It was past nine o 'clock in the evening in London.
The salon was at its busiest, and Bill Gates had been a little absent-minded.
Although he did not have any contact with Li Mu in the second half of the salon, his attention was inevitably focused on Li Mu.
In the salon of this entrepreneur gathering, Li Mu became the person with the most attention. The Internet industry itself was a rising industry, and Li Mu occupied a lot of resources in this rising industry. Therefore, almost every businessman present was trying to find some inspiration from the conversation with Li Mu.
Seeing others easily make money was already a headache for these capitalists. If there was a chance to get involved, they would never hesitate.
After Davidson dealt with the McMillan family's affairs, he came to the salon. He held a glass of champagne and sat next to Li Mu. He apologized to Li Mu for the McMillan family's affairs and promised Li Mu that he would not let any member of the McMillan family appear in front of Li Mu in the future while Li Mu was still in England.
Li Mu nodded and suddenly asked him, "Davidson, are you involved in the sports industry?"
Davidson said, "We have a few golf courses in England, and then we run some golf-related sports activities. Nothing else."
Li Mu asked him, "The English Premier League is so influential. Why haven't you done anything?"
As for the clubs … Although the English Premier League is very popular, the returns from investing in the clubs are not high at this stage. The capital behind the English clubs is basically divided into two categories. One is the long-term survival of the clubs, and the other is the external capital that does not rely on the clubs to make money. For example, Roman Abramovich, who just bought Chelsea, was prepared to not be profitable for the next ten years when he invested in Chelsea. Even after fifteen years, he may not be able to bear his own profits and losses. During these ten years, he still needs to continue to invest every year. No one will do such a business unless they like football. "
Li Mu asked him, "What if I also want to buy a Premier League club?"
Davidson was stunned and then asked, "Mr Lee really wants to buy a club?"
Li Mu nodded. "Buy one for fun, just like Abu."
Davidson smiled and said, "Actually, the financial situation of the major clubs at this stage is not very optimistic, so if the price is right, most of the clubs will be willing to sell. However, to be honest, I advise you not to rush into this pit. A football club is a bottomless pit of funds."
Li Mu smiled and said, "If Abu can afford to play, I believe I can as well."
Setting up a football club was an idea that Li Mu suddenly came up with that night.
That silly dog George McMillan was talking nonsense in front of him, but one sentence touched Li Mu's heart.
The poor strength of Hua Xia's football had indeed made FIFA and the clubs of the five major leagues hate it for not meeting their expectations.
FIFA also hoped that Hua Xia, the most populous country, could regularly play in the World Cup. Last year's World Cup in South Korea and Japan, Hua Xia's historic appearance made people see the huge market for football in Hua Xia. However, FIFA would not have thought that Hua Xia would never be able to return to the World Cup finals in the next decade or so.
It was the same for the clubs of the five major leagues.
The clubs of the five major leagues all hoped to bring in players from Hua Xia. This was mainly to open up the Hua Xia market. Yao Ming, who had just joined the NBA last year, had already begun to open up a bigger market space for the Rockets and even the entire NBA in Hua Xia. Everyone in the football field was also looking forward to such a day.
However, the embarrassing thing was that the overall level of the Hua Xia players was indeed weak. There were pitifully few players who could be selected by the five major leagues, and most of them found it difficult to play well after arriving in the five major leagues.
George McMillan said that Manchester United had confirmed that they would bring in a player from Hua Xia with the surname Dong. That should be Dong Fangzhuo. He should be the only Hua Xia player in the history of Hua Xia football to have joined Manchester United. However, his experience at Manchester United was not so pleasant and lucky. Instead, it was a process of rapid decline. This was not only because of his personal problems, but also because of the environment of the English Premier League and the degree of importance the club attached to him.
Some of the capable and ambitious Hua Xia players had to face many problems after joining the clubs of the five major leagues, including language problems, living habits problems, being unable to keep up with the pace of training, being ostracized by the players, and not being trusted enough by the club.
In fact, an eighteen or nineteen-year-old Hua Xia young man, even if he had been in school, had just graduated from high school. His English level was definitely not up to the point where he could live and communicate overseas on a daily basis. Moreover, an eighteen or nineteen-year-old football player had to sacrifice most of his study time to practice. If such a person came to the English Premier League, the language barrier alone would make him isolated. It was much more difficult for him to really adapt and continue to grow in the club than it was for other players.
If there was a club of the five major leagues operated by Hua Xia Capital, then regardless of whether the club could make money or not, it could first become a bridgehead for a Hua Xia football player to go overseas to receive a higher level of training.
