Superstar Cristiano Ronaldo's trip to China ended up being a lonely one.
On January 24 and 28, the days that Chinese fans were looking forward to, in Shenzhen, the Riyadh Victory team from Saudi Arabia was originally scheduled to play two matches against Chinese Super League teams Shanghai Shenhua and Zhejiang.
One of the most eye-catching is the star Cristiano Ronaldo, who is playing for Riyadh Victory, and when the idol is close at hand, many people would rather take time off work to see their idol play for themselves.
Before the game, Ronaldo's commercial value was also amplified by the organizers, ** anchor Lie'er Baby officially announced that Ronaldo will come to the live broadcast room on January 26 to challenge the Guinness World Record, and put a photo of the anchor and Ronaldo's P picture.
However, expectations were quickly shattered. On the evening of January 23, the organizer held a press conference and suddenly announced that Ronaldo could not play due to physical reasons, and the Riyadh Victory team's trip to China was postponed.
I just landed, what's going on? Some fans began to roar, they had already flown to Shenzhen alone, and they had also booked a hotel near the stadium, "If you don't kick, you won't kick, it's too sudden." ”
The ball game is gone, and the live broadcast is even more useless. On January 25th, Lie'er Baby has deleted the relevant Weibo, and replaced the header picture of the photo with Ronaldo in the live broadcast room, and changed it to a single photo to promote the New Year's Festival.
On January 26, the GST Glory Tour officially released**, and Ronaldo and the whole Riyadh Victory team left Shenzhen.
Weibo screenshot This Ronaldo trip to China ended ahead of schedule before the carnival was ushered in. As for what the Guinness World Record to be challenged in the live broadcast room is, it has also become an unknown.
But many people can feel that Ronaldo's trip to China is not happy.
Not only because he couldn't play due to injury, which delayed his business with the team, but also because of the live broadcast in China, which made him have mixed feelings.
From the moment he landed in Shenzhen and got off the plane, Ronaldo was always facing the mobile phone cameras of all parties in China. His every move is broadcast all over the Internet through live broadcast on his mobile phone at any time.
In a short period of a few days, the people who revolve around Ronaldo are more interested in his commercial value than simply liking his skills.
Former Chinese international Du Wenhui is one of them.
Just the day before Ronaldo arrived in China, Du Wenhui used his identity to obtain internal resources and learned in advance about the room where Ronaldo was staying at the hotel in Shenzhen.
The first thing he did was to start the live broadcast, take fans into the house to visit, and at the same time keep urging fans to "go on the light sign, be careful, small balls, and small glasses on a wave of brothers." ”
Just got off the plane on January 21, Ronaldo's whereabouts were quickly **, and Du Wenhui held his mobile phone for the first time to broadcast live. However, this time it is not free, and you need to pay 30 diamonds to enter the live broadcast room, which is 3 yuan fee. It is reported that when Ronaldo boarded the bus, there were nearly 10,000 people in the live broadcast, which made Du Wenhui earn more than 10,000 yuan.
But even if you spend money, you may not be able to see Ronaldo. The live broadcast time was very short, and some netizens said that they had just finished paying in the live broadcast room, and Du Wenhui hurriedly went off the air. Many fans thought that they had been deceived, and while reporting Du Wenhui to the platform, they accused him of "eating ugly" and having no bottom line.
However, this is not the end, there are still many people like Du Wenhui who want to use Ronaldo to make money and earn traffic.
On the evening of January 22, Ronaldo and the Riyadh Victory team attended the welcome dinner of the China trip. It was supposed to be a serious occasion, but because of a group of Internet celebrities, Ronaldo felt at a loss.
According to China News Weekly, the organizers took a large number of "seats" in this dinner, and most of the buyers were Internet celebrities. After spending the admission fee, the Internet celebrities use live broadcasts and other methods to obtain benefits. Throughout the dinner, Ronaldo was annoyed by autographs, group photos, and live broadcasts.
