The popularity and virtual prosperity of Chinese ice hockey
At the end of 2018, Beijing Huaxing Group won a plot in the south of Fushan district in Yantai, Shandong province with 0.46 billion yuan, this news quickly fermented in the domestic ice hockey circle-it was a normal thing for enterprises to take the land, however, the background of Huaxing’s land acquisition is unusual-Huaxing, as an enterprise focusing on ice rink operation and ice sports training, has been in arrears with coach salaries for at least 3 months. What is the matter with no money to pay employees but huge sums of money to buy land?
Hot ice hockey training, ice rink that keeps losing money
China Youth Daily · Zhongqing online reporter recently contacted the relevant person in charge of Beijing Huaxing Group, and the person in charge said the original.
The person in charge introduced that Huaxing brilliant, a subsidiary of Huaxing Group, is specifically responsible for ice rink operation and ice sports training, in Yantai, another subsidiary of Huaxing Group, Huaxing ice and snow education, took the land. The two subsidiaries operate independently. Therefore, there is no rumor in the industry that Huaxing Group used the salary owed to the coach to buy land.
The person in charge also admitted that Huaxing’s brilliant large-scale arrears of coach’s salary, but he stressed that because the hockey coach’s salary and commission ratio were too high, almost all domestic professional ice rinks are facing the problem of loss. Huaxing glory is trying to promote the reform of ice rink operation to fundamentally solve the strange situation of domestic youth ice hockey training.
After Beijing successfully bid for the 2022 Winter Olympics in 2015, the domestic ice and snow training showed explosive growth momentum, among which the youth ice hockey training market was even more popular. In Beijing, young ice hockey coaches are in short supply for a long time. The cost of a family to support a child to play ice hockey is often more than 100,000 yuan a year, of which the expenditure is mainly training fees, ice time fee. Correspondingly, the monthly income of a most common junior hockey coach can reach 20000 to 30000 yuan, and the monthly income of a good junior hockey coach can reach 40000 to 50000 yuan.
There was such a statement in the announcement released by Huaxing after winning the South plot of Fushan in Yantai, “I vaguely remember that when Huaxing was founded in 2015, we only had one tiger ice hockey team and two coaches, it took us three months to put the first ice rink into use.” This statement reveals the history of Huaxing’s development-from 2015 till now, in less than four years, Huaxing started from an ice hockey team and two coaches, now it has built and operated 9 indoor rink (including 5 ice rinks in Beijing) in China, providing more than 20,000 members with training in ice hockey, figure skating and short track speed skating. From an ice rink operation and youth ice sports training enterprise, this development speed is difficult to compare with that of domestic enterprises doing other sports training in the same period. This also reflects the popularity of the domestic youth ice hockey training market in the past few years from another perspective.
It can be said that in the economically developed areas in the south where beijing and ice hockey are gradually developed, youth ice hockey training is completely in the seller’s market. Under this market situation, it is amazing that a large area of a company doing ice sports training happens that a youth ice hockey coach is owed.
The person in charge of Huaxing Group said that the youth ice hockey training was indeed very popular, but the money was earned by the coach, and the ice rink even lost money.
In huaxing’s ice rink, the salaries and commission of ice hockey coaches account for more than 70% of the total income of the ice rink. The operation of the ice rink also requires a series of costs such as water and electricity, other staff salaries, various taxes, depreciation of facilities, etc, according to this accounting, Huaxing’s ice rink is all losing money.
According to industry insiders, most professional ice rinks in china are facing the problem of high proportion of coach income. Generally, the salary and commission of ice hockey coaches account for about 50% of the total income of ice rinks, under normal circumstances, only when this proportion is below 35% can the ice rink achieve profits.
The shortage of ice hockey coaches is the main reason why the ice rink must pay high salaries to ice hockey coaches. If the ice rink cannot provide attractive treatment, it will be difficult for the ice rink to hire enough ice hockey coaches.
However, industry insiders also said that in 2016, when Huaxing glory expanded by unconventional means, it caused controversy in the industry, which was another reason for the current high income of hockey coaches.
In March 2016, just as the 2015-2016 season of Beijing Junior Ice Hockey League was coming to an end, Beijing zero sunshine, Wolf, colorful ice cool, Haotai, Haoke, Century Star, eight Ice hockey clubs including Quanming star and Bingfeng held a joint meeting of the ice rink industry, and formally proposed to Beijing Ice Hockey Association in the name of the joint meeting of the ice rink industry, the above eight Ice hockey clubs will not participate in any ice hockey events involving Beijing Tiger Hockey Club and associated clubs, including Beijing youth ice hockey league.
