Article | li-wen tan He was given the Title of “senior event promoter” in front of the title of the former general manager of Sina Sports. The event, or even more self-branded event, seems to have become one of Wei Jianglei’s personal brand in the sports industry. A key step in his transformation of Sina Sports from a media company to an industrial company was the creation of a series of self-branded events, including the Sina 3X3 Golden League, which is best known. This mass event with A wide audience is the work of Big A. Arthur is the English name of Wei Jianglei, so many people in the industry call him Big A, and there are also people who call Wei Jianglei Arthur, such as the well-known CCTV sports host teacher Zhang Bin. Insiders who know Wei Jianglei know that he is a veteran runner who loves running and has more than 20 years of running experience. Wei Jianglei ran the Wuhan Marathon on April 15, the day after he took part in the 2023 Wuhan Sports and Urban Development Summit. “The Wuhan Marathon finished safely. The heat is an excuse. You can’t run.” Wei Jianglei shared modestly in the circle of friends. Wei Jianglei shows the medal of the Hanma race His love for running and rich running experience over the years finally drove Wei Jianglei to the position of general manager of Sina Sports. From the IT market behind HP and Lenovo to the sports market, Wei Jianglei brings forward thinking and commercial model exploration to China’s sports industry. Ma Guanguo, former director of CCTV Sports Center, spoke highly of Wei Jianglei, “Wei Jianglei jumped into the sports industry seven or eight years ago. He is a leader in the market industry and tried to explore the Chinese sports market with his successful experience.” After delivering a keynote speech at the Wuhan Sports and Urban Development Summit, Wei Jianglei chatted with sports Big Business, recalling the process of building his own brand of sports at Sina Sports, and about his latest book, Sports Gold Mine. After three years of ‘hunger’ for sports, it’s time to ‘drink better’ There is no denying that there has been a spurt of joy in domestic sporting events since the spring. Over the weekend of April 15 and 16, for example, more than 35 marathons are taking place in the country. In addition, the CBA and the Chinese Super League are very popular, and domestic sports events have gradually recovered their vitality. Sports fans, already hungry after a three-year absence, have been one of the driving forces behind the recent spurt of sporting activity. The marathon, for example, hasn’t been held on a large scale in the past three years, but after this spring, runners were a little overwhelmed. They had too many events to choose from. According to Wei Jianglei, although sports events have been very popular this year, they will not be able to recover the experience and brand promotion opportunities they have “lost” in the past three years. “Sports have become a part of people’s lifestyle and habits, such as running is a habit, playing basketball is a habit. The opportunities they’ve lost in the last three years, it’s inevitable.” In three years’ time, how should the tournament recover “what was lost”? Wei Jianglei believes that the restart of this year’s event gives these events an opportunity to upgrade instead. The event can take advantage of the opportunity to upgrade sports items, including sports events, such as treating the event with newer concepts and building the event with better services. “It doesn’t mean much to have the same tournament in 2023 as it did in 2019. Because after three years of hunger and thirst, what you give him to drink should make him drink better, do more and better for his health. We also need to focus on upgrades and iterations.” Wei Jianglei said to sports big business. “The platform is not profitable, and the copyright is astronomical.” Since the release of No. 46 document of The State Council in 2014, the sports industry has entered the fast lane of rapid development. As an important part of the sports industry, sports copyright has not escaped the erosion of the capital wave. In 2010, Sina began to broadcast NBA games by video, and the English Premier League began to broadcast live on PPTV. In early 2015, Tencent announced that it had acquired the exclusive copyright of NBA Internet in mainland China with a price of 500 million dollars for 5 years, and then letV Sports began to “blindfold rush”. In this exciting decade, the sports copyright market ushered in earth-shaking changes. Today, the clamour for Copyrights among the major platforms seems to be a memory, but the current copyright market seems a little quiet. Of course, Copyrights to games like the NBA and the English Premier League still have followers, but not as many as they used to. Sina Sports from the ownership of NBA and other top games copyright to the final become “all four” situation, because the rival is not able to compete with the gold dollar bills. Wei Jianglei has been the general manager of Sina Sports since April 2015. Naturally, how to deal with the loss of the NBA copyright has become the top priority since he took office. Wei Jianglei led Sina Sports’ transformation from a media company to an industrial company “If you can afford it, buy it.” Recalling the experience, Wei said: “Head games are the most important and easiest way to attract sports fans to the platform. When there are English Premier League and World Cup rights, people will come to watch them. But how to monetize the rights, especially when the rights have far exceeded the actual ability to monetize, it is impossible to buy.” Wei Jianglei added, “Sina Sports was not money to buy.” As the saying goes, bad things depend on good things, and bad things depend on bad things. Sina Sports didn’t have the money to buy the rights, which in retrospect wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. It would have been a different