Master of Education in Human Movement, Sport, and Leisure Studies Graduate Projects

Author(s)

Haoyan Gu

Abstract

The Olympic Games are a mega-event that is held every four years and draws millions of viewers around the world; at the Rio Olympic Games for instance, 7.5 million tickets were sold, and local fans had to enter a drawing to be qualified for tickets (Xinhua, 2015). Besides, the 2012 London Olympic Games attracted over 900,000 additional tickets over previous Games in popular sports (Flint, 2012). The interests in bidding and holding the Olympics are growing among the most populated and prominent cities (Dansero & Puttilli, 2010). This article mainly analyzes what the future of Chinese winter sports will be, and what would be the future impacts on tourism, the regional economy and sports marketing practices on China and Beijing in becoming the host of the 2022 Winter Olympics.

In 2015, at the 128thsession of the IOC, Beijing, together with its nearby Zhangjiakou City won the bid of the 2022 Winter Olympic Games (Yang & Li, 2015). This is the first time that China applied to host the Winter Olympic Games. Furthermore, it is the first time for China to have the opportunity to host a Winter Olympics, and it is also the third time for China to host the Olympic Games—the other two are the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games and the 2014 Nanjing Youth Olympics.

Beijing will become the first city that hosts both the Summer and Winter Olympics in sports history despite there being several countries that have already hosted both the Summer and Winter Olympics (i.e. United States, France, Italy, Canada, Germany and Japan). Although most winter sports have not been overly popular in China, skiing is a different story, the number of participants in skiing in China were 12.5 million person-times, and the growth margin was 21.36% compared to 2013-2014 and 98.41% in 2009-2010 respectively (You, 2016). According to You, the core participants of winter sports in China are only 1 million, and most of those participants are experiencing winter sports or participating because of the local environment.

Advisor

Dr. Sungho Cho

Second Reader

Dr. Lucy Jiesun Lee

Semester

Fall

Year

2017

Degree

M.Ed.

Program

Sport Administration

COinS