From Shanghai to Wolverhampton: Meet the Premier League's only Chinese chairman
Considering football is one of the world's most media-saturating topics, the people who work in it are very often surprisingly terrible interviewees: taciturn players, suspicious coaches, superior owners.
Certainly, not many offer to help the cameraman rearrange the furniture. But then, not many are like Jeff Shi, executive chairman of Premier League club Wolverhampton Wanderers FC.
Over the course of a long exclusive interview with CGTN, the Premier League's only Chinese chairman happily discusses many topics – including how he moved his family from Shanghai to Wolverhampton, how his trips to the local Chinese restaurant are soundtracked by fans discussing the team, why the club's branding is its secret weapon... and how football is only one part of the club's increasing success story.
Why Wolves?
Like many in football, Shi is here because of the Premier League, which by many criteria is the world's most lucrative sporting operation. Wolverhampton Wanderers, known to all as Wolves, has a long and storied history: formed in 1877, a three-time champion of England in the 1950s, and rarely out of the top two divisions ever since. But it wasn't the past that tempted Chinese conglomerate Fosun Group to buy Wolves in 2016.
"It's not because it's an English club," Shi explains, "it's because the value of the Premier League is so high. It's the best league in the world regarding the investment value and sporting quality."
In 2016, Wolves wasn't even in the Premier League. Fosun could have bought straight in – "We had a choice to invest into a Premier League club directly in 2016" – but decided second-division Wolves was a better proposition: "The cost is quite small, so we have a high chance to have better return from the investment."
“Sometimes I go to a Chinese restaurant, there’s maybe 10 tables and they’re all talking about Wolves”
Shi and Fosun also saw plenty of headroom for improvement. "Six years ago, Wolves was a good club, but the competence on the pitch wasn't so high." He made a three-year plan to reach the Premier League; in the second season, Wolves won 30 of its 46 league matches to claim the divisional title ("one year ahead of schedule," smiles Shi).
In the third and fourth seasons, Wolves finished seventh in the Premier League, qualifying for European competition in the UEFA Europa League. The team is once again up at the pleasant end of the league table, and a successful team makes for a happy city, as Shi knows.
"If you come to Wolverhampton, if you go to the pub, if you go to the restaurants, you can hear all the people are talking about Wolves," he beams. "Sometimes I go to a Chinese restaurant, there's maybe 10 tables and they're all talking about Wolves. Eventually it's about the happiness in the whole city, the buzzing life."
An adopted Wolverhamptonian
Wolverhampton is a city of 250,000 people with a proud industrial heritage and a friendly manner. It has warmly welcomed immigrants since the 19th-century Irish famine, and was particularly augmented during the postwar Windrush era by guest workers beckoned from British colonies in the Caribbean and south Asia – the Sikh community, for example, is around nine percent of the city's population.
Shi and his family have settled happily in the area; his daughters, aged 13 and nine, have started to develop the distinctive local accents. "They're forgetting Chinese now," says Shi, "they can only speak English."
Their father grew up in Shanghai, so Wolverhampton is a bit of a change – "quite quiet, especially the area I'm living in. It's very green, the environment is very good." And full of Wolves fans: "Every game you have 30,000 people to watch, so it's a big football city. Wherever I go, I meet the fans, they're very nice and friendly."
“I have been to all the places in the UK, maybe more than local people. I enjoy it here, the people are friendly and gentle”
And Shi goes all over: this is no remote manager, Zooming distractedly in for updates from afar. He lives in the village of Tettenhall, 10 minutes from Wolves' Molineux stadium and five minutes from the training ground: his office overlooks the pitches, and he is regularly seen on the touchline, wrapped in his Wolves-branded raincoat if necessary. Watching the players on matchday – not always just the men's first team, but the youth teams – has given him a grassroots view of his adopted country.
"The first time I came to London was 2009, as a tourist – to enjoy the city, to go to the British Museum, the National Gallery," he recalls. "But I think it's so different when you go to another city apart from London. I travel to every away game, so I have been to all the places in the UK, maybe more than local people."
He likes what he sees. "I enjoy it here, I think the people are very friendly and gentle. And for a foreigner, it's easy to settle in and I don't feel any barriers – 'OK, I'm a foreigner, I feel so hard to live here' – no, I don't think so. In general, because the UK is highly developed, I think it's easy and the economy is not bad and the living quality is quite good."
He's not the first to notice how "gentle" the locals can be. In 1941, George Orwell wrote that "The gentleness of the English civilization is perhaps its most marked characteristic. You notice it the instant you set foot on English soil."
Contributing to the community
Fosun was founded in 1992 as a market research company. Its original aspirations list "self-improvement, teamwork, performance and contribution to society". The first three of those have obvious parallels with football, but how does Shi see the sport's contribution to society?
