Four Years After "Breaking Up", What Can Nike Bring Back To CHBL?

On the evening of October 8th, the opening ceremony of the Nike China High School Basketball League (CHBL) is being held in Shanghai World Expo Plaza on the street from Mei Ben center.

Affected by the recent NBA turmoil, Nike's stars who were scheduled to attend the CHBL opener failed to show up. Many lost fans have already left the field before the game has started, and the outdoor giant stadium built by Nike is very empty.

The competition was launched between two basketball strong schools in Shanghai area, Nan Mo middle school and Hua Mo middle school. In the end, the South mold middle school defeated the Hua Mo middle school by 86:49 score, has won the new season CHBL league tournament's success.

Nike invited Kobe to unveil the platform for CHBL.

Time went back a month ago. In September 15th, Beijing Cadillac center, Spain and Argentina joined the 2019 Basketball World Cup final. During the break of the finals, Nike and the Chinese Secondary School Sports Association (hereinafter referred to as "China Sports Association") officially announced cooperation. Nike became the top sponsor of CHBL and won the title of the league.

Nike is not the first to sponsor CHBL. As early as the first CHBL competition in 2003, Nike was a sponsor, and the cooperation between the two sides lasted until 2015. Since then, Lining has taken over Nike's sponsorship of CHBL, and Nike has started to run its own high school basketball match "Gao Gao" independently.

In the four season of Nike and CHBL's "breaking up", (2015 -2019), Nike gained a high degree of attention with strong marketing momentum, but encountered many resistance in the course of the competition. The official league CHBL had a small voice, and even faced with the embarrassment of Lining's withdrawal from sponsorship and the lack of main equipment sponsors in the 2018-19 quarter.

On the one hand, "resistance to high" needs more support from the official in the competition. On the other hand, CHBL needs Nike's good marketing and sponsorship funds. Therefore, the two sides' "renew the front" is what they need and complement each other.

For the role of the two sides of the partnership, the official propaganda press release of Nike and China Sports Association said: "the Middle School Sports Association and Kangpai company are willing to accept the above products and sponsorship support. In view of the sponsorship of Nike, they agreed to grant Nike the highest level of sponsorship and licensing rights, based on mutual commitments and mutually beneficial conditions reached by the three parties." As for more details of cooperation, officials did not disclose more information.

In the actual operation, the new season's CHBL League mainly involves four main interests: China Sports Association, Kangpai company, Nike and basket wars. The four have their own different interests and responsibilities.

First is China Sports Concorde Corp company. Kang Pai Si is a joint venture between the general association and the China Sports Association in 2015 with the three companies of noble bird, tiger sports and Eunice sports. The general association and China Sports Association awarded the joint venture company a series of exclusive rights for all Chinese campus sports competitions, such as the right to commercial promotion, broadcasting rights, advertising development rights, commercial development rights, and related intellectual property rights. The authorized period is 20 years. In short, the company can be regarded as the "agent" in the commercial cooperation between the China Sports Association and the outside companies.

Nike's sponsorship contract for the CHBL League is signed by Kang Pai Si on behalf of China Sports Association and Nike. According to lazy bear sports, Nike and China Sports Association reached a contract period of 5 years, the annual sponsorship amount (including equipment) more than ten million RMB. The equipment of schools will also be upgraded with the promotion of grades.

Basket warfare is a basketball event operator founded in 2016. It has obtained the exclusive right to operate business in the next 5 years from Nike Sports Association of China (CHBL) from the China Sports Association, which is the same as the sponsorship cycle of Nike and China Sports Association. In addition, the basketball tournament also won the exclusive business operation right of the China Junior Basketball League (CJBL) in the next 5 years and the exclusive right to operate the Chinese Secondary School Basketball Championship (CSBA) in the next 6 years from the China Sports Association. That is to say, the main task of basket warfare is to invest in basketball competitions of CHBL, CJBL and CSBA. It is the exclusive business operation unit of the CHBL League besides the naming rights.

After reintegration, the CHBL League will usher in a new competition system. It will be divided into grass roots, regional and national finals. In the 2019-20 season, the CHBL will cover 22 provinces and cities nationwide, and more than 6000 high school athletes from 264 men and 132 women's basketball teams will compete in the competition from October to May next year for 8 months. By contrast, the previous "high resistance" League had only 88 schools in last season, and only three cities in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou.

