25 yuan, 90 minutes, with a world champion teaching you one-on-one.
That’s the trial lesson being advertised at Zhang Jike’s Lin’an, Hangzhou training center. Do the math, and it comes to less than 17 yuan an hour. At the table tennis club downstairs in the same residential complex, a coach charges 280 yuan to feed balls. Private lessons with coaches who have professional-team backgrounds start at 200 yuan.
On the evening of October 15, Liu Dingshuo went live. He didn’t name anyone, but the comments did it for him. The former national team practice partner counted it out on his fingers: 200 to 280 yuan is the industry’s bare minimum for a coach to make a living. He’d spent more than a decade in professional table tennis and had never seen an hourly lesson rate in the double digits. His words were harsh, but the point was clear: if a Grand Slam champion drops the price to 17 yuan, how are the people opening clubs supposed to survive?
Liu Dingshuo has reason to be concerned. He left the national team in October 2024, spent years as Wang Chuqin’s practice partner, won the men’s singles title at the World Junior Championships, and finished runner-up in men’s singles at the 2021 National Games. Now his training center is about to open.
Zhang Jike replied the next day: You’re not good enough to be taken seriously, so I can’t be bothered with you. He added an even harsher jab: He was right there in Hangzhou and told Liu to come talk to him face-to-face—but Liu wouldn’t dare. Liu didn’t back down. In his livestream, he shot back: “You want to go head-to-head in person? Do I look scared to you?”
They’re both from Qingdao and came up through the Luneng system. One runs youth training and tournaments in Hangzhou; the other is preparing to open a table tennis club in Beijing.
But 25 yuan isn’t the regular price. I checked the training center’s fee schedule. A standard month of long-term training costs 4,980 yuan; specialized training for talented students costs 9,980. Those are the real prices.
Students who place in the top eight at provincial championships pay 4,400 yuan a month; those who place in the national top six pay just 980. The better you perform, the less tuition you pay. At the end of the day, that 25 yuan buys you little more than a chance to step inside and take a look.
And there’s a whole system behind that ticket. In late September, the inaugural Zhang Jike Cup kicked off in Xinchang, with 350,000 yuan in prize money and 180,000 going to the champion alone. Trial lessons bring people in, tiered pricing sorts them into groups, tournaments generate exposure, and livestreams bring in revenue. Once all four parts are in motion, he controls both the sources and the destinations of the money.
My take: this isn’t a price war. It’s a top-tier personal brand bringing the “subsidize to acquire traffic” playbook into traditional sports training. The crypto world has been running this script for five years: airdrops to attract users, tiered perks for token holders, events to drive engagement, and KOLs promoting trades. Not one step has changed. Zhang Jike has simply swapped students for customers, and tokens for lesson packages. Different names, same mechanics.
What I’m not sure about is how much Liu Dingshuo’s club will ultimately charge, or whether it will even open. As of now, there’s been no word.
$CHZ $DOGE $BTC #张继科 #刘丁硕 #乒乓球 #粉丝经济 #Binance Square
That’s the trial lesson being advertised at Zhang Jike’s Lin’an, Hangzhou training center. Do the math, and it comes to less than 17 yuan an hour. At the table tennis club downstairs in the same residential complex, a coach charges 280 yuan to feed balls. Private lessons with coaches who have professional-team backgrounds start at 200 yuan.
On the evening of October 15, Liu Dingshuo went live. He didn’t name anyone, but the comments did it for him. The former national team practice partner counted it out on his fingers: 200 to 280 yuan is the industry’s bare minimum for a coach to make a living. He’d spent more than a decade in professional table tennis and had never seen an hourly lesson rate in the double digits. His words were harsh, but the point was clear: if a Grand Slam champion drops the price to 17 yuan, how are the people opening clubs supposed to survive?
Liu Dingshuo has reason to be concerned. He left the national team in October 2024, spent years as Wang Chuqin’s practice partner, won the men’s singles title at the World Junior Championships, and finished runner-up in men’s singles at the 2021 National Games. Now his training center is about to open.
Zhang Jike replied the next day: You’re not good enough to be taken seriously, so I can’t be bothered with you. He added an even harsher jab: He was right there in Hangzhou and told Liu to come talk to him face-to-face—but Liu wouldn’t dare. Liu didn’t back down. In his livestream, he shot back: “You want to go head-to-head in person? Do I look scared to you?”
They’re both from Qingdao and came up through the Luneng system. One runs youth training and tournaments in Hangzhou; the other is preparing to open a table tennis club in Beijing.
But 25 yuan isn’t the regular price. I checked the training center’s fee schedule. A standard month of long-term training costs 4,980 yuan; specialized training for talented students costs 9,980. Those are the real prices.
Students who place in the top eight at provincial championships pay 4,400 yuan a month; those who place in the national top six pay just 980. The better you perform, the less tuition you pay. At the end of the day, that 25 yuan buys you little more than a chance to step inside and take a look.
And there’s a whole system behind that ticket. In late September, the inaugural Zhang Jike Cup kicked off in Xinchang, with 350,000 yuan in prize money and 180,000 going to the champion alone. Trial lessons bring people in, tiered pricing sorts them into groups, tournaments generate exposure, and livestreams bring in revenue. Once all four parts are in motion, he controls both the sources and the destinations of the money.
My take: this isn’t a price war. It’s a top-tier personal brand bringing the “subsidize to acquire traffic” playbook into traditional sports training. The crypto world has been running this script for five years: airdrops to attract users, tiered perks for token holders, events to drive engagement, and KOLs promoting trades. Not one step has changed. Zhang Jike has simply swapped students for customers, and tokens for lesson packages. Different names, same mechanics.
What I’m not sure about is how much Liu Dingshuo’s club will ultimately charge, or whether it will even open. As of now, there’s been no word.
$CHZ $DOGE $BTC #张继科 #刘丁硕 #乒乓球 #粉丝经济 #Binance Square