Tough road to recovery

According to the 2019 China Marathon Report, published by the CAA last Friday, last year's spring season (March-May) saw 564 races held to make it the second busiest period on the country's race calendar behind Oct-Dec.

Now with this year's entire spring schedule wiped out, industry experts reckon that businesses face a daunting second half of the year even if races are allowed to resume.

"Due to the delay of events originally scheduled in the first half, the number of races will skyrocket in the second half if the government gives the green light," said Chen Guoqiang, a sports sociology researcher at Shanghai University of Sport, in a column on shobserver.com.

"Event organizers will have to compete harder against each other to attract enough runners, sponsors and media exposure to make their races profitable."

Bao Mingxiao, director of the China Sports Economic Research Center, suggests that race organizers and promoters should focus on improving race quality by providing more professional services and better online interactions with participants whenever events restart.

"The rising public awareness of embracing a healthy lifestyle will only be strengthened after the coronavirus crisis," Bao said during an online forum earlier last month.

"For the long term, the rebound in sports participation and consumption will be a very likely scenario and it will definitely help grow the market for running events."

According to CAA statistics released on Friday, a total of 1,828 long-distance running races were held in the Chinese mainland last year, up from just 21 similar events in 2011. These events attracted about 7.13 million runners on a 22 percent year-on-year increase from 2018.