"It's a key element of life for people – not only for the UK, for China, for the world. You see every weekend all the fans go to the stadium or watch the TV, it's very important.
"When you win more, you are representing the club in Wolverhampton, giving the people in the city more energy and more bragging rights. I think that eventually the aim of life is to make people more happy, and I think football itself is very important for this. And so when we are talking about contribution to the community or society, I think the first thing is to build a good club, a strong club, to compete, then to win more – to give people more happiness is the ultimate goal."
It's noticeable how often Shi prefaces his responses with "I think" or "I suppose". He weighs his answers carefully, but without aching pauses; he is however confident enough to wait for the right idiomatic phrase (such as "bragging rights") to come to mind.
His patience also shows in the way he frequently says "Eventually": this is a man with big ideas and ideals, and a masterplan in mind, but with an approach that is measured rather than manic. That grace under pressure has been shown to help in far more important ways than buying the right center-forward.
In spring 2020, as the world grappled with a new pandemic, the UK suffered a shortage of personal protective equipment for vulnerable medical staff. Fosun was able to help, importing 4,000 protective masks for Wolverhampton frontline workers in April, with thousands more following in May and tens of thousands in June.
Asked about this huge helping hand for a confused and terrified community, Shi is humble almost to the point of dismissing the subject: for him, it simply made logical sense.
"China was the first country to undertake the pandemic, so have more knowledge and more preparation than in the UK," he explains. "When the pandemic hit the country here, the resources in hospitals were quite tight and also the people felt a little bit puzzled.
"Fosun happens to be in the healthcare industry, so it's quite natural Fosun has the resources to help. And we think, 'OK, it's not so hard for us to have a plan to help the people here.' So we shipped all of them here. It's quite natural, and we are very happy to try to help."
Chinese interest in West Midlands football
Wolves wasn't the only local club available for Chinese investors in 2016. Ten miles down the road, Wolves' traditional rivals West Bromwich Albion was bought by a consortium led by Guochuan Lai. Four miles east of there, Aston Villa was taken over by Tony Xia's Recon Group. And three miles south of Villa, Birmingham City was bought by Paul Suen's Trillion Trophy Asia Limited.
Such a batch of investment concentrated in and around England's second city produced much speculation among football fans, but Shi insists it was purely coincidence rather than some geolocated goldmine.
"I think it's totally, totally by luck: they were on sale," he shrugs. "If we had a chance to invest into a London club, maybe we'd do this. I can't say we thought too much about the area of the West Midlands."
By this point in the conversation, Wolves' media chief has taken a keen interest in the line of questioning, but he needn't worry. Shi certainly doesn't. He says there was no contact between the compatriot investors – "We didn't know each other, we just knew the news from the paper" – and sees no grand unifying theory of investment potential.
"Why other Chinese owners like to invest in a football club, I don't know – I feel it's independent cases. We have our own reasons and aims to do something, but I cannot say the same thing on behalf of other owners."
What can be said is that none of the local rivals have prospered quite like Wolves since 2016. Aston Villa spent two seasons in the second division before Xia sold up. West Brom dropped out of the Premier League after Lai's second season; they are currently midtable in the second division with Lai said to be keen to sell.
“It’s not about the money, it’s not about ambition, it’s about daily operations. You have to be committed”
As for Birmingham City, the team hasn't ever looked like escaping the second division, finishing 19th, 19th, 17th, 20th and 18th in the 24-team tier, with fans protesting against the owners. So where does Shi think Wolves went so right when others were going so wrong?
"Not to be disrespectful to the owners, but I think we have a better team," he says – and by 'team' he means not the 11 blokes in boots but the wider off-field operation. "It's not about the money, it's not about ambition, it's about daily operations.
"You have to be very committed and you have to be quite intelligent because you are competing with tough opponents. I can say we have one of the best teams, that's the only difference. If you move me to the other clubs, I think we can copy the same story."
But is the Wolves experience a template applicable in other situations? Several investment groups now own more than one club, from the globe-straddling City Football Group to the more modest Pacific Media Group which owns small clubs in England, Belgium, Denmark, France and Switzerland. Does Fosun have any plans in this direction?
Shi closes down that idea with a chuckle: "No, no. We've bought Wolves, so: The End." He understands the idea as a "business strategy", with savings on scouting and using lesser clubs as feeders, but "if you have two or three clubs, then I think only one club will be the core brand."
Premier League risks and rewards
The Premier League is a huge money-making machine, but there are tiers within it. England's "big six" clubs – Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool, Manchester City, Manchester United and Tottenham Hotspur – have dominated the division for decades.
