More than 80,000 industry professionals from 120 countries came to ISPO Munich, the leading sports business exhibition, held from 24-27 January.

Visitor numbers increased from Italy, Switzerland and Austria. There were also a large number of visitors from Russia and the Ukraine. The number of exhibitors also increased from 2,585 in the prior year to 2,645 exhibitors at this year’s event.

The high share of foreign visitors (87%) emphasizes the international character of the trade show. The entire 180,000m² of exhibition space, covering 16 exhibition halls, were fully booked, organisers report.

Innovations and new products

“Following the challenging pre-Christmas sales conditions the mood was definitely better than expected. The plethora of innovations and new products presented at ISPO Munich further strengthened the confidence of the industry to be able to weather the latest challenges presented by climate and market structure changes,” commented Klaus Dittrich, CEO and Chairman of Messe München.

There were new exhibitors in all segments, particularly in Health & Fitness and Outdoor. The new hall distribution received positive feedback from both exhibitors and visitors. The strongly growing Health & Fitness had more space at its disposal in hall B4 and once again proved that there are still more opportunities to be had for the sports industry in this area.

ISPO Brandnew Awards

This year’s overall winner of the ISPO Brandnew Awards was Icaros, the first virtual reality fitness equipment, which impressively demonstrated the further digital development of fitness and new options to exercise in virtual worlds.

Users of Icaros can fly through virtual worlds and play games with the help of a headset and controller. And at the same time almost all muscle groups are exercised, the manufacturer reports.

Following daily activities

For the first time, users of the new website ispo.com were able to follow the daily activities at the trade show online.

In the future, the site will provide relevant industry information all year long. A special editorial team will manage the site and provide news and background reports from the world of sporting goods.

Special guests

ISPO is not only appealing to international exhibitors and visitors, but is also attractive for prominent athletes and politicians. Among the prominent guests were FC Bayern Coach Pep Guardiola, as well as the successful professional alpinist and this year’s ISPO Trophy recipient Gerlinde Kaltenbrunner, and the former Olympic weightlifting champion Matthias Steiner.

Other sports celebrities included Philipp Lahm, FC Bayern Team Captain and speed skater Claudia Pechstein. Additional guests included the world’s best-known bike trial rider, Danny MacAskill and two – time Olympic champion and five-time ski racing world champion Ted Ligety.

Cooperation

The Federation of the European Sporting Goods Industry (FESI) expressed a desire to deepen the cooperation between the sporting goods industry and the European Commission.

The federation represents 1,800 companies and thus about 85% of the European market. At ISPO Munich the organization held a meeting between CEOs from key sports business companies, such as Salomon, Nike, Adidas and Puma and representatives of the EU Commission, among them the Vice President and Commissioner for the Digital Single Market Initiative, Andrus Ansip.

The entrepreneurs highlighted and shared their requirements in terms of the digital single market with the politicians. Federal Minister of Economic Affairs and Development Dr Gerd Müller reported on the development of the Alliance for Sustainable Textiles, with the goal to improve the conditions in apparel manufacturing.

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