Then, there was another ** outflow of him and his teammates toasting, and the topic of "Ronaldo toasting" once appeared on the hot search. The host of the dinner that night then refuted the rumors on the live broadcast **, "Ronaldo did not drink alcohol that night, he drank white fungus pear soup." ”
Ronaldo toasts** Including the live broadcast of the so-called "official announcement" on January 26, it was not actually supported by Ronaldo himself.
According to a report by China News Weekly, before Ronaldo's trip to China, an e-commerce live broadcast platform contacted Ronaldo's agent through an intermediary to negotiate live streaming, but in the end, due to the disagreement on commercial rights and interests, the form was rejected by Ronaldo himself and the brokerage team.
Who would have thought that the live broadcast platform went to co-planning with the organizers, and finally persuaded the Riyadh Victory team to carry out live broadcast in the name of the team. However, in the promotional poster released later, there was only a portrait of Ronaldo himself and the Internet celebrity partner, and Ronaldo and Riyadh Victory Club were very dissatisfied with this.
And all these made Ronaldo's trip to China look very bad, and also became the fuse for the whole Riyadh victory team to leave Shenzhen in a hurry.
At the beginning, many netizens who heard the news that Ronaldo was going to go live immediately joked, "No matter how big a name comes to China, he will get the land in the live broadcast room." ”
Although it is just a joke, before Ronaldo, it is true that no matter how famous an international superstar is, as long as he comes to China, he will almost inevitably "follow the local customs" and go to the live broadcast room for a walk.
During June 18, 2023, when another big-name star Messi came to China, he walked into the live broadcast room of ** anchor Li Xuanzhuo, which was regarded as the only opportunity for Chinese fans to interact with Messi's official website.
From the appearance to the end, Messi appeared for about 15 minutes, and most of the time, he was asking and answering questions with football commentators He Wei and Li Xuanzhuo.
During this period, ** live broadcast tried its best to "de-commercialize", neither "exposed" any brand, and the anchor also emphasized many times that "any commercial elements that appeared during Messi's appearance in the live broadcast room, including Messi's exit, have nothing to do with Messi." ”
However, some careful people still found that the top of the screen in the live broadcast room intermittently rotated with logos such as smart home appliance brand Dreame, wine brand Tantai, and automobile brand AVATAR, which were suspected of being "advertising space rental" in advance.
Screenshot of Messi's live broadcast room Messi's influence is undoubtedly huge. According to ** reports, this live broadcast has received 2.98 million views, and the live broadcast clips have exceeded 10 billion people on major platforms.
Then, although the focus is not on selling goods, the search volume of the same T-shirt, sachet, sneakers, yerba mate and other products of the same type of Messi skyrocketed, and it still rushed to the **hot search.
From Messi, ** saw the huge influence of world-class stars in the live broadcast, so he began to find more people to enter the live broadcast room.
From July to August 2023, Tmall Super Experience arranged three NBA star live broadcast room meetings for Wiggins, Harden, and Marbury. In September 2023, basketball superstar "Big Shark" Shaq O'Neal will go to China, be more open, directly settle in ** live broadcast, and open his own personal account.
Coinciding with the Asian Games, in order to fit the theme of sports, a special live broadcast event "Shark Journey to the East" specially tailored for O'Neill came into being.
In the show, O'Neill first connected with Chinese athletes Fu Yuanhui and Deng Yaping, turned up table tennis, and followed them to learn to speak Henan dialect, and then followed the twelve ** anchors to challenge Chinese cultural activities such as playing mahjong, dancing square dances, and making Chinese food.
With Messi, O'Neill and others proofing, at the end of December 2023, as soon as the news that Ronaldo will come to China in January of the following year came out, Brother Xiao Yang was shouted by fans in the live broadcast room, "Invite Ronaldo to the live broadcast room". Because in October 2023, O'Neill just logged in to Brother Xiao Yang's live broadcast room, but the matter of inviting Ronaldo was vaguely passed by Brother Xiao Yang.