With only the top four permitted entry into the lucrative rolling continental buffet that is the following season's Champions League, it's a difficult glass ceiling to break through. In the last 18 years, 71 of the 72 top-four slots have been claimed by the same six teams.
Little wonder, then, that these six clubs also dominate the sport's finances in England, and indeed Europe. Auditors Deloitte publish an annual Money League listing the world's top football clubs by revenue.
Their most recent list, detailing the 2019/20 season, has all those six in the world's top 11 richest clubs, with revenue ranging from $447m (Tottenham) up to $670m (Manchester United). Wolves' revenue from the same season is cited at $175m.
Clearly it isn't a level playing field, and Shi recognizes that trying to compete simply by winning matches is almost inconceivable. "After we were promoted, the next step – from a top-10 team to a top-six, top-four, Champions League – it's very, very hard. Because the revenue sides for the top six are much, much bigger than us. It takes maybe 20 years to reach there with continuous success on the pitch."
Even if the appetite existed to sink money into the club – as some owners have, not always sustainably – to chase success, there are barriers: various 'financial fair play' instruments, which were designed to protect clubs from the threat of bankruptcy but have the effect of solidifying the status quo. The big clubs stay big because they're already big, chewing up the lion's share of revenue from advertising and broadcasting and prize money; to break that cycle on the field could take decades.
Instead, Shi is looking to brand extensions. In 2019, on a publicity-raising trip to China, Wolves staged a Shanghai fashion show soundtracked by live music from top-drawer Chinese band Miserable Faith. The club's fashion brand WWFC is another extension which is proving popular in China.
“One of the reasons we bought Wolves is the logo. The logo is unique and the name is unique, so it can be universal to everyone”
When competing for eyeballs, it's important to note the origin of the word "brand" – an instantly identifiable mark – and here, Shi think Wolves can enjoy the advantage of the club's evocative name and the distinctive iconography of the club's badge.
Understandably given its nickname, the club has used some sort of wolf's head in its branding since 1979, but the current brand is instantly recognizable: a stylized angular black wolf's head, on a background of orange (or 'Old Gold', as the club has always preferred to call its dominant color), inside a black hexagon.
For Shi, it's a calling card – wherever people might encounter it. And he reveals it's one of the reasons Fosun decided to invest in the club.
"To be honest, one of the reasons why we bought Wolves is the logo. The logo is unique and the name is unique, so it can be universal to everyone – to females, to males. And if you like the logo, maybe some content, no matter if it's football or something else – if you like the brand, I'm happy."
Whatever the brand is on, it all feeds back into the club's fame and popularity, eventually servicing a football team who can't otherwise hope to compete with established sides. "Success on the commercial side will be very important," says Shi. "You can't just put the money in and try to build a squad to compete and if you lose, then you leave. I think that's a model for many owners in the Premier League, but I don't think it's the right one."
The e-sports 'shortcut'
Instead of improving one squad, Shi has helped Wolves build a portfolio of them in what he sees as a crucial area for expansion: e-sports – competitive online video gaming, increasingly popular as a spectator sport, with fans following their favorite teams just as fervently as they do for offline sports.
Shi sees e-sports as adding interactive value to the traditional sporting experience. "It's more about interaction: you can see the words pop up on the screen, the comments from the fans," he says. "E-sports is blending sports and entertainment – it's not only about the result, it's also about the charm of the player, it's a kind of show."
Wolves set up a specialized e-sports division, operating across various hugely popular online games. Each team has its own section on the Wolves website, the players beaming at the camera like their colleagues in the men's, women's and youth football teams, all bedecked in the club's distinctive branding.
It's what Shi calls a "shortcut" to building the brand and its fanbase. And it's working. In 2020, Wolves' FIFA online team became champions in China's top official tournament, while the PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds team was promoted to China's top league.
“If you mix e-sports and football, maybe we are only behind Man United in China – we have maybe more than 10 million fan-base in the world”
In September 2021, Fosun acquired Chongqing QGhappy – world champion of Honor of Kings, the planet's second-biggest e-sports arena – and rebranded it Chongqing Wolves. The club now also has teams in Rocket League, Fortnite, Call of Duty and Identity V – all spreading the name (the players use the phrase "Wolves ay we", local dialect for "We are Wolves", as their catchphrase) and drawing people in. Lots of people, as Shi happily attests.
"I actually think regarding the fanbase, from the social media followers, if you mix e-sports and football, maybe we are only behind Man United in China," he says. "So it's huge – we have maybe more than 10 million fan-base in the world."
