IDG Asia Vice President delivers speech on Chinese winter sports industry at SA2018

Jennifer Xu, Vice President of International Data Group (IDG) Asia, delivered a speech at the Speaker Corner of SportAccord 2018 (SA2018) on April 17.  

The speech began with an overview on the Chinese winter sports market with Xu introducing that the winter sports industry in China will reach CNY300bn by 2018 and CNY1tn by 2025. In the 2016-2017 skiing season, the ski population in China attracted 13.6 million and the figure is expected to reach 30 million by 2022. 

Winter sports education is considered highly important in China with Xu reporting that the number of winter sport-featured schools in China will reach 2,000 by 2020 and 5,000 by 2025. Motivated by the Beijing 2022 Olympic Winter Games, the winter sports venue industry has also embraced this development opportunity expecting the total market scale of ski facilities to increase from 700 million to 1.5 billion by 2022. 

Against this background, Beijing Olympic City Development Association (BODA) and IDG co-launched the World Winter Sports Expo (WWSE) in 2016 with the third edition being staged in Beijing from September 19 to 22, 2018. 

According to Xu, the WWSE 2018 will include an exhibition, conference, summit forums, keynote speeches and other related activities. 

The WWSE 2018 will welcome over 600 brands gathered together in the 30,000-square meter exhibition area, as well as welcoming more than 150,000 visitors representing both domestic and overseas industry experts and winter sports enthusiasts. 

This year, the "Major Honored Guest Country" concept launched last year will continue for this edition with Austria the recipients of this year's title, bringing a team to the WWSE 2018, in order to promote the co-development of the winter sports industry in China and throughout the world. 

The World Winter Sports (Beijing) Expo is a professional and authoritative international exposition focusing specifically on winter sports. It aims to introduce the knowledge of winter sports to China and assist with promoting the project of “engaging 300 million people on the ice and snow” to popularize winter sports activities in China. 

As a professional and national-level exhibition, WWSE has won support and partnerships from the International Olympics Committee (IOC) and from 7 federations of Winter Olympic sports. 

It will support the preparations for the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics and Paralympics, promote the comprehensive development of sports in China, and help usher in a promising future for the booming winter sports industry in China.

Proofread by Raymond Fitzpatrick