Acting chief executive of the World Federation of the Sporting Goods Industry (WFSGI), Emma Zwiebler, says that current levels of physical inactivity represent an existential threat to the industry.

What did you do before joining the World Federation of the Sporting Goods Industry (WFSGI) in 2018? Please sum up your background. 

I played badminton at an elite level, representing my country, Scotland, 27 times, including at major events such as the Commonwealth Games in New Delhi in 2010. Unfortunately, I had to retire from the sport soon after because I suffered kidney failure and was in and out of hospital for six or eight months. Sport has been the vehicle for me. It has taken me on a journey through life that I could never have experienced otherwise. There was all the international travel, learning to appreciate different cultures, the life experience and all the life-skills that you build. I am a huge advocate for what sport can give you.

When anyone asks me what my greatest achievement has been, I always say that it was coming back from those health problems. Kidney failure was the biggest failure I had ever experienced. You can’t control something like that; your body fails you and that’s the reality, and it meant the end of my sporting career. I think to come back from something like that, to rebuild yourself, reshape your identity and what you are going to work on and what is going to be important to you is difficult. But in many ways it was a growth moment. It proved to me how resilient I am and it gave me a great drive to succeed in my career after sport. And I am proud of what I've managed to achieve since then.

What were the business and professional opportunities that presented themselves after this?

I was fortunate because my parents are both academic doctors and are very strong on the academic front. When I took up sport seriously, they said I had to keep my studies going. I had studied chemistry at undergraduate level in Glasgow and I wanted to use that knowledge, retrain in law and become an anti-doping lawyer. That didn’t quite work out because, in one of those ‘sliding doors’ moments, the law firm I agreed to join had a very high-profile anti-doping lawyer who left just two weeks before I joined. I enjoyed my career in sports law; I learned a lot, and met a lot of good people. I continued to be involved in badminton because I was elected as chair of the athletes’ commission of the Badminton World Federation (BWF) Council. That was pivotal for me because I was representing athletes before the decision-making body at the top of the sport. I was later elected to the BWF Council’s board in my own right and continued to serve on it until 2023. After six years in law, including training, I received an offer to join WFSGI in 2018 and I stepped down from everything else when I took on the role of interim chief executive in 2023 because I wanted to give everything to this. I am grateful for everything a background in elite sports has given me. I think it is possible that those lessons are particularly useful for a woman in business. I remember a really interesting EY study that found that something like 90% of women business leaders had played competitive sport at some level. In modern, international business, to have experienced different cultures, to have played against people from all parts of the world, to have trained with them, won against them and lost against them teaches you a huge amount about what is important for international business.

What would you say to people who are unfamiliar with badminton to convince them to give it a try? What do you love about your chosen sport?

People don’t realise, but it is one of the biggest participation sports in the world. It depends on which statistics you look at but it is consistently between number two and number five, and is always in the top ten. A lot of people find it easy and enjoyable to play. It’s a massive plus that it can be played by men and women at the same time. Tactically, it is very interesting. It is also beneficial from a physical activity and health point of view because you use almost every area of the body, whether in lunging at the front or reaching up at the back.

For the fourth annual sporting goods industry report that WFSGI recently published with McKinsey, you chose ‘Time To Move’ as the title. Please explain briefly why you wanted to convey urgency as a headline component of your message.

We absolutely did want to convey urgency. There are two main factors. The first is that this will be a year in which the only constant is change. That includes technological change, with artificial intelligence, for example, and change in public health, trade and politics, with all the elections that are taking place this year. We believe that companies operating in the international space will have to be ready to adapt because the circumstances in which they run their businesses could change rapidly. The second perspective is that the industry has to address the inactivity challenge. This is not a new challenge because inactivity levels have been either constant or rising for the last five or ten years, but we are reaching a critical tipping point now and if we don’t act now we will lose the opportunity to remedy this in ways that at least preserve current levels of public health. 

What detail does the report give to show the extent of this inactivity challenge?

We know from 2018 and 2019 that global inactivity levels sit at 28% for adults and at 81% for young people aged between 11 and 17. The reality is that the barrier for being ‘active’ is pretty low. The World Health Organization (WHO) gives a figure of 150 minutes of moderate exercise per week for adults and 60 minutes a day for adolescents. That’s sufficient movement to maintain good health. These are low barriers. What we are saying is that people are not moving enough to maintain good health and of course that is going to have a negative impact on what happens in the next five or ten years, particularly to the next generation. The inactivity rates are incredibly high. This isn’t only about covid-19. All that covid did was to accelerate trends that were there already and to increase the disparities between those who are active and those who are not. 

What led you to describe this inactivity as “human climate change”?

