ECSS Paris 2023: CP-SH07
With the rapid development of the global sports industry, the athlete's identity gradually changes from a mere participant to a bearer of commercial value, professional athletes face the dual challenges of capital discipline and self-empowerment. Since its establishment, the World Table Tennis Professional League (WTT) has made significant contributions to the commercialization of table tennis through a series of reforms and innovations. However, the developmental dilemma of professional athletes in the commercialization of sports has once again become a hotly debated issue as three table tennis world champions withdrew from the world rankings after the Paris Olympics and openly expressed their dissatisfaction with the WTT tournaments, which triggered strong concerns. Self-empowerment is not simply “individualism”, but the process of athletes fighting for the control of their career through strategic actions under the double pressure of commercial interests and athletic goals, which is essentially the process of fighting against the alienation of capital.Capital regulation is the process by which the power of capital regulates and restrains individuals through economic, institutional and cultural means. Based on this, this study takes the WTT event as an example to explore the situation of professional athletes in the game between self-empowerment and capital regulation and discipline, so as to help professional athletes safeguard their rights and interests and sustainable development in the commercialized environment. The study found that professional athletes face many dilemmas in WTT events. Firstly, there is the structural suppression of capital, the tournament organizers use “qualification” as a bargaining chip to require athletes to cooperate with commercial promotional activities. Secondly, there is a lack of discourse power among athletes. The capital and management of the tournament usually have a greater say, and athletes lack the opportunity to participate in the decision-making process, and are unable to grasp the right to participate on their own. Finally, there is the limitation of athletes' personal ability. Some professional athletes devote themselves to the training process resulting in the lack of commercial awareness and legal knowledge.In order to promote the sustainable development of professional athletes' subjectivity reconstruction, this paper proposes the following paths: firstly, athletes should strengthen their own capacity building and promote the compounding of their abilities. Second, promote multi-dimensional personal branding. Event organizers and sponsors should respect the autonomy of athletes and establish a fairer cooperation mechanism and transparent commercial benefit distribution mechanism. Finally, improve the system of protecting athletes' rights and interests. Athletes' associations should be established to fight for the rights and interests of professional athletes so as to form bargaining power.
Read CV ZHANG WenzheECSS Paris 2023: CP-SH07