Embattled Guangzhou get boost

(China Daily)
Updated: 2010-03-03 08:55

Evergrande comes to rescue of troubled soccer club with $14.6m

GUANGZHOU, Guangdong province - The atmosphere around Guangzhou's soccer team has been changing rapidly.

Within a week of the side being demoted to the second division due to match fixing, the club has received handsome support from local investors.

The Evergrande Real Estate Group, which founded a women's volleyball club in China last year, announced on Monday it had become the new owner of the Guangzhou soccer club. The investment is worth 100 million yuan ($14.6 million), including 20 million yuan to cover debts and back pay to players.

In addition, the club also revealed a new title sponsor for the coming season, Guangzhou Automobile Industry Group, which has pledged 25 million yuan ($3.6 million) to the organization.

"It is the hardest time in the history of the Guangzhou soccer team and the club needs support from everywhere to recover," Xu Jiayin, the president of Evergrande, said.

"We believe the citizens are still fond of the sport and we have great confidence in the sport's future in China, that's why we were determined to take over the club."

Last Tuesday, the then Guangzhou Pharmaceutical FC and the Chengdu Blades FC received the most severe punishment ever handed down by the Chinese Football Association (CFA) for having been involved in match manipulation in the second division in 2006. As punishment, they lost the chance to compete in the Chinese Super League, the nation's top-class soccer competition, which is to start on March 27.

"The financial support will surely help the players regain confidence in the club and give them more reason to fight on. It will also draw attention from the media and the fans, which is essential to the development of the club," He Wenyi, the director of the Chinese Sports Industry Research Center, told China Daily.

"On the other hand, the investment is also cost-efficient as the club and the league are at low points, so the investors can expect a return in the long term."

Since the nation started a large-scale crackdown on match manipulation and corruption last August, dozens of players, managers and officials have been arrested, including the sport's former chief Nan Yong who, according to a statement from the Ministry of Public Security on Monday, had taken bribes and manipulated league matches.

Apart from giving a much-needed and timely boost to the morale of the Guangzhou club, the move will also help revitalize the domestic soccer market, said He.

"It sends out a very positive signal and will encourage other potential investors to re-evaluate the value of the soccer industry. After the nationwide clampdown on match fixing, the league should pick up in the near future," he said.

However, not everybody believes there will be a massive chain reaction to this investment.

"Unlike the truly professional leagues in Europe, the league is still in the charge of the CFA, which is de facto government body. That could easily lead to mismanagement and corruption ... like in the case of Nan Yong," Yi Jiandong, professor at the Beijing Sport University and an expert on the sports industry, said. "I doubt (the sponsorship) is much more than Xu Jiayin's personal choice to help brand his company, rather than the start of a successful investment in the field."