It’s a bit of a provocative phrase, but the comparison pans out in a couple of ways. The challenge to public health is real and governments, people and communities are not worried enough about inactivity levels. This really reminds me of where the climate change debate was ten years ago, which led to Greta Thunberg becoming a catalyst for people starting to take it much more seriously. Someone who is in their thirties or forties and is inactive may not necessarily look or feel challenged now, but it will show when they reach their sixties, seventies and eighties, when they are likely to need treatment from the health service. This was the same for climate change for many years; it was hard to convince people, companies or countries to change their behaviours based on future changes to the environment. One difference is that there is no single currency for physical inactivity. Everyone can calculate their carbon footprint, whether as individuals or at government level; CO2 emissions are a currency for that. You don’t have the same thing for physical inactivity. There isn’t one thing that makes it easy to understand for everyone. Tackling inactivity is to call for large-scale behavioural change and reducing carbon footprint is too. So that’s another parallel. 

What are the consequences likely to be?

WHO just wants people to move their bodies more. The fact that we don’t, that we have become so sedentary as a global population, is something that is very challenging for public health. WHO has already calculated the impact if current inactivity levels don’t change. In a 2022 study, it assessed the price-tag for inactivity, in terms of the cost of having a high number of people fall into ill health if inactivity levels remain the same, with 28% for adults and 81% for adolescents. Where they landed is pretty astronomical. If nothing changes, by 2030, we will see 500 million more people falling into ill health solely because they are not active enough and the cost to healthcare systems, just for their first year of treatment, will be $300 billion. For the sporting goods industry, if there are 500 million more people who are less likely to be active, they are less likely to consume the products that our industry provides. And there will be $300 billion less to spend on things like sports facilities, training, access to sport and any form of education on the importance of being active. From our perspective, these statistics are incredibly worrying. WFSGI has a responsibility to raise the alarm bell about this and to point out that this is serious and that more action needs to be taken.

The new report does pick out some success stories. What is at the heart of the increase in popularity of sports such as pickleball, paddel and off-course golf? What can companies focusing on other sports learn from those examples?

I don’t believe anyone has the full answer but we have data and we can observe the trends. The social and casual ethos of those sports is significant. They were not set up originally as competitive sports, but as social engagement and being part of a community. Competition came later. The examples you mention all have quite a low barrier to entry in terms of skill levels. You can pick them up quite easily as an adult. People’s appetite for more formal, competitive structures and for watching long, drawn-out sporting events seems to have diminished. New generations don’t engage with sport in the same way now and you can see this in the rise of e-sports and in the fact that break-dancing is coming into the Paris 2024 Summer Olympics. Climbing and skateboarding were huge hits at Tokyo 2020. The popularity of these new formats show the rising interest from fans, particularly among the newer generations, in shorter, exciting formats, sports with an urban or community element, and in opportunities to engage directly with the players or the games using technology. 

What could help skiing fight back, especially in Europe?

The three things that have impacted skiing in recent years are covid, the cost-of-living crisis and climate change, which is an omni-present issue for winter sports. It’s a seasonal business and the resorts were shut at key times in the covid years. They are traditionally more expensive activities and family budgets have been suffering. And on climate change, I think the type of collaboration we have seen in the Climate Pact that the Federation of the European Sporting Goods Industry (FESI) announced in February with Peak 63, to accelerate climate action in the winter sports industry, the support of the winter sports industry is going to be critical in helping the wider sporting goods industry reduce the impacts of climate change and protect our winters.

Some brands have taken solace from relatively high sales of sports clothing and footwear to satisfy strong consumer appetite for comfort and casualness. What help is this, if any, to WFSGI? 

Our members are businesses. To some extent, it is good for them to have this revenue stream. In our first annual sporting goods industry report in 2020, McKinsey identified athleisure, along with women’s sports and China, as the key growth drivers for the coming years, so we can’t ignore it. Athleisure has been hot for five, six or even seven years. But our industry leaders do want to see more people becoming physically active and this is, ultimately, where they and WFSGI would love to see more business growth. WFSGI signed a memorandum of understanding with WHO last year to improve global health through increased physical activity and sports participation. This underlines the role that the industry wants WFSGI to have, examining how we, as the private sector, can support the public sector and UN agencies, especially WHO, to get people to move more. 

In general, there are contrasts in the report between a longer-term vision on the part of WFSGI and the shorter-term focus of big corporations. What is your strategy for encouraging member companies to take a more far-sighted approach?

These are not incompatible. Our members are a significant proportion of the sporting goods industry, but not all of it. Of course the leaders of these businesses are focused on growth, but they have their eyes on longer-term issues for the industry, too. Climate change goals are a clear example; many have plans in place for decarbonisation and the road to net zero. But physical inactivity, human climate change, is also something that we view as an existential threat to the long-term future of our industry. I’m confident that the leaders at our member companies have a long-term lens, too. This year, any manner of things could happen in geopolitics and have huge implications for our industry and for global stability. They have to address these questions as well. Modern leaders must maximise opportunities in the short term to deliver growth, while also keeping an eye on future trends in industry and the wider world and be able to respond quickly to ensure the long term viability of their businesses.

Interim chief executive of WFSGI, Emma Zwiebler.
CREDIT: WFSGI

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