The six-year-old Beijing Winter Olympics opened on February 4, 2022. The economic sector related to the Winter Olympics has risen against the trend as early as a few months ago, and the Nandu reporter combed and found that it includes both ice and snow industries directly related to the Winter Olympics, such as ice and snow tourism, ice and snow sports, as well as new consumer industries such as ice and snow clothing and souvenirs. In addition, under the theme of "Winter Olympics of Science and Technology" and "Winter Olympics of Wisdom", technologies and applications such as digital yuan, artificial intelligence, 5G, and cloud computing have also ushered in new opportunities for development.
346 million people participate in snow sports
With the Approaching Winter Olympics, a wave of ice and snow has been set off in China, and consumer industries such as ice and snow tourism, ice and snow souvenirs, and ice and snow clothing have heated up.
According to the Statistical Survey Report on "Driving 300 Million People to Participate in Ice and Snow Sports" commissioned by the State General Administration of Sport to the National Bureau of Statistics, from the successful bid for the Winter Olympic Games to October 2021, the number of residents in the country who have participated in ice and snow sports is 346 million, and the participation rate of ice and snow sports is 24.56%, achieving the goal of driving 300 million people to participate in ice and snow sports.
From the perspective of policy, from 2016 to 2020, the national and local governments issued the "Ice and Snow Sports Development Plan (2016-2025)", "Mass Winter Sports Promotion and Popularization Plan (2016-2020)", "National Ice and Snow Venue Facilities Construction Plan (2016-2022)", "National Winter Sports Competition Management Measures (Trial)" and many other policies to promote the development of the ice and snow industry.
From the perspective of investment, Orange IT data shows that from 2015 to 2022, a total of 38 investments in the field of "ice and snow projects" have been completed. Among them, 2016 and 2021 are the peak periods of investment, with 10 and 9 investments completed in these two years respectively.
The Tianfeng Securities report shows that after the domestic epidemic has been effectively controlled, the mainland ice and snow industry has begun to recover, and on the whole, the prosperity of the mainland ice and snow industry has not decreased. The 2022 Winter Olympics and other multiple favorable circumstances are expected to usher in a new round of development in the mainland ice and snow industry. Snow tourism will become the core engine of winter tourism and the ice and snow economy on the mainland. According to the latest achievements of the China Tourism Research Institute, it is expected that the number of mainland ice and snow tourists will reach 340 million in the ice and snow season from 2021 to 2022, and the revenue will reach 670 billion yuan.
The consumption of sports virtual products is hot
In 2021, the "empty field" of the Tokyo Olympic Games under the epidemic situation was held, and the International Olympic Committee launched the NFT version of the Olympic badge, allowing the Olympic collection to enter the digital age. During the Winter Olympics, due to the combination of digital collections and traditional sports consumption, virtual products have also been included in the scope of sports consumption, and NFTs have shown great potential. Earlier, Zhang Yimou, the general director of the opening ceremony, said in an interview with CCTV News that "it is necessary to use scientific and technological content to make the opening ceremony less people but not empty, ethereal and romantic."
As a partner of the Beijing Winter Olympics, Yili entered the launch of the "Champion Shine 2022" digital collection, including 7 special models and 1 hidden model. The special edition is limited to 2022 copies worldwide, and the hidden edition is limited to only 17 copies worldwide, which is a scarce collection. It is understood that the "Champion Shine 2022" digital collection was instantly snatched up as soon as it was launched, and the sound volume of 70 million reads in 4 hours was obtained on Weibo.
Sports brands such as Li Ning and ANTA have also released digital products. In January this year, ANTA and Tmall Super Brand Day created an interactive digital space "ANTA Ice and Snow Spirit Realm", paying tribute to Mr. Qian Xuesen's Chinese interpretation of the term virtual reality. ANTA's "2022 Special Commemorative Edition High-Energy Ice and Snow Digital Collection" has also been released.
(Winter Olympics Digital Collection)
Consulting giant Deloitte predicts that sports-related NFT transactions will exceed $2 billion in 2022, with 5 million sports fans buying and using it.
It is understood that NFT - non-homogeneous token (Non-Fungible Token) is a kind of encrypted digital proof of rights and interests that cannot be copied, tampered with and split on blockchain technology, which maps physical assets such as physical collections and virtual assets such as images, music, and game props.
Fang Guangzhao, an analyst at Open Source Securities, believes that the Spring Festival Gala and the Winter Olympics, which are of national concern, are expected to further popularize the concept of virtual people and technologies such as holographic and AR to the public, and promote the commercialization space of virtual people in various application scenarios. Fang Guangzhao suggested that the active layout of the meta-universe of virtual people, NFTs, open world game tracks with faster commercial landing, considering that it has entered the performance forecast period of A-shares, it is necessary to comprehensively consider the performance growth rate, choose a higher margin of safety for valuation, and have advantages in IP creation and operation, and the meta-universe related business promotion is more active and is expected to land faster to the performance target.
