"The Evergrande Model"

When it comes to ball sports on the international stage, there is no one to replace the bestsports team in China, the Chinese Women’s Volleyball team which represents the highestsports spirit among Chinese people. From1980s when China team five straight major worldtitles, the “women’s volleyball spirit” has been influencing Chinese people from onegeneration to another. Since1996, the volleyball sport started to become commercialized dueto economic reform in China. Chinese Volleyball Association adopted a series of strongmeasures to reform our competition system as a breakthrough. These measures includeincreasing team quota and flexible transfer of athletes, which has greatly facilitated themarketing of volleyball sports, and made the development of China’s Professional Volleyballleagues more specific and realistic. Volleyball Clubs are a derivative from the marketeconomy and sports reform, created in response to China’s sports development. However,nowadays this most popular sport has not been on the right track in terms ofprofessionalization. Lack of innovation and breakthrough has become a bottleneck to furthercommercialize China’s Volleyball, although progress has been made. This is in remarkablecontrast with the commercialization of football and basketball, as Volleyball’s marketing hasbeen with no passion and motivation. The Evergrande volleyball club has been a rising star inthe Chinese volleyball professional league., as its establishment has filled the blank ofprofessionalism of China Volleyball Clubs. This study aimed to learn from Evergrande inbuilding an authentic professional volleyball club, and provide a reference basis for thedevelopment of Professional Volleyball Clubs.This present study was performed by means of literature, expert interviews,mathematical statistics, questionnaires, and comparison analysis. With Evergrande s the mainresearch subject, relevant coaches, athletes and club executives were interviewed. Theobjective of the study was to have a better understanding of the current state of China’sprofessional club development.Through surveys and statistical analyses, the conclusions on the problem of our traditionalvolleyball club are as follows,1）We have not yet established an authentic professional club system, mainly due to thelack of clarity in the club’s ownership.2）The marketing development has been insufficient.3）The market demand has been weak, and the sponsors have no motivation to invest. Thelack of enthusiasm of athletes’ training and competing prevents a virtuous cycle from forming.4）Coaches and athletes have very low income.5）Less transfer opportunity impacts athletes’ development due to limited contest chance.6）There is a lack of professional managementtalents.At the present stage, the main differences between Evergrande and the others are theaspects of the club’s ownership, management, the labor capital relationship between athletesand the club. The issues of traditional clubs, which are under the above four main areas andcan be further categorized into27aspects, need to be solved urgently. I am proposing15approaches to help solve these issues. These approaches include focusing on developingreserve talents, improving communication with the media, promoting the commercialization,and building professional volleyball management talents, etc. Through analyzing the abovesituation and putting forward suggestions and strategies, the present study hopes to providevaluable insights into the development of our country’s volleyball sport.