China Sport Show 2018: three platforms to realize three visions across the sports industry

　　China Sport Show 2017 held in May in Shanghai provided a feast of sporting goods for 1,473 enterprises and 130,000 attendees. It’s the first time for China Sporting Goods Federation (CSGF) to sponsor this industry event as a true social organization in an entirely market-oriented way, so CSGF's Secretary-General Luo Jie described it as a “second startup”.

　　CSGF would start the run-up to China Sport Show 2018 on August 8. Before that, Luo Jie presented a summary and outlook for the event.

　　Since becoming market-oriented, China Sport Show has achieved significant improvement in scale and quality in 2017. Forums and participant-inviting activities have turned China Sport Show from only an exhibition to a platform for all industries and parties to exchange ideas; while in 2018, China Sporting Goods Industry Summit will be upgraded into China Sports Industry Forum and become an important theoretical and ideological forefront of China's sports industry. Accordingly, China Sport Show will be further updated and expand its coverage from sporting goods to sports industry.

　　Reform, from exhibition to platform

　　Despite of the pressure in an economic downturn, China Sport Show had an increase of 30% in scale in 2017 compared with the previous year. Among the four sections, the fitness and stadium building gained faster progress; the ball products, driven by the widespread football, basketball and volleyball games, also received positive growth; the clothing category, however, basically remained steady with average performance.

　　Luo said, CSGF would take the first step towards seeking partnership with many sporting goods associations globally, in an attempt to invite a greater basis of audience overseas. China Sport Show this year has over 3,600 pre-registered overseas visitors. “It's a pretty rare number you'd find amongst the domestic sort of exhibition.”

　　The most highlighted update about China Sport Show this year is the “great platform effect”. According to Luo, numerous attempts were made before the exhibition turned itself into a virtually commercial platform. The diversity of cooperating parties has displayed the exhibition's inclusiveness. As it's showing increasingly obvious effect as a comprehensive platform, this year's China Sport Show has also significantly expanded its event system, which contains five major categories: high-level forum, interaction experience, performance and demonstration, business and trade communications, and concurrent conferences.

　　This year's summit has been upgraded to “6+N”, including national fitness forum, youth sports exchange meeting co-organized with Youth Sports Dept., General Administration of Sport of China, and university stadium management forum co-organized with the Sports Committee of China Association of Higher Education (CAHE), and has caused quite a stir in the industry.

　　Various participant-inviting activities are also available in this year's China Sport Show. The “Selection of Innovative Outdoor Fitness Equipment” and “Selection of Fitness Equipment for Special Group” are organized to build a user-enterprise interaction platform and encourage technical innovation. The Bodybuilding & Bikini Competition and 2017 Conference of I-FIT China Professional Fitness Coach help enliven the industrial atmosphere and encourage the related groups to get involved. The Youth Park in partnership with the Youth Sports Dept. and the discussion regarding training course of sports program have broadened the channels to build sports into campus.

　　China Sport Show is expected to cover sports industry

　　After attending and watching China Sport Show 2017, Zhao Yong, deputy director-general of the General Administration of Sport, indicated that China Sport Show is an important platform for China's sports industry.

　　“Mr. Zhao expects us to build China Sport Show and the summit into a platform for idea exchange, product exhibition and international cooperation, through which we can help realize the transformation and update of sporting goods and drive the development sports career and industry,” said Luo.

　　Luo believes what Mr. Zhao has instructed is a new source of idea for China Sport Show’s future trend. “Now we don’t stick to bigger scale as a key criterion. Instead, we focus on better quality and essential properties that would adapt China Sport Show to both the national and social expectations from sports.”

　　Luo notes that China Sport Show has great potential for being a channel that connects the government with the industry, business and enterprises. On that account, the sports industry forum in 2018 is expected to invite more influential guests and discuss more up-to-date topics.

　　He also has three conceptions regarding how to play China Sport Show 2018’s three-platform role.

　　First, to strengthen the effort of attracting international business and increase the ratio of global procurers.

　　Second, to complete the trade transition from business to customer. As the intermediate steps are undercut by the widespread Internet business, consumers now have direct access to consumer goods. Exhibitors suggested that more mass audience should be invited to China Sport Show.

　　Third, in terms of building all exhibition sections, China Sport Show would no longer be limited to sporting goods manufacturing, rather, it might cover sporting tourism and provide customized sporting tourism goods in the next year. Luo believes that after consumption upgrading, shopping is no longer an attraction to the common people. Sporting tourism of "competition plus experience” will be an important consumer spending.

　　In his opinion, China Sport Show will integrate more elements required in sports industry, become a trend-setting event and build the cooperative win-win model for participants. Higher-level communication channels should be expanded to build a communication system between the industry and government, inside/across the industry and between China and other countries. It should become a platform for trading of quality resources, so as to supply more tangible/intangible resources and create space for the aggregation and exchange of more valuable information. In short, China Sport Show will make its contribution to develop the sports career and industry and build the social public system.