How is the sports consumption under the national fitness upgraded?

Image source @ Visual China

| analysys analysis

A few days ago, the General Office of the CPC Central Committee and the General Office of the State Council issued the "Opinions on Building a Higher Level of National Fitness Public Service System" (hereinafter referred to as the "Opinions"), which is regarded as another boost to the development of the national fitness cause.

Fitness for all is not a new issue. As early as 1995, the State Council promulgated and implemented the Outline of the National Fitness Program, and various relevant regulations and policies were issued successively in the following decades. As mentioned in the title, focusing on the keyword "higher level", the sports industry and sports consumption have begun a round of upgrading in recent years.

From the perspective of the existing sports ecology, the sports industry has gradually shown the characteristics of closed-loop online platforms and digitalized offline formats; from the perspective of consumers' sports consumption demand, it shows the characteristics of niche sports driving subdivision demand and digital consumption gradually upgrading.

Relevant policies have been issued one after another, and the sports industry has continued to upgrade

The relevant policies and opinions promulgated in recent years have shown the support and requirements for the upgrading of the sports industry.

The "Opinions" issued this time focus on building a higher level of national fitness public service system, and propose reform measures from many aspects such as creating a green and convenient new carrier of national fitness and building a multi-level and diversified event activity system. Among them, in terms of promoting the green and low-carbon transformation of fitness facilities, it is also mentioned to accelerate the use of new generation information technology such as 5G to improve venue management and event services.

In August 2021, the State Council issued the National Fitness Program (2021-2025). Analysys believes that compared with the previous industrial policies, the "Plan" released this time pays more attention to the implementation of the plan, which can be called the "new infrastructure" of China's sports industry, and drives the vigorous development of surrounding industries such as sports consumption, and finally achieves the new goal of 5 trillion yuan in China's sports industry.

In addition, in terms of the main tasks, it is mentioned to increase the supply of national fitness venues and facilities, digitally upgrade and transform more than 1,000 public sports venues; promote the high-quality development of the sports industry, promote digital transformation, encourage sports enterprises to "go to the cloud and use data to empower wisdom", and promote the collaborative transformation of the whole industry chain.

Up to now, many cities have begun to upgrade the national fitness public service system.

Taking Shanghai as an example, the General Office of the Shanghai Municipal People's Government has successively issued the Outline of the Construction of Shanghai World-Famous Sports Cities and the Opinions on Promoting the National Fitness Project and Strengthening the Construction of Sports Facilities in the City. Subsequently, the Shanghai Municipal Sports Bureau issued the "Opinions on Promoting the Construction of a New Sports Service Complex for Urban Sports Centers", proposing the development goal of achieving full coverage of urban sports centers in 16 districts of the city by 2025.

In February this year, six projects, including the Sanlinqiao Sports and Culture Park and the Xiangcuo Sports and Cultural Complex, were identified as pilot projects for the 2021 Urban Sports Center. In addition, since the second half of last year, some venues of the upgraded Xujiahui Sports Park and the newly built Huangpu Riverside Skateboarding Extreme Park and other sports venues have begun to operate.

Sports ecological upgrade: online platform closed loop, offline format digitalization

According to the 14th Five-Year Plan, the total scale of the mainland sports industry will reach 5 trillion yuan in 2025. According to the data disclosed in the "Healthy China 2030" Planning Outline, the number of people who regularly participate in physical exercise in the mainland will reach 435 million in 2020. The size of the market, the size of the population and the certain policy guidance, the sports industry will have the potential to become a rapid growth track.

Judging from the existing sports industry-related supply, the sports ecology is also undergoing a round of upgrading. With the development of various emerging technologies and the catalysis of the epidemic, the current development of the sports consumption industry not only relies on sports venues in the public service system, but also includes commercial sports venues, sports events and the retail of related goods, in addition to online platforms have also become an important part of its ecology.

On the one hand, online platforms that rely on content are gradually expanding to e-commerce, brands and even offline businesses, showing the characteristics of closed loops.

Previously, the content characteristics of these platforms were obvious. B station, vibrato, Xiaohongshu and other Internet platforms for sports stars, sports experts to provide content release and dissemination channels, keep, millet sports and other head sports fitness app for home sports, health monitoring to provide more possibilities, major events online live broadcast and information services have also become an important part of sports culture communication.

