Guangzhou will devote major effort to developing sport industry, and make it a new pillar industry of the city. Yesterday, the municipal government executive meeting deliberated and passed “the opinions of accelerating the development of the sports industry and promoting the sports consumption” (“Opinions” for short). “Opinions” put forward the overall layout-“One Belt and One Network with Three Large Areas”, planning to construct 15 municipal-level and 66 district-level functional areas of sport industry, and also providing policy support for functional areas. In addition, the “Opinions” also made it clear that taking sports facilities as the carrier, the powerful enterprises are actively supported and encouraged to vigorously build an urban sports service complex, promote the comprehensive exploitation of city’s sports, residence, leisure as well as business, and then form a new city landmark.

 

By 2025, Several Sports Business Conglomerate will be Listed.

 

It is reported that as a city of national contact point for sport industry. Guangzhou has a good sports atmosphere and a huge sports consumer groups. According to the latest statistics, there are totally 25400 sports industry corporate units, which employs 118600 people. The industrial scale is 179,787 million yuan, and the added value realized by the whole city’s sport industry is up to 33,758 million yuan, accounting for 1.87% of the city’s GDP. The relevant responsible person of Municipal Sports Bureau said, in recent years, Guangzhou insists on better satisfying the growing demand of the public for sports and taking it as a starting point. The modernizing process of sports industry has been accelerating constantly, having formed a group of main industries with strong strength and competitiveness. The sport industry has also become an important part of modern service industry in Guangzhou.

 

The “opinions” proposed that, by 2015, the proportion of sports service industry among sports industry output value will increase to 50 percent, a number of large sports enterprise groups will become the main force of sports market and several have been listed. The overall scopes of sport industry will be up to 250 billion yuan, accounting for nearly 5 percent of the whole city’s GDP. Sport industry will become a new pillar industry of Guangzhou. Meanwhile, “Opinions” demanded to finish five tasks, including creating a good market environment ,optimizing the industrial structure, improving the layout of the industrial space, promoting the development of industrial integration, and fostering fitness consumption market. Besides, the government will increase financial investment, enhance investment and financing support, and actively implement the tax price preferential policies, strengthen the planning layout and land supply, focus on training and introducing sports industry professionals and so on.

 

A Water Sports Belt Will be Built From The Pearl River to Liuxihe

 

“Opinions” put forward the overall layout of “One Belt and One Network with Three Large Areas”, planning to construct 15 municipal-level and 66 district-level functional areas of sport industry, and providing policy support to functional areas.

 

“One Belt” refers to the Water sport industry belt form the Pearl River to Xiliuhe, which ranges from The Pearl River to Xiliuhe water body, along with the sport industry belt formed in coastal areas extending throughout the south and the north of Guangzhou. It focuses on developing water fitness and leisure activities and showing the “water” characteristic of Guangzhou sport industry.

 

“One Network” means the greenway sports network, which covers the greenway sports network of the whole city, stressing to develop greenway fitness and leisure activities, and reflecting the “green” characteristic of Guangzhou sport industry.

 

“Three Large Areas”: The first is modern sport service industry area in the central region, which covers the downtown city as well as the north central part of Panyu District. Focus on promoting modern sport service industry, such as sports competition performance, fitness and leisure activities, sports goods sales, sports headquarters economy, sports exhibition, research and development design and so on. The second is ecological leisure sports industry area in northern part, which covers Huadu District, northern Baiyun District, Conghua District and Zengcheng District, relying on the excellent northern mountains, waters, greenway, and mountaineering walking roads to develop ecological leisure sports industry. The third is coastal high-end sport industry area, which covers Nansha District and southern Panyu District, making use of the advantages of coast and watery region to put priority on the development of high-end leisure sport industry like yachts and golf.

 

The Coordination of Sports, Commerce and Residence Has Become the New Landmark of the City.

 

Of particular concern is that “Opinions” put forward the idea of building sports service complex, actively supporting and encouraging powerful enterprises taking sports facilities as a carrier, vigorously building urban sports service complex, and promoting comprehensive development of sports and residence, leisure and business so as to form a new landmark of city.

 

The urban sports service complex refers to a set of multifunctional and high-efficient group facilities on the basis of space composite, which mutually affect and promote with each other. It takes sports service as the core within the urban area, including cultural and sports activities, leisure and entertainment, centralized business, theme restaurants, healthy living, feature hotel and other urban functions. The first method of building urban sports service complex is to cultivate new formats of sport industry, focusing on promoting the integration development of sports, culture, leisure tourism, trade exhibition, and creative fashion. The second method is promoting sports consumption. The third one is forming a new landmark of the city. Building urban sports service complex will play an important role as a new landmark, and at the same time attract the attention of surrounding people. It can also increase the landmark buildings of the city and then enhance the city’s attractiveness. Relevant responsible person of Municipal Sports Bureau emphasized that the construction of urban sports service complex, is not simply a government-dominated activity, but mainly a market behavior, an enterprise behavior.

 

A few years ago, there was a piece of news mentioning that Hengda Group hope to win the land of Guangzhou racecourse located in Whampoa Avenue so as to construct a complex assembling football fields, hotels as well as malls., but then, it came to nothing. Later on, there were messages saying that Evergrande will build a large football field in Panyu South Station area. For this, in last year's special release conference for city leaders, the Vice Mayor of Guangzhou Wang Dongceng has responded that there are indeed planning for professional football field in the planning of  Guangzhou public sports facilities functional area and the Regulatory detailed Planning of South Station area. However, the construction of professional football field should be carried out by enterprises and clubs, now there is no club having their own football field, "when to build the professional football field is unknown since we have to wait for enterprises taking lands and constructing, besides, the land transfer has not been carried out now."

Source: Translated from Invest Guangzhou