Sports students can only exercise? Yang Zixing, CEO of Beitou Sports Center, will tell you how to run a stadium successfully! How did you first enter the sports industry and become an operator? It's my idea to step into this industry since I was a student. I began to study track and field in high school, and I was exposed to dance, swimming, fitness and other sports in college in those years. So after I graduated from school, I have been committed to my favorite sports and fitness industry with the principle of "applying what I have learned", and it has been about 25 years now. Look at the market in Taiwan Province Province at that time. The so-called sports and leisure industry was dominated by clubs that received members. These venues have high-end sports equipment and a fashionable and clean sports environment. As a coach, I like this working environment and content very much. I started my career as a swimming coach, and then I became a fitness coach. Later, this step towards venue operation was my unexpected direction in life.
Yang Zixing, who was born as a young athlete, has been devoted to sports with the slogan of "applying what he has learned" since graduation. When I was a coach in a famous club, one day my boss suddenly asked me cautiously whether I wanted to be a "professional coach" or a "venue management" in the future. This sudden choice of 1 made me hesitate for a long time because I love teaching. After careful consideration, I decided to give up the familiar field of professional coaching and choose venue management that I have never been exposed to. Experience tells me that only by learning how to manage and operate a sports venue can we really change the breadth and depth of the sports and leisure industry. Although, from the big environment at that time, large clubs were quite high-quality sports and leisure places, I always felt that something could be added to its original model, so that the hardware and software configuration of the whole industry could better meet the needs of different groups of people, and at the same time, the venue could be better developed.
Do you have any suggestions on how to run a sports stadium well? I call the manager of a venue "the manager". I've heard someone say, "You don't need any professional ability to run a sports stadium. As long as you have the funds to put the equipment in, you can succeed. In my opinion, in addition to funds and equipment, venues need to have five professional abilities: integration ability, integration ability, leadership ability, market acumen and analysis and planning. Many operators have the first four abilities, but they lack very important analysis and planning ability, and because of the lack of this major, they can easily tell employees what to do according to their own experience, so they can't make the most correct decision at the best time. " There are many real examples in front of me, "said CEO Yang.
To run a large stadium, in addition to the above five professional abilities, you need to have other knowledge majors, including financial analysis, language ability and marketing. Like many professional managers, to cultivate a professional sports manager, you need to have a variety of majors and abilities. Because these knowledge and experience can't be cultivated in 3-5 years as a student, as long as I stay in this industry, I will have the motivation to enrich myself and keep learning. As long as there is a little missing, I will study at once. So from university to graduate school, as long as there are courses related to management or finance, I will go to class as soon as I have time. Looking back, it also brought a lot of new knowledge to be applied in the sports industry.
Managers who want to run a venue must keep up with the pace of this era through continuous learning. In addition to these abilities I just mentioned, if you want to devote yourself to this field, you must also have a heart of "enthusiasm", "unbeaten" and "courage to help others"! A large part of the sports industry is an industry that serves people. As long as it is to serve people, there will be so-called "customer complaints." If you face customers' complaints with evasive and perfunctory attitude, you will lack an "unbeaten" heart. "Being brave in helping others" refers to helping others and encouraging others to exercise. In this industry, I think having these three key hearts is the "basic mentality" that a manager who is suitable for running stadiums should have. Finally, we should have the ability to tolerate employees' mistakes and cultivate employees' minds. In a word, if you want to be a successful venue manager, you should not only study professional topics, but also cultivate psychological topics.
What do different venues need to pay attention to? A few years ago, I made an evaluation and research on the development of sports and leisure industry in Taiwan Province Province. The future trend will show two extremes: one is miniaturization, niche, refinement and customization, which is absolutely untenable for the communication industry, but sports and leisure belong to the service industry. In practice, because there are many small fitness studios now, they will position themselves well and find suitable target groups, and operators will build themselves into people with specific professional functions; Another trend is large-scale, popular, diversified and diversified, such as sports clubs, chain gyms and sports centers. The operators of these venues must think and evaluate the future development direction. Although some venues exist between these two trends at present, the sports and leisure service industry in Taiwan Province Province will definitely expand to these two extremes in the future. I remember a statistic more than 20 years ago that the proportion of people who would go to stadiums in Taipei was below 7%, but the year before last, the Taipei Sports Bureau made a survey on the sports population in Taipei, and the people who would go to stadiums accounted for more than 30% of the total sports population. From this data, we can find that the rise of large-scale, popular, diversified and diversified sports centers has encouraged the sports needs of Taipei citizens and has continued to produce great effects.
Because the number of sports people has increased, niche markets have begun to appear, which means that sports people have begun to have personal needs. If the niche, niche, refined and customized studios can meet the special needs of these people, then these studios have the ability to survive. So at present, these two directions are ongoing trends, and then there will be four major trends of specialization, differentiation, internationalization and chain, which will form an important direction of the future sports industry. These aspects are all the operators or managers of our sports industry must pay attention to.
