Intern journalist | Chen Qiongye
The Beijing Winter Olympics have stimulated enthusiasm for ice and snow tourism, and "300 million people on ice and snow" is becoming a reality.
In January this year, the China Tourism Research Institute released the "China Ice and Snow Tourism Consumption Big Data Report (2022)", showing that the number of ice and snow leisure tourists in the country increased from 170 million in the 2016-2017 ice and snow season to 254 million in the 2020-2021 ice and snow season, and it is expected that the number will reach 305 million in 2021-2022.
A number of favorable policies for the ice and snow industry have been introduced. The 13th Five-Year Plan for the Development of the Sports Industry, released in June 2016, pointed out that it is necessary to accelerate the development of the ice and snow sports industry and help improve the quality and competitiveness of China's ice and snow sports.
In November of the same year, in order to promote the prosperity and healthy development of ice and snow sports, the State General Administration of Sport, the Development and Reform Commission and other four departments jointly issued the "Ice and Snow Sports Development Plan (2016-2025)", proposing that by 2025, the total scale of the domestic ice and snow industry will reach one trillion yuan, requiring the number of ice and snow sports schools in primary and secondary schools across the country to reach 5,000 in 2025.
The "double reduction" policy that landed in July 2021 also stimulates ice and snow sports to a certain extent.
According to beijing youth daily, after the implementation of the "double reduction" policy, many schools in Beijing have successively carried out a series of activities of "ice and snow sports into the campus". The Skating Association and the China Dancers Association jointly compiled and distributed the "First Set of Figure Skating Radio Exercises in China", and nearly 50,000 students across the country learned this set of radio exercises, and more than 900 ice rink instructors participated in the demonstration and teaching.
Driven by strong demand and policies, more and more players and capital are pouring into the ice and snow track.
According to Tianyancha data, in 2015, Beijing successfully bid for the Winter Olympics, and ice and snow sports related enterprises began to grow rapidly from that year, and about 55% of related enterprises were established in the past 5 years. In 2021, more than 1,400 new ice and snow sports related enterprises will be added in China, an increase of 24% year-on-year.
According to the Mob Research Institute's "2020 China Ski Industry White Paper", from 2014 to 2019, the size of China's ski training market increased from 4.2 billion yuan to 6.91 billion yuan, an average annual growth rate of 10.47%. According to the "Research Report on the Development of China's Ice and Snow Industry" launched by International Data (Asia) Group and Huateng Ice and Snow Industry Organization, the total scale of China's ice and snow industry will reach 600 billion yuan in 2020.
According to incomplete statistics of interface education, between 2015 and 2021, companies providing ice and snow training business have a total of 27 financings, of which two financings of more than 100 million yuan are from SNOW51 and Xueleshan respectively.
Financing of companies with ice and snow training businesses for the period 2015-2021. Draft: Chen Qiongye
In June 2021, Wanyu Fangfei, an ice sports training and aesthetic education institution, announced the completion of a 10 million-level Series A financing, led by New Oriental (NYSE: EDU). According to Interface Education, online educational institution Spark Thinking has also begun to provide general education courses for young children in ice and snow sports.
But whether capital can sustain its enthusiasm for snow sports remains a question mark.
From the perspective of the number of financing in each year, the number of ice and snow industry financing and ice and snow training financing in 2016 and 2021 is significantly higher than that in other years, with 17 cases and 11 cases respectively. In other years, the corresponding number of financing is only 7 at most, and the heat in 2019 and 2020 has plummeted, with only 4 and 2 cases, respectively. Most of the financing rounds are concentrated in the angel round and the A round, and the number of companies that can obtain capital to continue to increase their optimism is very few.
2015-2021 domestic ice and snow industry investment and financing trends Chart: Chen Qiongye
Snow and ice training itself also faces many challenges.
According to the "2020 China Ski Industry White Paper", the penetration rate of the domestic ski industry is less than 1%, while the data of the United States and Japan is close to 10%; Switzerland and Austria are more than 30%, and skiing is still a niche sport in China, with a lot of room for development.
In addition, while the ice and snow industry is gradually developing, the site facilities have not kept up.
Sports, including skiing, have all been mismatched between the construction of venues and facilities and the increasing number of participants. According to the statistics of the State General Administration of Sports, as of the end of 2019, the national sports area was 2.917 billion square meters, of which the ice and snow sports venues were only 0.61 billion square meters, accounting for about 2% of the total sports area; of which ski venues accounted for 42% of the ice and snow sports venues and 58% of the skating venues.
Due to climatic reasons, ice and snow sports still have a certain regionality. According to the 2020 White Paper on China's Ski Industry, there are 715 ski resorts that are open for business in 2020. According to the distribution of provinces, Heilongjiang still ranks first in the country with 94, and Xinjiang Autonomous Region and Hebei Province tie for second with 65. In the 2020-21 snow season, the number of skiers ranked by province, and Hebei, Jilin and Beijing continued to rank in the top three.
"Although ice and snow sports are developing faster, they will not be as popular as football, basketball, cycling and other sports." According to The View quoted by Blue Whale Education, the current public awareness of skiing is still small, the safety awareness is insufficient, and some adolescent parents lack the correct understanding of this sport, believing that it is too dangerous, or very simple, do not need professional coach training.
In addition, the curriculum standards and grade certification system need to be established urgently, the above-mentioned industry insiders believe that the currently widely used international youth ice and snow training system and grade certification system, although complete and authoritative, but lack of adaptability to local conditions.
The lack of ice and snow sports coaches is also one of the current status quo. According to the "2019 China Ice and Snow Sports Industry Overview" of the Head Leopard Research Institute, the shortage of ice and snow sports coaches is about 20,000 people, and the contradiction between supply and demand of coaches is the main problem restricting the development of the industry.