Alisports has beaten Wisdom Sports to acquire the marketing and operating rights of Hangzhou Marathon, with an offer of more than CNY100m (USD15.89m) for the next four years. If there is no surprise they would become the company to run the Hangzhou Marathon for the next four years.  

Wisdom Sports was responsible for operating Hangzhou Marathon in a deal that will expire in 2018. The sports company provided an offer of CNY86.31m (USD13.71m) for the marathon race, meaning that it cannot renew its current deal.

According to Tao Zili, Director of the Competition Center at Sports Bureau of Zhejiang Province, 6 of 11 companies who submitted application forms attended the bidding ceremony.

As Tao said, “Alisports will acquire the exclusive operating rights of the Hangzhou Marathon for the next four years if no one raises an objection by next Thursday (on April 24).”

Alisports has started to make strides in marathon races since 2017, as the sports company was the co-operator of the 2017 Hainan International Marathon. Additionally, Alisports also holds the exclusive rights to the marathon series under the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation from 2017 to 2019.

According to Tao, “The Hangzhou race plans to introduce online marathon this year, making the event no longer limited by the 35,000 offline participants. At the same time, Alisports is also seeking to turn the event into a ‘hi-tech marathon race.’”

Source: zjnews.zjol.com.cn

 Proofread by William Logsdon