. We are one of the largest billiard brands in the world. Because our sales channels are very wide, we have reached In order to achieve the expected goals, and from the perspective of our experience, we believe that the choice of sports events, especially billiards, is a close relationship with us. So we want to go from the business turnover of hundreds of thousands in the early days of our factory to the business of hundreds of millions now. We think the sponsorship and participation of this event and event play a very important role in this.
Regarding the commercial return of the event, Mr. Gan Liantong said: “We dare not think too much about the commercial return at the beginning. Billiards really landed in China in 1982, including development within 9 years. It is undeniable that many projects and products have gone through a period of rapid development. , There will be a period of decline. From 2000 to 2005, these four to five years are a period of great billiards. From the perspective of our Chinese industry, there are still many companies doing these billiards activities during the rapid development period. Many of them didn’t do it during the trough period, changed careers and gave up. In this, we empathized with the situation at that time, and it is really fresh in our memory. That will be the star card to withstand the small ball of the General Administration of Sports. Wang Liwei, deputy director of the center, said: It is the star that has supported the backbone of our Chinese billiards. At that time, when we were in the competition, we had the only ranking event. The need to maintain the daily training foundation of athletes has also maintained the development of billiards in China. It was a sensation, and it was very hard in those years.”
“After Ding Junhui won the championship in 2005, to be honest, we didn’t expect too much commercial return. We just wanted to cultivate Xiaohui, attract the world’s top players, and then introduce world-class events to China. This should be said. It has had a relatively large impact on Chinese sports. It is hoped that through these things, Chinese billiards will follow up. At that time, with more and more international competitions, Ding Junhui won more attention after winning the championship, and the sport has become more important. Significant development. Of course, from the perspective of commercial returns, we feel that the sponsored companies now have their commercial returns, whether it is from brand or commercial promotion. For our star brand, there are only two. The first is that we are The sports industry is a company that produces billiards. We have a mission to promote this sport in an event, including training more players like Ding Junhui, providing them with hardware facilities, and making the billiards market bigger and better. On the other hand, after a long period of time, we have also made a transition from manufacturing to sponsorship to hosting. We want to host this event. We should say that there will definitely be commercial returns. Our current event time is still relatively tight. At present, I still dare not think of more commercial returns. We hope that through this year’s full promotion, the broadcast from CCTV includes the attention of major media. There are hundreds of millions of Taiwan fans across the country. We think it’s commercial The value is still very high.”
This year, the Haikou World Snooker Open was held in Haikou for the first time and was a success. Mr. Gan Liantong has high expectations for the competition. We came to host this event after a lot of effort, because the Snooker Association used to set the Chinese game as two stations. With the growth and development of the Chinese market, they are willing to put more events in China. It has been two years after the application was approved to host the World Open. Since we got this approval last year, time was very tight during the preparation of the event. As you can see, our event operation is fairly successful. This year’s competition is to test the waters of our professional competition team. We will sum up our experience in this competition, find out the shortcomings, and accumulate experience in order to be more professional in future competitions. ”
“Hope for the future, I feel that Hainan is a city approved by the state with the concept of an international tourist island. I hope that the tropical island scenery will combine the characteristics of the blue sea with the snooker sport to create a unique Hainan’s characteristic event. Through our continuous accumulation of experience and continuous exploration to make our event better and better. Finally, I hope that more spectators can come closer to the stadium and feel the charm of snooker.
Signature: Star Billiards