The digital yuan application covers more than 50,000 scenarios of the Winter Olympics
According to the data released by the central bank, by the end of 2021, the number of digital yuan pilot scenarios has exceeded 8.0851 million, compared with the data on June 30 of that year, and the number of scenes has increased by 6 times in half a year. The Beijing Winter Olympics, which opened on February 4, are also an important scene for the digital yuan pilot.
The digital yuan is a legal tender in digital form issued by the People's Bank of China, and the current pilot area presents a "10+1" pattern, which is piloted for Shenzhen, Suzhou, Xiong'an, Chengdu, Shanghai, Changsha, Hainan, Qingdao, Dalian, Xi'an and Beijing Winter Olympics scenarios.
On February 1 Chinese Minzu Bank released the news that the Shijiazhuang Central Branch of the People's Bank of China set up a leading group and set up a command center, and formed a "three horizontal and one vertical" integrated joint force with the Operation and Management Department of the People's Bank of China, the relevant departments of the Hebei Provincial Government, various financial institutions, and the Zhangjiakou City Central Branch of the People's Bank of China, and organized and coordinated the construction of the payment service environment for the Winter Olympic Games.
It is reported that the 6 participating banking institutions actively distribute various forms of digital RMB red envelopes and carry out activities such as the reduction of digital RMB consumption, which has driven the continuous growth of consumption scenarios in the pilot areas of the Winter Olympic Games. At present, the application of digital yuan has covered more than 50,000 scenes such as venues, hotels, restaurants, merchants, postal services, transportation, and medical care in the Zhangjiakou area of the Winter Olympics, and opened more than 7 million public and private wallets.
In addition, the mobile payment application market in Zhangjiakou of the Winter Olympics has been expanding, and various mainstream mobile payment methods have fully covered various life scenarios such as "food, housing, travel, travel, entertainment, and shopping". Especially in the transportation field related to the Winter Olympic Games, mobile payment has covered various scenarios such as taxi, bus, high-speed rail station, airport, bus station, and high-speed toll collection.
A staff member at the scene of the Winter Olympics told Nandu Reporter that the use of digital yuan payment in the competition area is not much different from Alipay and WeChat payment, but it is relatively safer. The biggest convenience is that "sometimes the venue network maintenance, there is no signal, the network can also use the digital yuan as usual."
The "Winter Olympics on the Cloud" reduce costs and enrich the experience
A month before the opening of the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, the Beijing Winter Olympics have completed the migration of core systems to the cloud. This is the first time in the history of the Olympic Games that cloud computing has replaced traditional IT, carrying the organization and operation of the Olympic Games.
In the past, each Olympics required the construction of traditional IT machine rooms repeatedly and demolished after a brief use of the games. After moving to the cloud, the cost of IT infrastructure has dropped significantly, and the application development and deployment process has been shortened.
Going to the clouds is one of the important measures of the Green Winter Olympics. Compared with the traditional machine room, the Winter Olympic Cloud Data Center in Zhangbei achieves 100% mechanical refrigeration through natural air cooling, immersion liquid cooling, intelligent temperature regulation and other technologies, reducing thermal energy consumption to more than 70%.
In addition to energy conservation and environmental protection, the "comprehensive cloud" of the Beijing Winter Olympics has also brought a better viewing experience, according to reports, on the basis of the cloud, the application of visual intelligence, algorithms, AR and other technologies in the arena allows the audience to be immersed in the scene and get a better viewing experience. For example, through multi-angle intelligent synthesis technology, multi-array video is combined into a panoramic dynamic picture, which brings more dimensions of viewing perspectives for races such as speed skating and curling.
In addition, according to the introduction of the winter Olympics core system of "full cloud" also to sports media workers to bring more production space. Production crews around the world have broken through the limitations of on-site production and can download content in the cloud.
"The widespread use of cloud technology in Olympic sports scenarios simplifies the development, integration and deployment process of olympic business systems, shortens time, reduces costs and enriches the user experience," said Yu Hong, director of the Technology Department of the Beijing Winter Olympics Organizing Committee.
AI creates a curling "virtual and real combination" viewing experience
Restricted by the epidemic prevention and control, online viewing has become the main form for many viewers to watch the Winter Olympic Games. However, online viewing does not mean a single experience, under the concept of "Science and Technology Winter Olympics", the application of intelligent technologies such as AI is rapidly breaking the boundary between the digital world and the real world.
