China League side Sichuan Annapurna FC looks for new investors

Newly promoted 2019 China League (China League One) side, Sichuan Annapurna FC made an official announcement on January 6 looking for investment or the sale of the entire stakes in the club. 

The official announcement says that since 2016 when the club was established, the owner of the club has invested over CNY200m in the club over the past three seasons. Now, because the investor is being affected by the microeconomic environment, the club is facing a lack of financial support for the upcoming new season. As a result, to enable the club to prepare well for the new season, the club is publicly looking for organizations or individuals in and outside Sichuan Province, to invest in the club or to purchase the club as a whole. 

Sichuan Annapurna FC was the only professional Sichuan football team playing in the Chinese Football Association Division Two League. In the 2017 season, they had a wonderful season ( 27 wins and 4 ties) and were promoted to China League. 

The club was founded in 2016 by its owners HE Yapian and FAN Xiaoyan.

After winning promotion to the 2019 China League, at a press conference in November 2018, Sichuan Annapurna FC President He Yaping said to the media that their aim was to get promoted to the Chinese Super League before the 2021 season and ideally if everything went well, they hoped to win promotion in 2019. However, he said they they could not support this goal by themselves, because they would need to invest CNY800m to CNY1.2bn each year to realize their goal of playing in the CSL. 

They announced at the press conference that their plan was to raise CNY100m to CNY200m from title sponsorship, CNY50m to CNY100m from merchandise, investment totalling between CNY200m to CNY300m from other companies and that stakeholders would look for further investments. Back in November they were in talks with a few companies but had not had any confirmed results. They hoped to secure partnerships with companies by the middle of December, 2018. 

Therefore, this new announcement made on Sunday January 6 is another effort by the club to look for investment. 

Reference: Sichuan Annapurna FC Weibo

Proofread by Raymond Fitzpatrick