This incident, initiated by eight youth ice hockey training enterprises, attacked Huaxing’s Tiger ice hockey club, and made the profound contradiction between Huaxing and its competitors public.
According to the understanding of China Youth Daily Zhongqing Online Reporter, the root of the incident was that Hua Xing, who was expanding rapidly at that time, at a price exceeding the market price, the ice hockey coaches of other youth ice hockey training enterprises in Beijing were “digging the walls”, some of the ice hockey coaches of these enterprises took their children and even joined the tiger ice hockey club to which Huaxing belongs, causing strong dissatisfaction from other ice rink and youth ice hockey club. In the short term, Huaxing has realized the expansion of youth ice hockey training business, but the price of the whole Beijing youth ice hockey training market has risen accordingly. At the same time, huaxing also dug a deep hole for himself and the whole industry-it was from that time that the ratio of coach’s basic salary and commission’s operating income in the ice rink broke through the reasonable limit of 35%.
However, the relevant person in charge of huaxing group denied to china youth daily zhongqing online reporter today that the past three years ago was triggered by huaxing raising the coach’s salary. The person in charge said, at that time, Huaxing only provided complete social security for ice hockey coaches according to the modern enterprise system, and did not significantly increase the salary level of ice hockey coaches as rumored by the outside world.
However, up to now, it is true that the high wages of junior ice hockey coaches and the unprofitable professional ice rink are both true.
Huaxing began to have a large area of unpaid wages in the second half of last year, mainly because the shareholders of the company were unwilling to continue to fill the funds for the losses of the ice rink, forcing the ice rink to start revenue reform.
The person in charge of huaxing group said that the continuous loss of the ice rink will eventually lead to the closing of the ice rink, which is unfavorable to both coaches and youth ice hockey training. Therefore, the revenue reform of the ice rink is imperative.
The reform method is to improve the labor efficiency of hockey coaches by increasing the working hours of hockey coaches without reducing the income of hockey coaches, so that the ice rink can expand the training volume of youth ice hockey without increasing or even reducing the number of ice hockey coaches, thus reducing the operating cost of the ice rink.
Huaxing glory has implemented revenue reform in two ice rinks in beijing, one of which has achieved initial results. The salary and commission ratio of ice hockey coaches have dropped from more than 70% of the total income of the ice rink to 36%. However, not all coaches readily accept this reform. Huaxing’s other three ice rinks in Beijing are currently holding a wait-and-see attitude towards revenue reform.
According to the plan of Huaxing Group, by the end of this year, all the ice rink to which Huaxing Glory belongs will complete revenue reform to achieve the goal of making profits in the ice rink, this is the basis to ensure the continuous operation of the ice rink and the continuous development of the youth ice hockey training business.
On the other hand, relying solely on ice rink operation and ice sports training is obviously not enough to generate greater profits. This time huaxing took land in yantai, it can be seen that the enterprise is planning a new strategy.
According to the announcement issued by the local government, the total planned land area of the plot obtained by huaxing in yantai is about 27.83 hectares, of which the construction land area is about 19.7 hectares. In order to control the layout of the building, it is divided into A, B, C three regions. The property of area A land is sports compatible with commercial and commercial land, and the main ice sports venues, training halls, business offices and commerce are planned; The property of Area B is education and scientific research land, planning 23000 square meters of international schools and kindergartens; The nature of Area C is residential compatible commercial land, planning residential and commercial, community pension, sports and other public facilities.
The characteristics of ice sports is a major advantage for Huaxing to win this plot, but the greatest value of this plot for Huaxing lies in the development of residential and commercial, business office, international schools and kindergartens.
The precarious ice hockey talent training system
In January, the coldest season in the northern hemisphere was also the climax of the ice and snow movement. For puckster, this should be the busiest period of the year, but at this time, the base of Haotai hope team, the ice rink of Haotai Ma Quan camp in the northeast suburb of Beijing, was extremely deserted. In the National Winter Games in January 2016, Chengde team, which was headed by Haotai hope team, won the third place in men’s ice hockey make a great coup. This young team, just like its name-hope team, has brought a new wind and a kind of hope to Chinese ice hockey, but who can imagine that three years later, this team has been on the verge of collapse.
Haotai hopes that the ice hockey team will be founded by entrepreneur Zhang yuan in 2009 and adopt the training concept of combining sports and education, aiming at exploring a more scientific and consistent path for the training of Chinese ice hockey reserve talents.
