Research On Development Problems Of Chinese Professional Football League From The Perspective Of Historical Evolution

The nationwide crackdown on gambling and match-fixing was lunched in March2009in China. After two years’investigation and preparation, the trials on football corruption and match-fixing scandals were eventually opened on19th December,2011. The Chinese Professional Football League, which is a typical product of football professional reform in China, was turned out to be a place where gambling and match-fixing scandals happened frequently. Why did the Chinese Professional League have so many problems and scandals? What is the real problem about Chinese football? We have to find out the truth so hardly and deeply that the rebirth of Chinese football could come true.This paper took the whole past eighteen seasons of Chinese Professional Football League as the research object, and divided the whole eighteen years into three stages from the perspective of historical evolution. Three stages are:Chinese Series A League era which lasts ten years; Chinese Super League era from2004to2008; Chinese Super League era after Beijing Olympic games. This paper reviewed the historical fact, summarized the corresponding system and operation mechanism of each stage,using some methods such as document searching and studying, investigation, interviewing experts, mathematical statistics and comparative analysis., And the research also summarized the achievement and problems of each stage using the stakeholder theory. Then it pointed out the development characteristic of each stage. At last, based on the above, it summarized the development of the Chinese Football League’s trajectory and fundamental problems.China carried out the professional football reform in a top-down way. This paper argues that the institution changes in early stage are entirely oriented by the Government. With the deepening of the reform, the professional clubs were established and became another stakeholder group. The conflict of these two major stakeholders (the Government and the Clubs) became the driving force of institutional innovation so that the reform went into a stage of mixed institutional change. This mode will last a long time. On the operation mechanism, the evolution of our system showed the gradual trend with international standards. But the cost of the evolution is high and low efficiency because of the neglect of the needs of some stakeholders. The operating conditions of the professional leagues are improving. At the macro level, the reform process of the management system is slow. And this slowness restricted the improvement of our league level and became one of the fundamental problems. In the current social environment, thorough separation of management from operation and the establishment of a real professional league system are unrealistic.