Other anchors couldn't put Ronaldo in the live broadcast room, which made Lie'er Baby more capable.
No one expected the slap in the face to come so quickly. The cooperation was not successful, and the live broadcast was still there, and Lie'er Baby quickly changed to a single version of the New Year's Festival header, and deleted the official announcement Weibo related to Ronaldo.
On January 26, the comment area of Lie'er Baby's live broadcast room occasionally popped up with the sentence "Is Ronaldo coming today?" There are only a few comments under his official Weibo account, all of which ask, "What about Ronaldo?" ”
It's just that once someone mentions Ronaldo, the anchors in the live broadcast room tacitly ignore this topic and concentrate on bringing goods. How vigorous the official announcement was, and how embarrassed they were in the face of emergencies.
Football stars were fooled into bringing goods, which appeared as early as 20 years ago.
In 2003, Ronaldo came to China with Real Madrid to play commercial matches, during which time he invited him to a private dinner through an intermediary.
According to a report at the time, the intermediary conveyed to Ronaldo that a friend of the business had invited him to a private banquet and promised Ronaldo $300,000.
Ronaldo, who happily went to the appointment, would not have thought that this was actually a commercial endorsement trap.
At the banquet, Ronaldo, wearing a yellow "Golden Throat" jersey and holding a box of Golden Throat Tablets in his hand, accepted a photo with him and took a video.
Soon after, this video was made into an advertisement by the company, and in CCTV for four years, the advertising slogan "Protect your voice, please use a golden voice, Guangxi golden voice" also followed Ronaldo's influence into thousands of households.
Screenshot of Ronaldo's Golden Throat advertisement When Ronaldo learned that he had somehow become the spokesperson for Golden Throat products, he was very angry.
The golden voice also thought about returning the lies he had telled, and issued a statement saying that the company signed an agreement with Ronaldo as a product image spokesperson, and every year sent a letter to Ronaldo's designated business promotion company in China, expressing his intention to continue to cooperate, and paid the relevant fees in accordance with the agreement.
Of course, Ronaldo does not agree with the statement of the golden voice. However, it is not easy to prosecute portrait infringement across borders, and once a lawsuit starts, it is equivalent to another publicity for the golden voice in disguise
So Ronaldo finally had to give up.
And the organizer in charge of Ronaldo's trip to China also uses a similar routine, wanting to do things to make money, but not wanting to pay the money that should be given.
Changxin Media, the organizer of Ronaldo's activities, has been rooted in the entertainment industry before, and has operated Jay Chou's concert tour, but has not held sports competitions. This routine of filling old wine with new bottles finally overturned on Ronaldo.
Ding Tao, director of the Entertainment and Sports Law Research Center of Guangdong Zhuojian Law Firm, said that internally, the first thing to do is to pay attention to process compliance. Any commercial sporting event introduced is a large-scale event, which requires the approval of departments at all levels, as well as work coordination. Related project work, ticketing, marketing, etc., all need to leave enough schedules and cycles, and you must not gamble and take risks according to the process. Externally, Chinese sports industry professionals need to have a "same-frequency dialogue" with their foreign counterparts to reach an agreement on business concepts and contracts.
Ding Tao added that at present, short ** and live streaming are popular, and it is true that foreign stars can get a good traffic effect when they participate in it. However, foreign stars have a strong sense of contract and copyright, and the rules and regulations used in portraits and related commercial rights and interests can be described as "baht must be compared" before the contract is signed.
The failure of Ronaldo's trip to China has reminded those organizers who are in a hurry that the commercialization process must first reach an agreement between both parties before proceeding, and the crude monetization model can only be disgusting and end in failure. And there is still a long way to go for international sports superstars to truly integrate into emerging fields such as live broadcasting.