Zhang Yuan, who loves ice hockey, creates conditions for the development of this team regardless of cost. He builds ice rink by himself, invites teachers to open cultural classes, invites foreign teachers to provide training guidance, and contacts college opportunities for school-age children. By the time of the 2010 National Winter Games, Haotai hope team had grown into a new force in the domestic men’s ice arena, ranking second only to Qiqihar and Harbin, the two traditional domestic men’s ice hockey teams.
Most of the members of Haotai hope team were around 20 years old at that time, and their growth potential was still huge. The bronze medal of the National Winter Games would not be the peak of their competitive career. Just as Zhang Yuan planned further development for the team, a bloody storm would come.
On june 25, 2016, beijing kunlun h & x ice hockey club was established and began to participate in the mainland ice hockey league KHL from august of that year. Kunlun h & x became the first team in china to participate in the international top ice hockey professional league.
As a professional team, Kunlun spent nearly 0.2 billion yuan a year on H & X, which was a cost that any professional hockey team in China could not imagine before. The birth of Kunlun H & X made Chinese ice hockey, which was accustomed to poor and bitter days, feel the impact of Kingyuan sports instantly.
Since 2017, with kunlun becoming the first national team club of chinese ice hockey h & x, kunlun h & x had the opportunity to closely contact with local team members in the name of national team calling team members for training and competition. Kunlun H & X can provide these local team members with income treatment much higher than the salary level of local teams, and it is not contradictory to regard themselves as professional clubs and local professional teams, trying to sign a work contract with the local team members directly with ownership relationship.
After kunlun was born h & x, the domestic ice hockey industry originally thought that china’s ice hockey finally had a big enterprise with deep pockets, which could contribute more to the development of china’s ice hockey. In fact, this large enterprise had its own plans. In just over a year, Harbin, Qiqihar and Haotai hope teams all found that Kunlun H & X was secretly contacting the players of these teams, try to determine the ownership relationship between some excellent players and Kunlun H & X by signing work contracts.
Haotai hope team suffered the greatest impact because of having a group of excellent young players.
By the national men’s ice hockey Championships held in May, 2018, as many as eight leading player of Haotai hope team had moved to Kunlun H & X. According to the head of Haotai hope team, the transfer of players, normal personnel flow such as leasing requires an agreement at the club level. However, Kunlun H & X regards itself as a professional club, and other teams in China are not professional clubs, without signing any player exchange agreement with Haotai hope team, they unilaterally signed a work contract with eight leading player of Haotai hope team, resulting in the eight players refusing to return to participate in the national ice hockey championship.
As the third place in the 2016 National Winter Games, Haotai hope team lost to Chongqing team with Qiqihar second team as the base in the 2018 national ice hockey championship, and the opponent who has never lost before-Beijing Shougang team. The absence of the eight main players not only caused great damage to the strength of Haotai hope team, but also had a great negative impact on the cohesion of the whole team. After the winter of 2018, Haotai hope team has reached the edge of disintegration.
Beijing’s successful bid for the 2022 Winter Olympics in 2015 also directly pushed Chinese ice hockey into an era of dramatic changes. In addition to the birth of Kunlun H & X, the mainland Ice Hockey League KHL and the North American professional ice hockey league NHL successively landed in China. In 2017, the National Games also set up the roller skating ice hockey project for the first time. In May 2018, the International Hockey Federation also agreed to grant 2022 qualifications to Chinese men’s and women’s ice hockey teams. Chinese men’s ice hockey will participate in the Winter Olympics for the first time. This was supposed to be a rare golden age in the history of Chinese ice hockey, but it also became a scuffle age when caretakers and gold diggers joined the stage. In any case, a hope team of Chinese ice hockey has been devoured in just three years, which is the sorrow of Chinese ice hockey.
However, behind the sad experience of Haotai hope team, the idea of training ice hockey talents represented by Zhang Yuan has not been respected by this era. Zhang Yuan, who has been raising ice hockey teams and exploring new training modes for ice hockey talents for ten years, was finally not defeated by opponents on the field, but was chilled by the “snatching” behavior of the “peach picking faction. The experience of Haotai hope team is a nightmare for only a few domestic ice hockey training teams. The cultivation of ice hockey reserve talents has the characteristics of high investment and long cycle, and there is no shortcut to follow. However, if the “peach picking” and “quick setting” are popular, in the end, no one will be willing to do the training of ice hockey talents. In the end, the weak talent training system of chinese ice hockey is even more precarious.
2022 how can it become the starting point of Chinese ice hockey?
