Business of sports tutoring booms in China

Sports tutoring is embracing its spring in the first winter holiday after the country's strictest-ever regulations on academic tutoring in July, as a record high number of Chinese students and parents flooded in to take and pay for sports lessons during the period.

Tang Li, a 39-year-old Beijing resident, sent her 11-year-old son to a tennis class three times a week during the winter holiday. She paid 900 yuan ($142) for one lesson of two hours and an extra 1,000 yuan for a class on physical training to help the kid catch up with high-strength sports.

Recalling a winter busy with calls from interested parents, Liu Feng, general manager of youth basketball training at East Star, a popular basketball tutoring company, said the firm witnessed "huge passion" from students in learning basketball over the past two months.

"Sports tutoring sector is embracing its spring with more beneficial policies from the government to promote sports and physical training," he said. With 130,000 registered students and 700 centers in about 180 cities across the country, Liu added the company's revenue has doubled from last year.

The latest data from analytics firm Tianyancha showed that more than 33,000 sports and art tutoring companies were newly added after the country's regulation on the after-school tutoring sector in July, a staggering increase of 99 percent year-on-year.

"Behind it is a broader trend of the country paying more attention to physical fitness and all-round development of the young generation. It was not an upside-down change for the sports sector, but parents are indeed willing to invest more on sports," said Wen Liyuan, chief operation officer of youth training at renowned tennis tournament China Open.

Taking students who play tennis as an example, Liu said that behind them are many parents who have returned from abroad or are middle- and high-income earners.

Industry experts said the ongoing Beijing 2022 Winter Olympic Games are also expected to lead to another boom in ice and winter-related sports in the country.

A survey by the General Administration of Sport of China and the National Bureau of Statistics showed the number of Chinese who have participated in winter sports training, amateur or professional competitions, and winter sports-related leisure activities has reached 346 million by the end of last year. That means one in four Chinese enjoyed winter sports or related activities at least once.

China is also making winter sports more accessible. Data from the Beijing Winter Olympics organizing committee showed that China currently has a total of 654 standard ice rinks and 803 ski resorts, an increase of 317 percent and 41 percent, respectively, compared with 2015.

Wang Zhuoqiong contributed to this story.