Throughout the 1990s, the Chinese Football Association were demanding more professionalism from their football teams and while many were semi-professional, Shanghai would be one of the first when they gathered sponsorship from Yu Zhifei and the local company named Shenhua on 10 December 1993, founding Shanghai Shenhua [REF].
In 2007, the owner of inner-city rival of Shanghai United, Zhu Jun and his company The9 Limited bought a majority share of Shanghai Shenhua and began to merge Shanghai United into Shanghai Shenhua.