The Beijing Winter Olympics will push China's ice and snow industry into the fast lane

Wu Te/Wen The Beijing Winter Olympics are about to be held, and the goal of "300 million people participating in ice and snow" has been achieved.

In August 2019, the General Office of the State Council issued the "Outline for the Construction of a Sports Powerhouse", proposing to promote the strategy of "expanding the south to the west and expanding to the east" of ice and snow sports, and establishing the development goal of "300 million people participating in ice and snow sports".

On the eve of the Beijing Winter Olympics, the State General Administration of Sport officially released the Statistical Survey Report on "Driving 300 Million People to Participate in Ice and Snow Sports". The report shows that since Beijing successfully bid for the Winter Olympics in 2015, the number of residents across the country who have participated in ice and snow sports has reached 346 million, and the participation rate of ice and snow sports is 24.56%. More than two years later, the development goal of "300 million people participating in ice and snow sports" has been achieved.

The three major "dividends" boost the development of the mainland ice and snow industry

For the mainland ice and snow industry, "300 million people" is not only a figure showing the popularity of ice and snow sports, but also a landmark symbol of industrial development. Looking at the rapid development of the mainland ice and snow industry in recent years, the three major "dividends" are indispensable.

The first is the "Winter Olympics Dividend". Undoubtedly, Beijing's successful bid for the Winter Olympics has played a direct role in stimulating the development of the mainland's ice and snow industry. Since Beijing successfully bid for the Winter Olympics in 2015, the state has promulgated policies such as the "China Ice and Snow Sports Development Plan (2016-2025)", "China's Ice and Snow Venue Facilities Construction Plan (2016-2022)", "Opinions on Vigorously Developing Ice and Snow Sports with the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics as an Opportunity", which has given great policy support to the development of the ice and snow industry. The preparations for the Beijing Winter Olympics have also continued to ferment in various media, arousing heated attention, and objectively creating a good public opinion environment for the development of ice and snow sports. Ice and snow sports consumers, social organizations and related industry enterprises actively participate in the feast of the Beijing Winter Olympics, and jointly form a good trend of common ice and snow industry development in all walks of life. Industry research has also found that foreign experience shows that hosting the Winter Olympics is the best period for popularizing national ice and snow sports. For example, the United States took the Lake Placid Winter Olympics as an opportunity to vigorously promote skiing, and the number of skiers in the United States soared from 5.3 million to 50.3 million in the following 20 years, with an average annual compound growth rate of 28%.

The second is the "consumption upgrade dividend". In addition to the direct stimulation of the Beijing Winter Olympics, the development of the ice and snow industry is more deeply rooted in the fertile soil of the mainland's economic development. With the increasing status of domestic consumption in the economic development of the mainland, the wave of consumption upgrading has also pushed the big ship of ice and snow industry to a broader space for development. In 2021, the average GDP of Chinese will exceed US$12,000, and sports, tourism, and cultural consumption will become important upgrading directions, and the ice and snow industry will benefit greatly. According to the "China Ice and Snow Tourism Development Report (2022)", the number of ice and snow leisure tourists in the 2020-2021 ice and snow season will reach 254 million, and it is expected that the 2021-2022 ice and snow season will reach 305 million person-times, and the goal of "300 million people participating in ice and snow sports" will also be achieved. This is the second major positive to promote the development of the mainland ice and snow industry.

The third is the "sports power dividend". The proposal of the sports power strategy has provided another impetus for the development of the ice and snow industry in the mainland. In recent years, the mainland has accelerated the construction of a sports power, and the integration of sports and education, sports and medicine, sports and sports, sports and tourism has been continuously promoted, which has also injected strong impetus into the development of the ice and snow industry. The ice and snow industry has the characteristics of wide coverage, huge industrial chain and strong relevance, which occupies an important position in the overall pattern of the mainland sports industry and will become an important beneficiary area of the sports power strategy.

