Recently, Fan Zhendong openly expressed his dissatisfaction with the new rules of WTT, drawing widespread attention from Chinese fans. Unable to bear the new rule that fines athletes for not participating in competitions, Fan Zhendong chose to withdraw from the world rankings but will not retire! This means that he will still participate in domestic competitions in the future, but he will definitely not play in international competitions.
Why did he choose to withdraw from the international rankings? Because WTT is purely profiting from the health of the athletes, with an overly dense schedule and punishment for non-participation, which is very unfair to the athletes!
The current chairman of WTT is Liu Guoliang, who has pushed for a commercial nature of the competition system under WTT that scores higher than the nine major events, forcing athletes who want to obtain international rankings to frequently compete, willingly exploited by WTT.
Of course, if Liu Guoliang's only significant initiative was the reform of WTT, it might not have been enough to make Fan Zhendong decide to quit. The real catalyst for Fan Zhendong's split with Liu Guoliang is actually the fan culture surrounding the national table tennis team!
In the past, Liu Guoliang promoted the fan culture of the national table tennis team mainly to promote table tennis! After all, table tennis is a niche sport with limited commercial value worldwide; since it is difficult to break through offline, they turned to online platforms, using short videos to market various topics, creating personal IPs for athletes, and thus gaining more attention for the national table tennis team.
Indeed, the national table tennis team quickly seized the traffic market, with many athletes becoming internet celebrities through topic marketing; their image transformed from pure athletes to national idols! This transformation inevitably made the national table tennis team the most affected sports team by fan culture in China's sports arena.
Through public statements by athletes like Fan Zhendong, we can easily conclude that the mixed fan culture has caused many athletes considerable trouble; however, when the powerful fan culture brought a lot of traffic and attention to the national table tennis team, combined with their excellent results, they became the darlings of advertisers, making the commercial operation and monetization ability of the national table tennis team the top in China's sports field today.
Regarding the impact of fan culture on China's sports arena, the General Administration of Sport has clearly stated in 2024 that it will focus on crackdowns. The Chinese Table Tennis Association also declared in August its intention to sever ties with fan culture. However, after the statement, no substantive actions were taken! The reason why the Chinese Table Tennis Association has not taken any substantial measures against fan culture is simply because Liu Guoliang's efforts to create the national table tennis IP, as well as the commercial operations of the national table tennis team and the wallets of all participants, are closely related to fan culture.
Liu Guoliang and other senior officials of the Table Tennis Association, with this behavior of saying one thing and doing another on the issue of fan culture, to some extent, also fostered certain unhealthy trends. During the Super League period, fan culture returned, and this time athletes such as Fan Zhendong, Wang Chuqin, and Sun Yingsha became victims. They are often slandered by unscrupulous media and subjected to cyberbullying, causing physical and mental fatigue for national table tennis players Fan Zhendong, Wang Chuqin, and Sun Yingsha.
In fact, as early as after the Olympics, Fan Zhendong had already shown intentions of retirement in front of the CCTV camera, and after the Olympics, everyone could see that he had never returned to the national team, only representing the Shanghai team.
This year's Singapore Grand Slam will be the beginning of Fan Zhendong's change. If he can return to participate, he will return to the national team, and the possibility of participating in the World Championships next is very high. If he does not return to participate, he is likely to miss the World Championships and will not represent the national team in the future.
Ultimately, Fan Zhendong not only failed to enter the participant list of the Singapore Grand Slam but also publicly declared his choice to withdraw from the world rankings, announcing the complete split between Fan Zhendong and Liu Guoliang!