Shi sees growing that fan-base as crucial: more fans means more revenue, which means more chance to grow the core football brand. "The gap between us and the other big clubs is about the fan-base. Eventually, when your fanbase in total is closer to other clubs, then you have a chance to compete in the long term. Otherwise, maybe you are so lucky to win the league once or twice, but it cannot be sustainable."
That lack of sustainability can be seen 65 kilometers east of Wolverhampton. In 2016, Leicester City stunned the football world by winning the Premier League: the only exception in the past 18 seasons to the big-six dominance of those crucial top four places. The following season the team finished 12th, then ninth twice, then fifth twice.
Clearly, that glass ceiling was quickly reglazed – a solemn warning that while success has many fathers, it doesn't guarantee healthy offspring. No wonder Shi asks football's eternal question: "Even if you get there once, how about the next year?"
For Shi, e-sports can also futureproof Wolves' appeal. "It's a link with football, with sports, but it's also more for the younger generation – for teenagers, for the twenties.
"They like football, but they need more things to do, and e-sports is the next one to follow football – maybe in 20 years, it will be a major sport in the world. So we think it's time to grasp the future."
Youthful optimism
By this point in the evening, Shi has been happily talking for almost 45 minutes. Sometimes he will apologetically close down a line of questioning, but not to be evasive: if he doesn't know the answer, he won't engage in pointless speculation. He doesn't know any other Chinese club owners, so he can't speak for them; he doesn't have a favorite fellow Premier League club chairman, so at their regular summit meetings he simply speaks to whoever he's sitting next to.
Sitting opposite CGTN he's so clearly comfortable with the conversation, he begins to crack polite jokes: asked whether the Chinese can learn anything from Premier League finances, he smiles "I think Chinese people are quite good at business, to be honest," before chuckling warmly.
But there is humility with the humor, and he recognizes that the UK can teach China a lot about football – a topic that quickly moves on to equality of opportunity and parental expectation. As a parent of children growing up in the UK, he knows the strength and depth of youth football – "it's easy to choose a club around your home, so you start to play football."
Again, as with fans, it's about building your base. "What China can learn from the UK is how to have a strong base for youth football: if you're a boy or girl, if you're five, six, seven years old, where you have a chance to play football, where you have the chance to have a good coach to help you, where your parents allow you to play football a lot."
“It’s important to make people feel safe and that there are a lot of alternatives for your life”
Parents worldwide worry about their children's potential careers, but Shi says compared to the UK, many parents in China see playing football as "wasting time – you may be injured." While many UK families help their young hopefuls chase a career, the talent funnel is necessarily brutal and most players don't make it.
Shi, whose remit includes the hundreds of youth players in the bustling Wolves academy based at the training ground five minutes from his home, thinks young hopefuls who hit their own ceiling would benefit not from more training but more retraining.
"Do you have a chance to go back to school, to start a new life? If you're 20, 21, 22, you can be a coach, you can be a sporting director, you can be a scout, you can be an agent. It's important to make people feel safe and that there are a lot of alternatives for your life. If I want to point out one thing we have to learn, it's about how to have the environment, the society, the system, to help people feel very free to play football."
Heroes help. The huge success of Yao Ming, who spent nine enormously successful seasons in U.S. basketball's NBA league, popularized the sport in China. Shi names Yao as his hero; his first football heroes, he says, were the West Germany team who won the 1990 World Cup. "That's when I started to watch football," he says; told that it was football's worst ever World Cup, he laughs loudly and agrees that things got better thereafter.
He insists, though, that heroes are not as important as environment in cultivating football success. "One hero or two heroes would speed up the process, but eventually you need the environment. If your classmates are talking about football, they're playing football, of course you will follow them."
Becoming stronger
When Shi says environment is key, it's not just buzzword bingo: this is a man who walked the walk. After his first season in charge ended disappointingly – Wolves finished 15th in the second tier – he moved himself and his family across the planet, from Shanghai to Wolverhampton, and the club won the second-tier title.
Shi passionately feels "the responsibility to build a strong company, to make the staff proud about where they are working," believing that a strong club will "impact all the people in the city" and make a "contribution to the community."
Asked where he sees Wolves in five years' time, he answers with his typical combination of certainty and politeness: "I think one of the best clubs in the world. I hope people around the world can recognize Wolves as a brand – and not only about football: about e-sports, about entertainment."
It won't be easy, but Shi carries a quiet, reasoned determination that would make it foolish to rule the idea out. He carries the message of constant self-improvement to his team – the wider Wolves team – as they chase the dream of global popularity.
"If you put your efforts in every day, if you learn every day, for myself or for my team, we are better than maybe five years ago. It's about learning every day to become stronger, then it's not so hard."
Originally published by CGTN Europe, 24 Mar 2022
