On December 24 and 25, the National Sports Directors Meeting was held in Beijing. As emphasized at the meeting, all departments and personnel involved in sports across China will work together, based on a faithful understanding of Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era, and the full implementation of the guiding principles from the 20th CPC National Congress and the second and third plenary sessions of the 20th CPC Central Committee, to deepen the reform of sports in all respects and accelerate the building of a sports powerhouse. It is imperative for us to ride on the momentum and make new contributions of sports to building a great country and realizing national rejuvenation on all fronts through Chinese modernization.

The National Sports Directors Meeting is ongoing. (photo source: the official WeChat account of China Sports)

Jin Zhi, Party Secretary and Director-General of the Sport Bureau of Zhejiang Province gave presentations on Zhejiang’s practices in building a Sports Brain and making digital sports a signature program at the meeting.

In recent years, Zhejiang has faithfully acted on the task entrusted by the General Administration of Sport of China “to pilot digital reform on sports”, by means of launching such reform in all respects and improving governance capacities. Since the start of 2024, the Provincial Sport Bureau has upgraded the general architecture of digital sports consisting “one (control) screen and two platforms (the service end and governance end)” under the Sports Brain initiative, and diversified application scenarios of sports to not only meet the intensive sports needs of the public but also significantly improve the efficiency of sports governance.

The Sports Brain is reported to include three parts: an integrated data warehouse, a coordinated network of operation, and a direct link to people’s actual needs.

Enabled by the integrated data warehouse and the coordinated network of operation, the control screen in the hall of the Provincial Sport Bureau presents all available information.

For example, Zhejiang Province hosts about 10,000 various sports events every year. Such large numbers of events are participated by many people and usually held in different places, making it difficult to regulate. The Provincial Sport Bureau thus explored to establish a digital regulatory mechanism for sports events, in which the data from public security, market supervision, health, meteorology, communications and other departments are accessible, major events across the province are filed level-by-level, released in one go, and dynamically monitored so that any  abnormalities will be detected and addressed in a timely manner.

For people’s questions such as “where to go for fitness, where to seek guidance services, and where to find sports events”, the APP “Zhejiang Sports” provides the public with adequate choices of public sports facilities, making 300 stadiums, 45,000 indoor venues, and 50,000 social sports instructors providing online services accessible with simple clicks.

Based on disassembling the core business of sports, analyzing the features of sports scenarios, and collecting and applying sports data, the Sports Brain develops application models for conducting services, supervision and management so as to realize monitoring and evaluation, prediction and early warning, and decision-making for sports. At present, the Sports Brain has already been applied in competitive sports, mass sports, and the supervision of sports training.

Taking national fitness as an example, the 187,000 sports venues in Zhejiang, major sports events across the province, and 600 fitness guidance videos have been included on the Brain for people to search information, navigate, make reservations, pay, register, buy tickets, and get professional instructions online. What’s more, 3061 sports training institutions with a total of 23.48 million yuan funds have been brought under regulation, preventing these institutions from absconding to certain degrees.

Going forward, the Sport Bureau of Zhejiang Province will upgrade the Sports Brain to integrate online and offline business, improve efficiency with digital technology, collect data for modeling, and combine “digital transformation” with “sports reform”, so as to make “digital sports” a signature program of Zhejiang.