On January 14, 2024 local time, the 2024 Australian Open (hereinafter referred to as the "Australian Open") kicked off in Melbourne Park, Australia.
As the first Grand Slam tennis tournament of the year, the Australian Open is generous in terms of prize pool injection, providing a total prize money of 60 million US dollars (approximately 430 million yuan) for participating players. This bonus number is not only a historic high for the Australian Open, but also second only to the $65 million bonus for the 2022 US Open in the four major slams.
A considerable portion of the Australian Open's confidence in bonuses comes from sponsors.
According to the official website of Australian Open, this year's event attracted 32 sponsors from sports, food, aviation and other fields, among which Luzhou Laojiao, a domestic Baijiu brand, also has a place.
(Luckin Coffee's official Weibo account)
In addition, before the start of the tournament, the Australian Open also announced that Luckin Coffee would become the official exclusive coffee partner of China and Southeast Asia. However, due to the low level of this title and regional restrictions, Luckin's name is not among the 32 high-level sponsors on the official website.
Two consumer brands are betting on the Australian Open, which is closely related to the outstanding performance of Chinese players in the tennis industry in recent seasons. In the 2023 season, Zhang Zhizhen and Zheng Qinwen respectively won the men's and women's singles championships at the Hangzhou Asian Games, achieving a new high in their personal world rankings. Nine Chinese players have also entered the Australian Open singles tournament this time.
Both Luzhou Laojiao and Luckin have cooperative relationships with Chinese players: Zhang Zhizhen once served as a platform for the signing ceremony between Luzhou Laojiao and the Australian Open with senior Zheng Jie; The fact that Shang Juncheng obtained a wildcard and directly entered the Australian Open tournament may be related to his status as the health ambassador of Luckin Coffee brand.
Of course, spending a lot of money sponsoring tennis Grand Slam tournaments, Luzhou Laojiao and Ruixing obviously have other considerations.
According to official data from the Australian Open, China is the world's largest audience for Australian Open TV news (with a viewing time of 8.1 million hours). In terms of viewing difficulty, the time difference between Melbourne and China is only 3 hours, which is the smallest time difference between Melbourne and Beijing among the four Grand Slams, and more in line with the viewing needs of Chinese fans.
Driven by the high attention of the Chinese people, a group of Chinese sponsors have flooded into the four major tennis tournaments, hoping to get a share of the media value: Hisense became the only Chinese sponsor of the Australian Open in 2013; Oppo has sponsored the last 5 French Open tournaments: Chinese tennis leader Li Na once lifted her first Grand Slam championship trophy there.
However, unlike brands such as Hisense and Oppo that have clear expansion plans for overseas markets, Luzhou Laojiao and Ruixing have relatively small business scales overseas.
Although the official website of Luzhou Laojiao shows that the company has conducted sales and marketing activities in overseas markets, its products are mainly sold to Asian countries and regions, such as Hong Kong, Singapore, and Malaysia. Countries such as Australia, the United States, and France that host Grand Slam tournaments do not have a high sense of presence. Luckin only opened its first overseas store in Singapore in April 2023, and there is currently no public plan to open a store in Australia.
The official Australian Open has not disclosed the sponsorship amounts of Luzhou Laojiao and Luckin, but based on the level of the event and sponsor, it is estimated that the sponsorship fee for Luzhou Laojiao is in the millions of yuan per year, while the sponsorship fee for Luckin with lower titles is also in the millions of yuan level.
For these two brands with limited overseas business scale, the direct economic return obtained through sales after sponsorship may not be too high. Choosing to sponsor the event at this time, they clearly hope to temporarily break free from the encirclement of a group of competitors in the Chinese market, and use the influence, dissemination channels, and audience participation of the event to increase the brand's exposure and popularity in front of the target consumer group.
From the market performance of the aforementioned two brands, although Luzhou Laojiao has a certain level of popularity, in terms of revenue, its market share in China has consistently ranked third to fifth, always overshadowed by Maotai and Wuliangye. Taking the first half of 2023 as an example, Luzhou Laojiao's revenue was 14.593 billion yuan, which is quite different from Maotai's 70.987 billion yuan and Wuliangye's 45.506 billion yuan.
For Luckin, which already has tens of thousands of stores in China, the future growth rate will inevitably slow down. At the same time, Luckin also has to fight a 9.9 yuan price war with the aggressive Kudi, further lowering its profit margin. That's also why Luckin decided to go abroad in 2023. The company urgently needs new growth opportunities.
Tennis has always been regarded as a representative of high-end sports events in the sports industry, and its commercial value is also ahead of most sports events. The enthusiasts and followers of this sport to some extent overlap with the consumers that consumer brands such as Luzhou Laojiao and Ruixing want to target.
Of course, this will also lay the foundation for their expansion in overseas markets and brand development. After all, there are also many Chinese communities settling and living in Australia.