Hopefully Sun Yang not to be the next "Liu Xiang"(2)

In advertising, Sun is regarded as the second Liu and has a huge market potential. One thing worth reflecting is that, although Liu is not old, many enterprises he once spoke for have turned to Sun. For example, the image on the package of the Coca Cola has changed from Liu to Sun and the Yili Group has also chosen Sun. We should not blame the enterprises. After all, what they pursue is profit and they need to consider the popularities and commercial values of their spokesmen. Old heroes will fade away and new idols will replace them inevitably. It is normal that advertisers favor new idols. For sportsmen, what the enterprises are more interested in is actually their values instead of their popularities. However, their values depend on their performances in sports competitions, and if they do not have good sports performances, their values will decrease sharply.

We should not let Sun turn into the second Liu. What we should do is to avoid Sun from becoming a quickly forgotten hero after being over exploited commercially and shining brightly for a short period. Some netizens are afraid that Sun has become a "diamond mine" for advertisers and his values will be sipped up sooner or later. Their worries are understandable. If Sun is a pure independent sportsman, it's his own business whether he will be over exploited or not. However, Sun's training expenditure comes from taxpayers and he should be responsible for them.

Hopefully, Sun will fix his position properly, not on the issue that how much his appearance fee should be, but whether he should be the spokesman for so many enterprises and attend so many commercial activities of various kinds or not. Of course, it is not an issue that Sun can determine alone. Behind him, there are his team and the Swimming Administrative Center under the General Administration of Sports of China. If we say that the bird with gold tied on its wings cannot fly high, then the fish over exploited by merchants will not be able to swim far.