Wanda Group, the gold sponsor of the World Cup, has a global reputation, but few know that the man at the helm of the company has not stepped foot on a green field. As I watched the World Cup, I was often drawn to the Chinese advertisements that interspersed the games, and wondered how often they appeared. Perhaps the highlight of the ads is the performance of the Chinese team, while Wanda Culture and Tourism is the second most prominent.
Wanda Group's strength is not only reflected in its sponsorship of the World Cup, but also as one of the seven official partners of FIFA. Even the English Premier League match, there is no lack of Wanda's advertising figure. With such a passion for soccer sponsorship, why doesn't Wanda build a team of its own?
Looking at the team lineups in the China Super League (CSL), Guangzhou Evergrande, Beijing Guoan and Shandong Luneng are all backed by large corporations. In terms of scale, Wanda is no less impressive. In fact, for Wanda, building a team is a piece of cake, but broken hearts are hard to put back together.
Dating back to the 1990s, Wanda Group took a stake in the Dalian soccer team, becoming one of only four newly promoted clubs among the 15 clubs in the Chinese Super League at the time. With sufficient capital, Wanda was a strong team and once ranked at the bottom of the Chinese Super League. However, in the 1998 Chinese Super League, Dalian Wanda took over Liaoning and suffered obvious favoritism from the referees. During the match, Wanda entered the penalty area several times, only to be ignored by the referee, and all three penalty kicks awarded were canceled.
After the match, it was reported that the match director gave a serious warning to the duty referee, but it still did not change the result. After the match, Wang Jianlin, head of the Wanda Group, announced that he was permanently withdrawing from Chinese soccer, and that since then, the Wanda Group would only be responsible for funding the game, and would no longer be in charge of the game itself.