With the development of recent years, online platforms have also begun to expand e-commerce and even offline business, trying to follow the closed-loop business model. For example, Keep relies on its own IP to focus on the theme of fitness and at the same time develop online e-commerce, course plans and offline fitness business; Kuaishou enriches its own content ecology through the investment of copyrights of major sports events such as the Winter Olympics and the NBA, so as to attract brands and related circle users.

On the other hand, under the background of the expansion of Internet brands to offline, traditional formats have also begun to test new formats and new business models, enriching the sports experience through digital and intelligent facilities, and gradually increasing the offline experience dimension of the sports industry.

Previously, the emerging gyms that were mainly group classes and purchased on a per-time basis began to rise, and brands such as Leke and Super Orangutan under the banner of "Internet + Fitness" rose rapidly. Online sports platform Keep is also actively testing the waters, using Keepland as an offline extension of its online sports scene. At the beginning of this year, Keep announced that it would change from offline stores to cooperation with gyms in an attempt to expand its offline scale.

Although as of now, the "Internet + fitness" model of this new type of gym seems to have not yet run through, and the profit situation is worrying, the digital exploration and attempt of offline sports space in this new model has become a trend.

In addition, creating new formats with digital and intelligent means has also become the development direction of traditional commercial and sports formats.

For example, newly opened shopping malls such as Shanghai Qiantan Taikoo Li and Songjiang Impression City have set up sports facilities such as smart running tracks and professional skateboarding venues in public spaces. Decathlon and Silver Sports to create a one-stop sports theme sports Mall is under construction, which will create Decathlon's first sports park flagship store in the country, open to the public in the form of a sports park. Anta's first digital intelligent sports complex "928 ANTA Creative Space" opened in January, in addition to brand retail, it also set up ski resorts, climbing walls, basketball courts and other sports experience scenes.

Sports consumption upgrade: niche sports drive subdivision demand, and digital consumption is gradually upgraded

Since the Winter Olympics, ice and snow sports such as skiing and skating have once become hot spots for the public, and ice and snow sports have gradually moved from a niche to the public.

According to the statistical survey report of the National Bureau of Statistics, the number of participants in ice and snow sports nationwide reached 346 million, with 654 standard ice rinks and 803 indoor and outdoor ski resorts, a significant increase over 2015. According to the data of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, the number of ice and snow leisure tourism in the 2020-2021 snow season reached 230 million person-times, and the income of ice and snow leisure tourism exceeded 390 billion yuan.

In addition to ice and snow sports, niche sports such as fishing, boxing, boating, surfing, and outdoors have also begun to rise, attracting widespread attention on social platforms. Along with this, a series of consumer demands such as professional clothing, supporting equipment, and sports training related to sports have gradually increased the market recognition of products that are both professional, fashionable and even high-end.

In addition to the rise of niche sports to drive the demand for segmentation and specialized and high-end consumption, the upgrading of sports consumption is also reflected in the upgrading of digital consumption.

The first is that efficient and convenient online channels are increasingly becoming the main choice for consumers to buy clothing, footwear and other products.

Referring to the e-commerce channel data of head sports brands ANTA and Li Ning, ANTA's e-commerce business contributed 29% of revenue in 2021, and Li Ning's e-commerce channels in the Chinese market accounted for 29.1% of total revenue in the first half of 2021, and the proportion of both increased compared with the same period in 2020.

Secondly, digital intelligent fitness equipment has begun to be accepted by more people, and the use of sports health APP or content platform for daily health monitoring and exercise has also become a means to meet the diverse and subdivided sports needs.

Taking sports health APPS as an example, the TOP10 apps with active people in February 2022 include sports and fitness apps such as Keep and Gollum, as well as apps with smart devices such as Xiaomi Sports, Sports Health, and Huawei Wear for health monitoring. In addition, the number of square dance video community Jelly Beans, which mainly serves middle-aged and elderly customers, ranks third after Xiaomi Sports.

Judging from the chain data, the demand for niche segments also provided a higher growth in the number of app active people. In addition to the walking APP, there are "Zheng Duoyan fitness video", outdoor lifestyle platform "MAX outdoor", cycling content interactive platform "Beauty Ride", "Copenhagen Weight Loss and Slimming" and other APPS that provide weight loss recipes.

The "Opinions" issued this time set the main targets of 2.6 square meters per capita sports area and 38.5% of the number of people who regularly participate in physical exercise by 2025. The "National Fitness Plan (2021-2025)" also mentions the main goal of driving the total scale of the national sports industry to reach 5 trillion yuan.

The potential and space for the development of China's sports industry are still there, what new changes will occur in the future? We will continue to pay attention.