New WFSGI report issues stark warning about inactivity
Trade association the World Federation of the Sporting Goods Industry (WFSGI) has published its fourth annual sporting goods industry report. It worked on the report with consultancy group McKinsey.
Content comes from research, consumer surveys, and interviews with industry decision-makers. It looks back at the industry’s performance in 2023 and highlights the major challenges facing sporting goods companies in the next 12 months.
The report’s title is ‘Sporting Goods 2024: Time To Move’. On announcing its publication, WFSGI said that, in addition macroeconomic headwinds, another important challenge the industry faces is what it called “rising levels of physical inactivity around the world”.
It quoted data from World Health Organization (WHO) research that says 28% of adults and 81% of adolescents globally are failing to meet WHO recommended levels of activity. In the US, 32% of men and 48% of women are currently inactive by WHO standards. Among 11-to-17-year-olds, these numbers rise to 64% for boys and 81% for girls.
“The same pattern is recreated across multiple key markets for the industry,” said the interim chief executive of WFSGI, Emma Zwiebler. “In China, current levels of inactivity calculated by WHO are at 80% for boys and 89% for girls.”
Ms Zwiebler said the report also highlights “an improving industry outlook” despite a challenging economic and business landscape, and that the sporting goods industry had demonstrated resilience in 2023, paving the way for growth in 2024. But she added: “Physical inactivity could be seen as the ‘human climate change’ and we all need to work together to combat it.”
Image: Puma.