If Li Mu bought Chelsea, he would first set aside a portion of the club's youth training camp, trial camp, and even the second and first teams for Hua Xia football players. Secondly, he would set up a professional translation team in Chelsea to ensure that after the Hua Xia players came here, their own development would not be delayed in training and life because of language problems.
In this way, in the club he invested in, there would not be a situation where Hua Xia athletes could only sit on the bench after signing a contract with the five major leagues, or be directly assigned to play in small leagues in other countries. As long as Hua Xia football players had the ability and were willing to go further in football, his own club could give them enough opportunities to grow.
In the eyes of Li Mu, the atmosphere and environment of the domestic league were distorted and not healthy enough. It was basically hopeless to really cultivate excellent football talents by relying solely on the domestic league. Otherwise, it would not have been possible for Hua Xia to not be able to play in the World Cup after more than a decade.
Therefore, if he could really build an overseas stage for talented Hua Xia football players, he might be able to send a few first-class players to Hua Xia football in the future.
After all, Makino Technology started in China and had received great favors from the people of Hua Xia. It was also his unshirkable responsibility to be able to give more returns to the people of China in many areas.
Davidson understood Li Mu's intentions at this moment. He now had so many profitable business lines that there was no need to rely on acquiring football clubs to make money. On the contrary, acquiring football clubs might be more of a pastime for Li Mu. More importantly, owning a top football club could bring a lot of better opportunities to Hua Xia football players.
Therefore, Davidson said to Li Mu, "Mr. Li, I will help you understand and look for suitable clubs in the next few days. If there is a suitable club, I will ask someone to sort out and send it to you as detailed as possible."
Li Mu nodded and said with a smile, "Thank you so much."
…
Ten o 'clock in the evening in London.
Microsoft officially began its own performance.
The promotional advertisements for the Windows-Live software package began to be released on many Internet platforms in Europe and the United States.
The official launch of Windows-Live included MSN, online gaming platform, MSN official website, and MSN blog, which almost completely overlapped with the YY ecosystem of Makino Technology.
However, Microsoft's advertising slogan was still full of gimmicks. Their advertising slogan for Windows-Live was: Make-your-Inter-life-better, giving you a better Internet life.
In this advertisement, Microsoft not only boasted about its own product ecosystem, but also focused on MSN's blog, claiming that it had redefined the blog. This time, the blog would bring a subversive experience to netizens around the world.
But just as this advertisement was launched, Makino Technology used YY to push a piece of news to users around the world. The title of this news was: "A new platform, Twitter, is about to be launched. Here is the world you want."
At this stage, no one could compete with YY in terms of advertising on the Internet.
More than 90% of online users opened and browsed this news. What shocked them was that in this news, there was an album with a large number of photos of top singers and stars. These singers were holding a piece of handwritten white paper in the photo, and on it was written a striking sentence: I will wait for you on Twitter!
There had never been a product that could gather such a large number of top stars to endorse or promote it. More importantly, these stars were not only promoting Twitter, but they would also become the first batch of star users to stay on Twitter. This made users full of expectations for Twitter, a new product that would be launched in an hour.
On the other hand, most of the users chose to ignore Windows-Live, and the reason was simple: there was nothing in Windows-Live that caught their attention. Every product and experience in this ecosystem could be obtained in YY. Their loyalty to YY was so high that it far exceeded Microsoft's expectations.
In addition, Makino Technology's products and updates had never disappointed users, so users were naturally looking forward to Twitter. At this time, almost no one paid attention to Microsoft's Windows-Live, and no one paid attention to Microsoft's so-called redefined blog.
Microsoft's marketing team kept track of the results of each advertisement. They sadly found that less than 10% of the clicks were opened, and less than 5% of the clicks were redirected to Microsoft's official download link. Among this 5%, only 20% of the clicks were actually downloaded.
This means that Microsoft spent 100,000 USD to advertise Windows-Live on a platform, and only 100,000 clicks resulted in 100,000 clicks. Of these 100,000 clicks, only 5,000 clicks were redirected to Microsoft's official download link. In the end, only 1,000 of these 5,000 clicks were redirected to Microsoft's official download link.
This set of data was simply rubbish to the extreme.
As time passed, Microsoft's conversion rate became worse as it got closer to Twitter's launch.
At 10: 30, at the salon, when Bill Gates' assistant whispered a few words in his ear, his expression immediately became ugly. Without saying anything, he got up and left the salon.
Li Mu looked at Bill Gates's back from the corner of his eyes. He could see the panic in Bill Gates's back.
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