On June 23, the opening ceremony of the large-scale public welfare activity - Industrial Bank Chinese Youth International Football Championship 2016, was held in the China World Hotel in Beijing, indicating that this top event with commitment to cultivating the future football star in China officially kicked off. It was under the guidance of National school Football Office, co-initiated and organized by the Youth Football Fund of China Social Welfare Foundation and China Sports Futurity International Co., Ltd, with the Industrial Bank as the title sponsor. In the opening ceremony, the Industrial Bank signed a strategic cooperation agreement with the hosts and became the exclusive title sponsor and the only partner in financial industry from 2016 to 2020.
It attracted widespread attention from all walks of life. Ministry of Education, the Chinese Football Association, Youth Football Fund of the China Social Welfare Foundation and representatives from the embassies of Spain, Germany, South Korea and other countries attended the opening ceremony.
Finance cooperates with football and supports its future
To revitalize the football sport and realize the football dream is our aspiration for generations. In 2015, some policies like the Football Reform Plan and Suggestions on the Implementation of Speeding up the Development of Youth School Football were unveiled. School football, escalated as a part of national strategy, was bursting with vitality.
Against this backdrop, the Chinese Youth International Football Championships was nurtured. It was based on the standard of international youth football events, with two groups including group of 12 / 13 years old and group of 19 year old and two stages covering the auditions and International Finals. The Chinese youth football team which wins in the audition in China will participate in the International Finals held in October this year, and compete with best youth teams from five continents of the world.
“This is the first youth football event totally connected with other parts of the world.” Guo Xiaowei, General Manager of China Sports Futurity International Co., Ltd, one of the hosts, said, “Building a platform which enables communication with world-class youth football teams will help enhance the youth football in China.”
It is worth mentioning that, with effort to turn the game into the most influential international youth football event, it charged nothing for the enrollment, fully reflecting its feature of public welfare.
Integration of finance and football sport was its another major highlight. In the opening ceremony, the Industrial Bank signed a five-year strategic cooperation agreement with the hosts and became the exclusive title sponsor and the only partner in financial industry from 2016 to 2020. As a representative of the green bank, industrial bank adheres to fulfill its social responsibility through “obtaining reasonable profits while bringing benefits to the stakeholders” and actively advocates the “environment friendly and healthy” lifestyle. Chen Jinguang, the Vice President of the Industrial Bank, said that IB’s choosing to be the title sponsor of this event was the milestone for the bank to participate in the strategy of “great health and general sports” and that the bank’s desire to do something for this event, provide comprehensive, differentiated financial services and value-added services for the involved parties and, through comprehensive, in-depth and crossover cooperation, convey the cultural essence of football and the vocational spirit to the youth, cultivate more football talents and facilitate the development of football in China.
Crossover marketing shows its brand vitality
In 2015, the IB set foot in sports marketing and did a good job based on “Vigor Life” credit brand, one of its retail businesses. It not only tailored Xing Power credit card for the running enthusiasts, but also signed a 5-year strategic cooperation agreement with Shanghai International Marathon and became the only designated cooperative bank in a series of events related to Shanghai Marathon. Together with the marathons in Taiyuan, Chengdu, Fuzhou and other cities, it launched “IB Joy Running Group” and set off a new ground of fashion - “Vigor Life”. By virtue of the event, it succeeded in creating a “vigorous, fashionable, healthy and environment-friendly” brand image of differentiated credit card, and attracted a batch of young citizens quickly. In the following year, it issued more than 1 million credit cards and obtained both social and business value.
As the title sponsor of Chinese Youth International Football Championships, the IB expanded its business of sports finance. In the eyes of Chen Jinguang, the integration of finance and football was the social responsibility of the mainstream commercial bank as well as another move of the IB to carry out the strategy of “great health and general sports”.
Apart from providing high-quality financial and value-added services to the involved parties during the event, the bank will also rely on its branches all over the country to actively cooperate with the hosts of the event and continue to publicize youth football, including starting youth football training camp, organizing the youth to go abroad to participate in the training of financial plan, and accelerate research and development of products and services related to the integration of finance and sports in order to give full play to the ability of comprehensive financial services. The bank is also very optimistic about the business opportunities behind this youth football championships in the hope to create a new blue ocean for the development of its retail banking business.