As of early September, the popular Jiangsu City Football League has reached the 11th round, with Xuzhou temporarily ranked fourth with two regular season games left and has steadily obtained the elimination ticket.
While many netizens support and cheer for the Xuzhou team on the Internet, there are also voices that "If there is a professional team in Xuzhou that is competing for the China League One or China League Two, it would be even more perfect."
The reason for the relevant voice is that Xuzhou's long-term campus football youth training model has indeed provided players to the youth training echelons and first-teams of many professional football clubs, and even emerged from "national players" who have been selected as national teams such as Sun Ke, Li Ang, and Shi Ke. Among the current players in the Chinese Super League (China's top professional football league), there are 6 players from Xuzhou, the highest among the 13 cities in Jiangsu Province.
Secondly, in the "Soviet Super League" competition, the Nantong team, which has the youth training lineup of Nantong Haimen Ke Diyuan (fify Ke Diyuan's first team) as its team, has maintained a complete victory so far, allowing people to intuitively feel the gap between the amateur team and the professional team echelon, not to mention that there is another professional team in Nantong - Nantong Zhiyun.
In addition, Nanjing, Suzhou and Wuxi currently have the China League One or China League Two teams such as Nanjing City, Suzhou Dongwu, and Wuxi Wu Gou, but the three cities have not used the youth training echelons of these professional teams as the team to compete in the "Su Super League". Assuming that there is still Jiangsu Football City League next year and the rules remain unchanged, then the above three cities are likely to send youth training echelons.
So why does Xuzhou City have no professional football team?
1. No enterprise or private fund owner investment team
Professional teams cannot be started with a coaching team plus twenty or thirty players. They also involve training bases, home team game venues, medical teams and other logistics support, personnel salary and other fixed expenses. Therefore, the cost of operating a China League Two or even China League One team is conservatively no less than 10 million.
To meet the relatively stable operation of the team, either the local state-owned enterprises under the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission shall invest or control the team, or there shall be large private enterprises or private financial owners to invest and build the team.
For a long time, large state-owned enterprises under the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission of Xuzhou City and well-known private enterprises in the city have no interest or need to form or invest in professional teams, but those established as individuals are all amateur teams.
2. The competitive level of professional football leagues at all levels in the country is not high, resulting in a relatively poor commercialization level. Investing in professional teams is almost a "pure money-burning" project, and the returns are worrying.
Contests are the basic platform of professional leagues, but relying on the basic platform to achieve considerable business effects and revenue sources is a necessary link to maintain the healthy operation of the league and each team.
But the reality is that none of the top Chinese Super League in China has reached a relatively considerable competitive level, and the Chinese Super League is not at the top level even in Asia.
If the league's competitive level is not high, it will not gain a huge fan base, and will not have considerable ticket revenue, event broadcast sharing, jersey advertising revenue, player transfer revenue, various commercial brand sponsorships, etc.
The income is worrying, and the team's league access fee, player transfer expenses, venue fees and various management fees are as high as those of various management fees. This is a project that spends more than makes money for the team's investors and shareholders, which is quite unprofitable.
In the golden period of the real estate industry, investors mainly based on real estate companies can still spend a lot of money to create a false prosperity for several years. However, after the market was cold and enterprises continued to storm, most of the Chinese Super League teams were accepted by local state-owned enterprises and operated at low cost.
Taking the Zhejiang team in the Chinese Super League as an example, its original shareholder was Greentown Real Estate Group, but its current shareholders have become Hangzhou Commercial Tourism Group and Zhejiang Energy Group.
Putting aside the Chinese Super League teams, as far as China League One and China League Two are concerned, Xuzhou is not short of companies that can "afford" and "play" but the market conditions with greater expenditures than revenue are not friendly to companies, so naturally no companies will get involved in this field.
