It's still unknown that how serious the effect will be brought by the failure of Liu Xiang in the 110-meter hurdles preliminaries, although Liu's comm...
It's still unknown that how serious the effect will be brought by the failure of Liu Xiang in the 110-meter hurdles preliminaries,
although Liu's commercial value has been largely devalued the actual influence on its at least 17 commercial endorsement company was unrevealed until now, at present, Liu's failure did not cause serious effects on the price of his sponsorship contract brands. In addition, the endorsement brand PR team has taken active measures to attend to this at the same time.
It's August 7 when the Chinese air-man Liu Xiang was present in the sixth group of the 100-meter hurdles preliminaries, with the sound of the gunfire, he broke the ice under the eyes of the world, however, he fell down when he was trying to cross over the first hurdle, what came in to our eyes was the single-foot figure of this hero} In fact, Liu's tragic fall not only dragged the hearts of millions of audiences, but also brought a heavy strike to the sponsors behind him.
Before the London Olympic Games, Liu Xiang signed with at least 17 brands, such as Nike, Coca-Cola, VISA, Tsingtao Brewery (00168), Erie, Lenovo (00992), Cadillac, Bank of Communications(03328:0, 0, “), Chinese postal service EMS and so on. As for now, the effects of Liu's failure in the preliminaries were not obvious, Lenovo was down 45 percent, from August 8 to 6.1 HK $; Tsingtao fell slightly by 0.34 percent, to close at HK $ 44.6 million; while the Bank of Communications increased by 0.38%, closing at HK 5.25$. And Erie listed in the Shanghai Stock Exchange fell slightly to 0.21%}.
In fact, for a well-known player who has 17 advertising sponsors, Liu Xiang's retirement from the competition is closely related to the business opportunities of billions of investment costs, and the effects on the endorsement brands may be self-evident. As people are feeling sorrowed at Liu Xiang's falling, his 17 sponsor companies have made the first reaction through the micro blog, many positive power and information were transferred on the mainland, for example, it was not until several minutes later that Nike put out the micro blogging custom copy: "Who dares on all the dignity, ventured to the pinnacle start all over again, even if it be nothing."
Nike public relations team also said that Liu's likeness of winning the champion was already within the elimination so that they had prepared several plans for the outcome, but what was out of the expectation was his falling at the first hurdle. However, the company admitted that it still has continuing cooperation with Liu Xiang, and the relevant representative denied the rumors that Liu Xiang has been kidnapped by advertisers to participate in the preliminaries with pains, "It was totally said by those conspiracy theorists."
It's said that because of the unpredictability of competitive items, Liu Xiang's endorsement fees are composed of guarantee amounts and a floating amounts, the latter one is determined by the contest results. At present, it's sure that Liu is not likely to take part in important competitions within 2012, therefore the business loss will last.
In fact, for a 29-year old athlete who has went through two surgeries on the Achilles at the same position, no one can predicate what his future will be. But along with the springing up of new stars in Olympics, such as Sun Yang, Ye Shiwen and Zhang Jike, to shot down the present business loss and risk is the most important thing that the sponsors of Liu Xiang can do.