However, although the CHBL season of the new season is broader than that of "high resistance", compared with its "home" (last season's CHBL League is also known as the "China Junior High School Basketball League"), the number of teams and the cycle of competition generally remain the same. Nike has confirmed to lazy bear sports that, after becoming the top sponsor of CHBL, Nike's own "high resistance" League will also be closed. The future "high tolerance" will refer to CHBL. That is to say, in the past four years, Nike's IP, which has been greatly nurturing, is like the one hundred and eight heroes in Liangshan. However, regardless of the impact of Nike becoming a "subordinate force" on the company's revenue, from the perspective of the development of the league, the China Sports Association Nike basket wars combination seems to have at least several favorable factors.

1. from the bottom to top competition system, the real meaning of the "national contest".

According to the CHBL investment plan obtained by lazy bear sports, the new season will start in October, and the grass roots competition will be held in December. The teams screened from the grass roots competition will decide the respective rankings in the four parts of the southeast and the northwest from March to April March. The final four teams will elect several teams to take part in the national finals of next May. That is to say, this is a road from the grassroots to the national champion, like the north of the Dunhuang master, from the Kanagawa county competition to go to Japan's national competition. For every high school student who has a basketball dream, entering the national competition is a major goal of high school career. And such a competition system has positive significance for the selection of campus basketball.

2. reduce students' multi line operations and improve the quality of competition.

Last season, several major cross regional basketball competitions in China included: Nike's own "high tolerance", CHBL of Chinese Sports Association and Jr.NBA of NBA. This makes some basketball strong schools have to face the situation of "multi line combat". Take Beijing Tsinghua middle school and Beijing four middle school as an example. In the 2018-19 season, the middle school men's basketball team in Qinghua reached the finals in the 3 league matches mentioned above, and won the championship of "high resistance" and CHBL. Beijing fourth middle school scored 2 League finals and won the champion of Jr.NBA Beijing. However, both teams told the lazy bear sports after the final of the "Ngao" Beijing regional finals in April 7th. The team still played in the CHBL competition one day before the finals, and the players' physical condition and injury condition also affected the competitive state to some extent.

Today, less than Nike's "high resistance" League, the Jr.NBA League is also "uncertain" because of the recent turmoil. Instead, it makes CHBL a "single seedling" of national high school basketball matches. Players do not need to fight more lines, so they can spend more time in preparing for CHBL, and the level of athletics presented by the League may be improved.

3. sponsors will be more diversified.

In the past, no matter CHBL or "high tolerance", they were not brisk in business development. CHBL is limited by communication and marketing, and has not received too much attention from the general public. Therefore, the number of sponsors is relatively small. But because of Nike's own league, Nike can only appear in any promotional activities, not to mention overseas investment. (in this year's high Beijing competition finals, the players' sports drinks are provided by pulsation, and no other brands can be seen at all.

Now, Nike's role in CHBL is only the top sponsor. Besides the sports brand, it can not restrict the basket wars to invest abroad. This provides new possibilities for other categories of sponsors to enter the league. Take the Taiwan high school basketball league as an example, besides Nike as the main sponsor, there are more than 20 sponsorship sponsors in other categories this year, including drinks, digital, electricity providers, medical care, education and so on. Besides Nike, the total income of sponsorship is up to tens of millions of new Taiwan dollars.

In addition, according to the CHBL investment plan provided by basket wars, the CHBL League will cooperate with Tencent sports. The live broadcast will be mainly broadcast on Tencent sports platform. Although Tencent sports allocated to CHBL's exposure time and layout is not yet unclear, but in Tencent sports such a collection of many domestic basketball user platform for transmission, to enhance the attention of CHBL will be helpful.

In the outlaws of the marsh, the heroes of Liangshan converted to the court under the guidance of Song Jiang, but the final outcome was not as they wished. It is not yet known whether Nike can transfer its attention to the "high resistance" crowd to the CHBL of the official league after giving up its "Liangshan". But for Chinese basketball, the reintegration of CHBL is at least one of the few good news in the near future.