Sports executive bullish on growth in China

With the 2018 World Cup in Russia just ending and 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics coming, soccer and winter sports have gone viral among the public.

Jacques-Henri Eyraud, CEO Olympique de Marseille, is planning to bring France's soccer to China, especially after France won the 2018 World Cup championship. He said he saw there were many Chinese wearing France's team shirts during the World Cup, which made him realize that it is possible to build a close China-France soccer friendship.

Gao Jisheng, the owner of Southampton FC, admitted that soccer is his generation's China dream. The reason why he bought Southampton FC was to learn from their experiences, and then go back to China and develop the country's sport industry.

Premier league is the origin of soccer which is quite mature now. Southampton FC also has a history of over 130 years and Gao is proud of it. He highly thinks of its managing concept and methods, so he has no intention of changing it much.

In Gao's opinion, public participation is the largest difference between China's soccer and the other mature countries'. For example, there are around 20,000 community clubs in Germany. People’s lives in Southampton tightly revolve around soccer.

However, soccer is a long-term investment. Therefore, to develop soccer in China it is necessary to be patient.

In addition, "Sports Town" is a good concept to develop soccer. Gao is planning to build about six soccer schools, 70 soccer fields, and institutions training soccer coaches, umpires, and managers. An all-round development is essential in China, according to Gao.

Compared to soccer, winter sports started to develop even later in China and even now public attention is not very high. 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics is a good opportunity to develop winter sports.

Li Zhang, vice-president of IDG, Sarah Lewis, general secretary of International Ski Federation, and Abraham Wang, CEO of SWIX China, together discussed the development of winter sports in aspects such as infrastructure facility construction, market development and promotion, ice and snow culture, and public cultivation.

According to Li Zhang, the scale of sports in China is expected to be worth 5 trillion yuan, and winter sports will generate one trillion yuan. Therefore, it is a huge market with enormous potential.

Currently, there are 15 million skiing lovers, 600 to 700 skiing holiday villages. It is important to increase China skiing's reputation because many people prefer going abroad to ski in winter without knowing China's own markets.