The sports industry has gone to two extreme directions, and only by figuring out its own position can it continue to develop here. When it comes to the operation of the sports center, its income includes four major items: ordinary tickets, variable venue rents (such as stadiums), fixed venue rents (such as shops and parking lots) and stadiums. But for sports centers, the course income is not very high. Take Beitou Sports Center as an example. In the past, the income from offering courses accounted for about 20-30% of the total income. However, considering the adjustment, the course income in 20 19 years has accounted for 5 1% of the total income, and the course types have exceeded 100. Therefore, as the manager of Beitou Sports Center, we should not only formulate favorable operational policies for the positioning and role of this stadium, but also actively arrange curriculum design and various innovations to meet various consumer groups in the sports center.
What reminders and precautions did the epidemic bring to the sports industry? Coronavirus pneumonia-19, which caused the global industry catastrophe in early 2020, really affected everyone, not to mention the loss and impact on the sports and leisure industry that relied on the utilization rate of venues and the services of sports professionals. Therefore, I consider introducing e system and equipment to optimize, streamline and change the fixed manpower in operation, which is also some changes in the cost structure of the industry in the future. For example, we can arrange more manpower for customer service that needs temperature, and we can use the Internet or robots to handle the sale or exchange of tickets. In addition, cloud services can also be used to solve some basic customer service questions and answers or professional knowledge. Electronic application is very important for venue operators. Only in this way can the four major costs and income structures of sports centers be greatly adjusted and optimized. Only in this way can the impact and operation be minimized when any possible major event comes, which is also a problem that operators in all walks of life must think about.
After the epidemic in the sports center, let me rethink the introduction of brand-new E equipment and adjust the human structure. According to your observation, what is the future trend of sports industry? Sports clubs are closely related to trends. In the early days of Alexander Fitness Club, many leading chain clubs cooperated with some foreign courses and introduced many popular sports courses into Taiwan Province Province. But in contrast, the sports center takes the courses of the general public and the cheap charging methods. In addition, the admission fee is different from that of fitness centers such as clubs, and it is difficult to compare with foreign courses introduced by fitness clubs or large chain gymnasiums. As I mentioned earlier, "knowing your position" is very important. After all, it belongs to two different modes of operation. The orientation of sports center is to guide the public and promote diversified sports. Of course, it is not ruled out that we will go to the club business model in the future, adopt differentiated market model and provide miniaturized and customized services, so as to change the market structure and introduce more new stadiums, which will be helpful to the development of the overall sports and leisure industry in Taiwan Province Province.
The gym in the sports center also has professional fitness instructors who can provide consultation and teaching for people who love sports at any time. What is the most distinctive stadium in Beitou Sports Center? Six years ago, when I took over the Beitou Sports Center, I shouted the slogan of "one museum with one feature". At that time, I knew that competitive sports was the development focus of physical education departments in various schools. When I saw many athletes leaving campus for social work, I couldn't find a way to continue their sports life. After all, not all sports in the market in Taiwan Province Province can embark on a professional path, so I specially arranged martial arts courses and put them in Beitou Sports Center. The slogan of "Round Player's Dream" was launched for office workers, so that these office workers also had the opportunity to go abroad to participate in competitions through martial arts. I'm glad that Wushu has always been a key characteristic course in this sports center. In addition, I also plan traditional martial arts, such as White Crane Boxing and Tai Ji Chuan. Especially for the disciplined elders, I design more advanced boxing courses, so that the elders can participate in the competition and successfully build a sense of personal accomplishment beyond sports health. Of course, we also have many other special courses, which can be built according to market demand. For example, Taigu course, which is rare in the market, is very popular with students.
Beitou Sports Center has a two-story large-scale rock climbing ground, which is also the sports venue that CEO Yang insisted on staying after taking over. What licenses or knowledge do you need to obtain to open a sports venue? Friends who are interested in coaching must have a basic sports license. It used to be very popular to get a foreign sports license, but it didn't meet the people's physique and sports standards in Taiwan Province province. So I suggest that you can go to various special sports associations to ask about the training content of the license. At present, the sports department does not stipulate which licenses must be obtained, and the requirements and regulations of various fitness clubs and sports centers are different. So what licenses you must obtain depends on the direction you want to take.
If you want to go all the way to the managers who manage venues, I suggest that in addition to sports, you can start with general business management courses and apply them to the industry. With your own strengths, you can evaluate the overall trend. When you really enter this industry, you will find that you may still lack any professional knowledge, and then strengthen it according to your own shortcomings. If you are a professional sports coach, know the advantages of yourself and other nearby venues, learn the required majors to improve your academic ability, and once you want to manage a venue, look around and learn more about the industry and future trends, then you are popular in the market.
Interview, writing//David
Photography//Oliver Wu
Venue/Beitou Sports Center