The "three ends" are working together, and the mainland ice and snow industry is quickly stepping up the ladder

Boosted by the three "dividends", the mainland ice and snow industry has seized the opportunity to achieve rapid development, and initially formed an industrial pattern with fitness and leisure as the mainstay, competition performances, venue services, sports training, equipment manufacturing and sports tourism as the coordinated development. It is mainly reflected in three aspects: investment, product and consumption.

Investment side: The investment momentum of the mainland ice and snow industry is strong. In addition to investment in ice and snow sports venues such as ice skating rinks and ski resorts, the investment in the ice and snow industry has also expanded to highways, high-speed railways, characteristic towns and other fields, involving a wider range of infrastructure construction and other fields. Taking Zhangjiakou, an important investment town in the ice and snow industry in recent years, as an example, in 2018, Zhangjiakou released 20 key industrial investment projects with a total investment of 123.88 billion yuan, and has introduced 109 ice and snow industry projects, covering ice and snow equipment research and development and manufacturing, talent education and training, cultural tourism and other fields, and built 9 large ski resorts and 177 high, medium and primary ski slopes. In addition, in terms of investment in ice and snow tourism, according to incomplete statistics, the investment in ice and snow tourism in the mainland from 2018 to 2019 reached 610 billion yuan. The influx of a large number of investments has provided financial support for the rapid development of the ice and snow industry and laid a solid foundation for subsequent operations.

Product side: the mainland ice and snow industry has achieved "double quality". On the one hand, the scale of the ice and snow industry continues to grow, and a new "trillion industry" will be formed. According to the research report, the market size of the mainland ice and snow industry has exceeded 500 billion yuan in 2019, and 578.8 billion yuan in 2021, and the total scale is expected to exceed 1 trillion yuan in 2025. In addition, in the field of ice and snow tourism, according to the United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO), China's ice and snow tourism will drive the output value of related industries by 2.92 trillion yuan in the ice and snow season from 2021 to 2022. On the other hand, the mainland's ice and snow industry products are constantly enriched and the formats are constantly upgraded. Various ice and snow events have been held, covering people of different levels and levels; ski resorts have become the new normal with diversified formats and all-season operations to meet the needs of mountain outdoors, family leisure, wilderness camping and other needs; ice and snow tourism is in full swing, integrating sports, leisure, parent-child, ecology, folklore and other elements; the trend of localization, high-end and branding of ice and snow equipment has emerged. The product strength of the mainland ice and snow industry has been effectively improved.

Consumption: The consumption of the mainland ice and snow industry has become a new hot spot. The mainland is becoming the world's main ice and snow consumption market, and has a large future development space, of which ice and snow tourism, entertainment and leisure have become the focus of consumption. Statistics show that the participation rate of ice and snow sports among residents aged 18 and above in the mainland has reached 26.95%, 38.43% of the participants carry out ice and snow sports 1-2 times a year, more than 90% of the ice and snow sports participants spontaneously participate in ice and snow sports, and 70.35% of the participants take "entertainment and leisure" as the main purpose of participating in ice and snow sports. Mainland skiers are among the best in the world, and based on the huge number of skiers and market size, China has been recognized as one of the world's major ski markets.

Therefore, from the performance of the investment side, product side and consumption side, since Beijing successfully bid for the Winter Olympics in 2015, the mainland ice and snow industry is on the "fast track". The in-depth investigation of the motives behind it and the grasp of its future development trajectory are inseparable from the impact of the triple "dividend" of the winter Olympics heritage, the release of consumption upgrading potential, and the construction of a sports power. Of course, the mainland ice and snow industry is still in a period of rapid development and climbing, objectively there are still problems such as the quality and quantity gap of product content supply, the breadth and depth of ice and snow consumption, etc., and there is still a big gap with mature countries in the ice and snow industry, and it is affected by the new crown epidemic at present. However, with the continuous release of the above-mentioned triple "dividends", the mainland ice and snow industry relies on these deep foundations, and its future development is worth looking forward to.

(The author is assistant dean of sports business school of Beijing Sport University)

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