Ice hockey is the only collective ball event in the Winter Olympics, and the men’s ice hockey final is the final of the Winter Olympics. Among all the winter sports, ice hockey is also one of the only four major professional sports in North America. In terms of Chinese ice hockey, against the background that Beijing will host the Winter Olympics in 2022, China Ice Hockey Association once predicted that the industrial value of Chinese ice hockey could reach 300 billion yuan per year, which is more than a hundred times higher than now. In addition, in recent years, national leaders have expressed their concern for ice hockey projects on many occasions. It can be said that both the market value potential and the so-called political significance of Chinese ice hockey are unique in winter sports.
Since 2015, with Beijing’s bid to host the 2022 Winter Olympics entering its final climax and its final bid success, China’s ice hockey has also changed its dilemma that has continued to shrink since the 1980 s. A unpopular project finally ushered in a turning point in fate, at that time, it became one of the hottest winter sports in China, including enterprises like Huaxing and Kunlun H & X, which entered the ice hockey market after 2015, but there were many speculators among them.
In Beijing, youth ice hockey has also shown a wave of rapid development in the past few years. From 2018 to 2019, the Beijing Youth Ice Hockey Club League is being held, with more than 3300 participants and 199 teams participating in the competition, it has become the largest youth ice hockey event in Asia.
Ice rink, as the foundation of youth ice hockey, has also increased several times in Beijing. According to the statistics of Ji Junfeng, former vice minister of ice hockey department of Winter Sports Management Center of the State General Administration of Sports, by the end of this year, Beijing is expected to have more than 70 pieces of indoor rink, which is about 4 times more than that in 2015.
However, behind the surface prosperity, some fundamental problems that troubled the development of Chinese ice hockey have not been solved.
Just half a month ago, a false message that “the chairman of the International Ice Federation, Fassel, said that he might cancel the 2022th qualification of Chinese ice hockey direct” blew up the whole Chinese ice hockey circle, the reason why a fake message has such great power is that it does not look fake.
As we all know, the ice hockey of the Winter Olympics does not carry out the policy that the host automatically obtains the Olympic qualification like the collective ball events such as football and basketball of the Summer Olympics. International ice hockey matches are classified and grouped strictly according to the strength of each participating team. Only teams with similar strength can compete in the same group. In football and basketball games, the two teams with different strengths compete together. The worst result is that the scores differ greatly. However, in ice hockey games, due to the high speed, if two teams with different strengths compete together, the worst result may be that the weak team members were seriously injured and even threatened by life. Based on this, as the world’s highest level ice hockey competition in the Winter Olympics, 10 men’s and 8 women’s teams should all reach or have the level equivalent to the world’s top ten and eight. However, the Chinese men’s ice hockey team ranks 33rd in the world and the Chinese women’s team ranks 20th. According to the grouping of the International Ice Federation World Championships, the Chinese men’s team participated in group B A (belonging to the Group of the fourth grade of the world championships), while the Chinese women’s team participated in group A B (belonging to the Group of the third grade of the world championships). China’s male and female teams average is still far from the world ranking that matches the Winter Olympics.
On May 17, 2018, the general meeting of all members of the International Ice Federation was held in Copenhagen, Denmark. According to the special statement of China Ice Hockey Association and the negotiation of the International Ice Federation Council, the conference voted unanimously to obtain the qualification of the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics through the Chinese ice hockey team.
This decision of the International Ice Federation avoids the embarrassment that the Chinese ice hockey team is likely to become the first host ice hockey team in history that cannot participate in the Winter Olympics, but more importantly, it is to encourage the accelerated development of Chinese ice hockey.
However, since Beijing successfully bid for the 2022 Winter Olympics in 2015, China’s ice hockey has not improved significantly. In contrast, in order to qualify for the 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Olympics, the progress speed of the Korean men’s ice hockey team in the past few years has made Chinese ice hockey ashamed. South Korea began to participate in the Asian Ice Hockey League systematically as early as 2003. Since 2014, South Korea men’s ice hockey has carried out a series of work such as domestication of players and hiring foreign Korean teachers, the Korean men’s team rose step by step from Group B of the world championship to the World Championship Group (top group), making itself capable of participating in the Winter Olympics.
At present, there are only three years left before the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics. Can Chinese ice hockey, especially Chinese men’s ice hockey, achieve leapfrog development? It may be because the Chinese ice hockey circle does not have too high confidence in this, so when the false news that “the International Ice Hockey Federation may cancel the 2022th qualification of Chinese ice hockey direct” comes out, many people in the Chinese ice hockey circle believe it, as a result, the false news spread rapidly in the circle.