story if Sina Sports had spent a lot of money and ended up with a huge loss. In Wei Jianglei’s opinion, if the platform does not have the profitability then the copyright is astronomical, is a bottomless pit, but if the platform has the profitability, can use the copyright to make money. “Sky-high Copyrights happen when the rights can be turned into sky-high profits, but if there is no profit to support it, there is no such thing as sky-high Copyrights.” ‘A game without sponsors is soulless’ Besides running, basketball is undoubtedly another sport Wei Jianglei is most familiar with. First, Wei Jianglei used to be the main point guard of the school team. During his six-year high school career, he participated in many basketball competitions in Beijing and Haidian District of Beijing. The other is the 3X3 Basketball Golden League under the banner of Wei Jianglei. The 3X3 Basketball Golden League has become one of the benchmarks of domestic self-owned brand competitions no matter in terms of competition scale or commercial development. However, the start of the 3X3 basketball Golden League is not as smooth as Wei Jianglei thought. “The first Golden League, it’s a long story.” In 2015, when the event started, the name was still “Sina three-player Street Basketball Tournament”, but it has not been renamed or upgraded. In Wei’s recollection, the first tournament had all sorts of “problems” : poor court conditions, uneven refereeing, no coverage of the event and, most importantly, no sponsors. Wei Jianglei bluntly said, “The game without sponsors is soulless.” The 2015 event, which took place in nine cities and attracted 1,200 players, ended up with no sponsors, only hundreds of basketball uniforms bought from 361 degrees through “face swiping”. Such a result is not not bleak, but after the resumption and communication with the industry, Wei Jianglei more firm determination to hold the event. On the one hand, as mentioned above, Wei Jianglei has no cards to play (copyright), on the other hand, through the self-organized events, can find traffic entrance for Sina, based on the self-organized events can produce mass communication content, attract mass users. In just five years, the 3X3 Basketball Golden League has gone from having no sponsors in 2015 to achieving more than 55 million yuan in 2019. The sponsorship matrix includes many well-known brands such as Dongfeng Qicchen, Qiaodan Sports, Master Kong Ice Tea and TCL, which has realized a leap in commercial value. In Wei’s opinion, if a mass sports event has enough participants, or if the coverage of the event is large enough, then the event must be of high level. In 2015, there were only 1,200 participants in the 3X3 Golden League, but in 2019, the number has soared to 120,000. “It’s a one-match elimination schedule, with a round-robin system when you get to the semi-finals. As the game progressed, the level of the game got higher and higher, so at that time the 3X3 basketball Golden League represented the highest level of 3X3 games in China, because our base was big enough.” The success of the 3X3 Basketball Golden League is not only the top quality of the games, but also the careful brand strategy of the games. In view of this, Wei Jianglei put forward the “three Huatao three ways” race execution and publicity strategy. “Three ways” refers to the promotion of the game with entertainment and socializing, and the construction of the game with Internet thinking. “Three ways” refers to the channels for players’ professional advancement, internationalization and commercialization. Wei Jianglei firmly believes that high frequency, wide coverage, high quality events and innovative competition system can produce unparalleled influence, and influence will be transformed into the competition commercial value system composed of online communication value, offline display value and traditional media communication value. The commercial value of the event, based on the science of its impact, will eventually become a measure of the amount of commercial sponsorship for the event. Gold Mine of Sports Events, Mining the “Ten Golden Theorems” of Sports Events Commercialization The experience and process of exploring the commercialization of sports events over the years was written by Wei Jianglei in the Gold Mine of Sports Events. In the book, Wei Jianglei details the growth of the 3X3 Basketball Golden League, how the tournament grew from scratch to become the most commercially valuable mass sports event in China, and the operating logic of niche high-end sports such as equestrian, skiing and fencing. In the author’s opinion, the biggest attraction of this book is that Wei Jianglei, as a professional manager, tells the “gold mine” behind the games from the perspective of sports business. “I entered the sports circuit just in time for 2015, and despite having a lot of business experience before, I knew nothing about the sports industry. But it’s much easier to look at sports in a commercial way, as a business, than it is to try to commercialize it after a lifetime of doing it.” Wei Jianglei said to the big sports business, “We must take the logic of business to look at the sports industry, only in this way can the sports industry really go forward.” “Gold Mine” condensed Wei Jianglei’s thinking and summary of the commercialization of sports events over the years, including the basis of the “Ten Golden Theorems”, the calculation formula of the commercial value of sports events, and the key of how to develop partners, and so on. He explained them all in the book. At the end of the book, Wei Jianglei argues that sports events are a slow business, which requires a long incubation period and accumulation before the business can enter a virtuous circle. And any sports company should clearly know its core advantage, and make good use of it, in order to sustainable development. Note: The images used in this article are from the Internet