During the Curling Competition of the Winter Olympic Games, SenseTime joined hands with China Mobile Migu, the official broadcaster of the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, to present the trajectory curve of curling during the competition in the form of live broadcast and analysis commentary. For the general audience, this technology can help better understand the rules of curling and the current competition situation, while for professional spectators and commentators, it can analyze the current state of athletes and throwing techniques and tactics.
At that time, online viewers can select the "SenseTime AI Watch" video stream through the "Migu Video" APP to view the current game match information, the virtual screen of the base camp, and the curling trajectory curve in motion.
According to reports, this innovative application of "combination of virtual and real" is based on visual AI perception, deep learning, three-dimensional modeling and spatial positioning and other technologies, overcoming the problem of accurately capturing the motion trajectory of smaller objects based on long visual distance in a super space environment, and realizing the detection tracking and trajectory capture of motion curling through the digital mapping of real scenes.
(Curling trajectory live interface under AI support)
The application of artificial intelligence technology at the Beijing Winter Olympics also includes a digital human "sign language anchor", which can not only report the news, but also conduct live broadcast of the sign language of the event, which will bring good news to the hearing impaired.
AI anchors are sign language translation engines and natural action engines driven by technologies such as speech recognition and natural speech understanding, with the ability of sign language expression and sign language presentation effects, and can provide professional and accurate sign language interpretation.
(AI Sign Language Anchor)
It is reported that the first AI sign language anchor has "real people"-like skin, hair, eyes, the image is kind and natural, created by CCTV News and Baidu Intelligent Cloud, she will use AI wisdom to provide sign language services for hearing impaired users.
AI sign language anchors are provided by Baidu Intelligent Yunxiling Digital Human Platform to provide technical support and services. The platform-level product provides one-stop virtual hosts, virtual employees, virtual idols, brand spokespersons and other industries for radio and television, interactive entertainment, finance, government affairs, operators, retail and other industries. At present, a series of digital people have been created, such as CCTV virtual host Xiao C, space agency Mars rover digital person Zhu Rong, financial management commissioner Xiaopu and so on.
5G Technology Helps "Smart Winter Olympics"
In addition, during the Beijing Winter Olympics, 5G-related industries also ushered in development opportunities. At the end of January, the world's first 5G+8K full-service OB truck has entered the Beijing Winter Olympics, which will bring 5G+8K ultra-high-definition video experience to global audiences during the Winter Olympics, and comprehensively demonstrate the capabilities and levels of China's ultra-high-definition video industry.
Compared with ordinary high-definition video, 8K pixels are higher and the picture is clearer, but the amount of transmitted information is large and cannot be transmitted through 4G, and 5G+8K broadcasting is more suitable for collective viewing of cultural and sports activities such as large-screen displays, sports events, and concerts.
In terms of 5G coverage, according to Yu Hong, director of the Technical Department of the Beijing Winter Olympic Organizing Committee, 5G technology will be more widely used during the Beijing Winter Olympics, and the 5G network coverage within the fifth ring road and the sub-center of the city has been realized, the accurate coverage of typical application scenarios outside the fifth ring road, and all the Winter Olympic venues and connected venues have achieved 5G signal coverage, which has prepared the basic conditions for the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics. In terms of the construction of smart venues, 5G-based energy management, equipment detection and early warning, security management, traffic dispatch, etc. have been established to achieve controllable and visual control of venues.
In addition to facilitating the transmission of ultra-high-definition video, 5G coverage also provides infrastructure for applications such as food delivery robots to further reduce the pressure of epidemic prevention.
Zhang Jia, director of the Beijing Unicom Winter Olympic Office, introduced that Unicom provided venues with smart epidemic prevention, asset management, food delivery robots and other solutions, and the application of 5G created a comprehensive experience for events, athletes and media.
In order to achieve the dual goals of epidemic prevention and efficient operation, first of all, "Ice Cube" has realized 5G robot food delivery service in the closed-loop area, avoiding contact between personnel. Secondly, 5G provides convenience for media services, and the hybrid interview area realizes remote interviews through cloud broadcasting, which not only ensures the interaction between the news media and athletes, coaches and other managers in the closed loop, but also provides protection for epidemic prevention. In addition, the handheld "WozhiHu" smart epidemic prevention machine can only check the identity, health code and nucleic acid test with the ID card, and print the voucher immediately, which is convenient for the registrant to repeatedly enter and exit the venue within 24 hours.
Written by: Nandu reporter Ma Ningning Wang Chenchen
(Part of the content is integrated from Xinhua News Agency)