In addition to the 2022 prospects at the national team level, the domestic youth ice hockey, which has shown a vigorous development trend in recent years, has also encountered the “bottleneck” of development more and more obviously “.
More than a month ago, the ice hockey competition of the first winter sports meeting in beijing came to an end. This was the first time that beijing set up a city-wide comprehensive winter sports meeting and another major measure to promote the development of winter sports in the whole city. However, it is a pity that Group A (16-18 age group) of the ice hockey competition of the first Winter Games in Beijing was canceled due to the insufficient number of registration teams. Beijing is the best city for teenagers to carry out ice hockey in China at present, but the problem of poor rising channel of ice hockey teenagers has not been solved for many years, which is also the biggest problem facing the development of domestic teenagers ice hockey now. Since there is only one university (Harbin Institute of Physical Education) in China to recruit ice hockey students, and at the same time, there is no professional league system for ice hockey, which leads to that ice hockey teenagers either go abroad or give up ice hockey after they reach the middle school stage, therefore, with the increase of children’s age, domestic youth ice hockey presents the embarrassment of a sharp drop in the number of participants. In 2017, China Ice Hockey Association put forward the “ten million” plan, that is, to promote 10 universities, 100 high schools, 1,000 junior high schools and 10,000 primary schools nationwide to carry out ice hockey, it is intended to solve the problem of rising channel of ice hockey teenagers. However, it is beyond the functional scope of China Ice Hockey Association to promote the development of ice hockey at the university level and establish the enrollment channel for ice hockey students. The promotion of this work is very difficult, but the preparation for the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics in recent years is the best time to promote this work.
In addition to the problem of entering a higher school, the high consumption price of domestic youth ice hockey training is also hindering more children from entering the ice hockey project.
The number of ice rinks in Beijing has increased several times in the past few years. In principle, there are more venues and the price of participating in ice hockey should also show a downward trend. But in fact, the price of youth ice hockey training is still rising. In Beijing, a family usually spends more than 100,000 yuan each year supporting children to play ice hockey.
Commercial ice rink accounts for the majority, and public welfare ice rink is relatively small, resulting in higher cost of ice; One-to-one small class is popular, and the training fee is relatively high; the pursuit of famous brands and luxury of ice hockey equipment makes the consumption price of domestic youth ice hockey much higher than that of North America and Europe.
Ice hockey labeled as noble sports actually keeps most children from ordinary families out of the door. Ice hockey is very attractive to children. With the upsurge of ice and snow sports in recent years, many children have the opportunity to get in touch with ice hockey and like ice hockey, but their families are unable to make them play ice hockey. There are also some families, facing the rising cost of ice hockey training every year, they feel more difficult and finally have to let their children give up ice hockey.
Not long ago, China Youth Daily Zhongqing online reporter interviewed Joen, director of ice hockey project of Beijing Chen Lu ice sports center. As a Canadian ice hockey coach, Joon has been in China for 3 years. He found that although China’s ice hockey has developed rapidly and is full of vitality, but the development environment of ice hockey is much more complicated than he imagined. What surprised him most was that the “competition” here was extremely fierce, between clubs and clubs, between coaches and coaches, between children and children, between parents and parents…… There is nothing wrong with competition, but here, competition and cooperation seem to be a pair of contradictions.
Joon saw that it was difficult for some clubs to effectively curb the vicious competition behavior of “digging the walls” and destroying the order of the industry; Coaches often had faction groups to which they belonged, and the factions fought inwardly; chinese hockey parents usually like to compare their children’s clubs, coaches and children themselves with each other, and sometimes serious quarrels and even fights broke out for this.
In China’s ice hockey circle, many people only consider their own interests-how to earn more money and how to expand their business are mainstream values. As for the principles and visions of the development of an industry, every employee, every enterprise and institution should take responsibility for the industry, the true feeling of ice hockey and the foresight of focusing on the future of Chinese ice hockey, which instead become a foil or stay on the slogan.
In recent years, I have seen the development of ice hockey in China becoming increasingly popular. Some foreign ice hockey enterprises and institutions are also trying to enter China. However, like Joon, after they deeply understand the real development environment of Chinese ice hockey, gradually realize that the difficulty of promoting the development of Chinese ice hockey is far greater than imagined. The development of ice hockey requires not only hardware improvement and capital investment, but also the promotion of correct ice hockey culture and respect for the development rules of ice hockey. In the latter, chinese ice hockey is still too short.
Beijing, January 21st
China Youth Daily · China youth online reporter Cixin Source: China Youth Daily