American Millionaire offers ZJ 2mil dollars if he converts to Pingpong (sandpaper bats), net community LoLs
2016-06-08 15:01
In order to promote the Pingpong World Championship, its founder American investor Jeffrey Bogatin recently said during an interview with CCTV sports, if ZJ the grand slam champ were to switch to join his event, his annually income would be over 2mil US dollars. That seems quite a lot. Then again, it depends on who you're comparing:
(Chart showing stars and events of other sports, like the prize money for the highest competitions of Tennis - 2.8mil USD, soccer - 576mil USD and basketball - 1.4mil USD, as well as a table of sports stars and their salaries, [can't quite read the names, cause it's too low res] number 1 and 2 are boxers, no. 1 is Mayweather with 300mil USD, number 3 is Ronaldo with an annual salary of 79.5mil USD etc.)
Compared to that chart, 2mil suddenly turns out to be on 18th spot of top sportsmen salaries. Then again, do you know the prize money of ITTF tour competitions? Let's have a look:
According to media reports, in 2015 ITTF provided a total of 3.5mil USD for all competitions held that year, of which 3mil were allocated to prize money for the pro tours (?), these two figures are an all time high in the history of ITTF. See? 3.5mil being a historical all time high. And at the end of the year, the top 3 male and female TT players go home with about 390k USD of prize money each. In that regard, 2mil is indeed pretty attractive! But when it comes to the American having ZJ switch to a sandpaper bat, the reaction of the Chinese net community is: Haha!
(Photo with Baggaley)
Nevermind the net community going Haha, this American investor is really way too ignorant of the current situation of the Chinese sports system. In order to become a member of the national TT team, "getting there on your own" is highly difficult, although there was Li Na [a grand slam tennis player] with her "solo flight" [probably meaning that she wasn't raised by the system], there are fairly few recent athletes to follow that example. To produce a player like ZJ, 2mil USD a year is by far not enough! Let alone, as a TT grand slam champ, after ZJ retires from his [Chinese] provincial team, he might find himself a nice home. Whereas as a "down to businees" [as in hired gun] American player, once he retires, who is to provide his living then?
It's still too early to tell whether or not the "Pingpong World Championship" will gain popularity in China, but if you want to make professional TT players switch to sandpaper bats, it's likely doomed to fail. As of now, a sports event, that has no relation to the Olympics will hardly attract any national player.
