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In Conversation with Innovation Spotter Olivier Glauser

THE SPOT – meet the guest speakers!
Olivier Glauser, co-founder of Shankai Sports, in interview with iSportconnect, sharing his insights about the increasing influence of Chinese brands, China’s lead in digital transformation and the impact on the global sporting landscape.

Jay Stuart
In Conversation:

How China Is Changing the Big Game

The importance of China will be a central theme of THE SPOT’s talkback session on “Who Will Call the Shots in the Future of Sport?”. Panellist Olivier Glauser, co-founderof the agency Shankhai Sports, sees China’s role inevitably increasing as Chinese companies play an ever bigger role outside their home market. “China has the second biggest economy in the world and it will be the largest before long,” he said. “But if you look at the list of the top brands in the world, there are no Chinese brands anywhere near the top of the list. There is a complete significantbetween the huge growth of Chinese economic power and the global influence of Chinese brands. That is starting to change.”

Television manufacturer Hisense is a brand practically unknown outside China. Shankhai, a sports management and media company with Chinese roots but now based in Switzerland, helped Hisense to break the ice as an international brand with the UEFA Euro 2016 tournament. Hisense is now also sponsoring the FIFA World Cup in Russia.

China is basically following a familiar Asian trajectory in terms of brands, according to Glauser. Not only are Western markets unfamiliar with Chinese companies, people don’t realise the high quality of the products they make. “It’s like the way people used to make fun of Japanese transistor radios and a few years later it was an accepted fact that the Japanese produce some of the best cars in the world.”

And the importance of China is not just about brands. It’s about digital. “China is way ahead of the West in terms of digital transformation,” Glauser said. “The adoption of digital technology is so advanced.”

The other point he stressed is that China is more digitally competitive than the West. “Where we just have Facebook and Twitter, for example, the Chinese market is full of competitors in social media. It’s the West that has virtual monopolies. China is the opposite.”

The big deal that made Alibaba an Olympic TOP sponsor is a perfect example of the change that’s occurring.

People think of Alibaba as a sort of Amazon (and it did once do $25 billion sales in a single day) but the reality is that it’s a technology platform. Unlike Amazon it does not have warehouses, it enables merchants to sell online and offline. “Alibaba’s strategy is about making its computing power available through cloud services,” said Glauser, who devoted a year on the TOP agreement. “The Olympics deal is all about encouraging and enabling digital transformation.” 

Joey Tan, Alibaba’s Head of Global Strategic Initiatives, will tell more about the company’s plans and its role in sport on the same panel at THE SPOT.

www.thespot2018.org

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