Emma Zwiebler, CEO of the World Federation of the Sporting Goods Industry (WFSGI), sat down exclusively with TRENDS at the World Economic Forum in Davos to discuss the growing crisis of physical inactivity, particularly in the UAE and across the Middle East. Leading an association that represents global brands like Nike, Adidas, and ASICS, Zwiebler shared her insights on how the sporting goods industry can play a pivotal role in addressing this pressing issue. “The sporting goods industry is uniquely positioned to drive meaningful change,” she remarked, emphasizing the need for innovation and collaboration to encourage healthier lifestyles worldwide.
In the wake of alarming statistics showing that 1.8 billion adults globally, and 81% of young people aged 11-17, fail to meet recommended activity levels, Zwiebler expressed deep concern over the future impact of inactivity. “It’s not just about selling products—it’s about creating a culture of movement,” she stated, stressing the importance of community and government efforts to tackle the problem. Highlighting initiatives like Dubai’s 30-by-30 campaign, she called for a unified approach from both the public and private sectors to embed physical activity into everyday life and promote long-term well-being.
Excerpts from the interview:
What are the key takeaways from Davos and what topics have you addressed here? You see any collective joint action plan?
It’s a really good question. It’s actually an industry association, so I’m the CEO of the World Federation of the Sporting Goods Industry. We represent member companies across the value chain. We have in membership your household brand names, your Nikes, your Adidas, your ASICs, your Anthas, but also the retailers and the manufacturers. We represent almost the full value chain of the sporting goods industry. It’s the first time we’ve had a chance to actually be here with an aligned industry voice. Actually, we’ve just come this afternoon from a session with the chair of our board, was giving a speech around the importance of the topic of physical activity. How do we leverage the power of the sporting goods industry to get the world to move? How is that connected to the very important climate agenda that obviously the World Economic Forum has had for many years. So I’m sure we can come back to that in the discussion. But as a first-timer, I think what I’ve learned here is probably not too original, but it’s the opportunity and the potential for action and collaboration on some of the biggest challenges of our time. So climate change is obviously one that’s come up naturally, given everything that happened in geopolitics, the impact on trade, the impact on some of the discussions that have shaped our narrative for the last few years has definitely arisen.
I’ve listened to some really interesting discussions around that. But I think for me, the biggest takeaway leading this association, and we have as our number one strategic priority, how does the sporting goods industry play its part in addressing the physical inactivity crisis? I think a big takeaway for us is that this is a great platform for that, because here we can connect, obviously, with the forum who share the vision for a healthier, more active future, particularly for the next generation, but also across industry. It’s so critical because this issue around rising activity levels globally and locally, and I’m sure it will come to your vision in a minute, but it’s a problem that cannot be resolved by our industry alone. It needs industries across the spectrum to be engaging on this topic, and we also need governments to be investing more as well as local authorities So I think that this is a great opportunity for us to bring this agenda to the forum and to other industries, and hopefully to be able to drive forward to that change, or at least to be leading it.
And I’m sure you’re familiar, Dubai has the ambition to become one of the healthiest cities, 30 by 30, make 30 minutes a day and exercise for 30 days within November. The biggest marathon of 220,000 people happened just a couple of weeks ago, et cetera. How do you see collaboration between public, private, and social entities within the NGO space or within the communities that can come together, support and have that vision and trickle down across multiple regions, not just one small place. I gave it as an example because I’ve seen it. Maybe you have other examples.
Maybe let’s start with it because not everyone is familiar with the data. From a global landscape, and then let’s go down into the UAE region. From a global landscape, 31% of the adult population, so 18 plus, 1.8 billion adults, don’t move their bodies enough to maintain good health. It’s a pretty low barrier. It’s 150 minutes a week of moderate exercise, or even walking would accomplish this. And it’s a really significant reality that 1.8 billion adults, that’s another China, it’s another India. So it’s a huge proportion of the adult population But the situation, unfortunately, gets worse when we go to the next generation. The next generation is the least active in history: 81 percent- When you say next, you mean- 11 to 17 year olds. The alpha? Yeah. They do not move their bodies enough to maintain good health. So they are starting life as adults, as potential employees, as potential consumers of our industry with a real disadvantage. because they are already putting their wellbeing, their physical and mental health at risk just because they have not moved their bodies enough. And actually before we spoke, I looked because these stats come from the World Health Organization, and they do a breakdown in country profile girls.
And from the UAE perspective, the trend also plays out. So for adults, it’s 39% of men and 41% of women. So it’s higher than the global average. And for boys and girls, it’s 78% of boys, so slightly lower than the global average, but 87% of girls, so much higher than the global average.
For that age bracket?
Yes, for 11 to 17-year-olds. On the WHO profiles for inactive populations in youth in UAE, it’s 78% of boys, 87% of girls that don’t move their bodies enough to maintain good health. And I think when you look at the UAE, the region has been through a massive evolution and it’s become much more digital, tech-first, and that has led to an increased level of said attribute. And you and I are both sitting here, you’re recording on your mobile. I’ve checked stats on my mobile. This phone-based lifestyle is also adding to that. It’s not that we should go and say, okay, tech is inherently bad. That’s not true. Tech can be a real force for good. But we have to look and understand what impact it is having, particularly on that next generation. When you look at the World Health Organization’s Global Action Plan on physical activities, essentially their roadmap, how do countries become more active? They have at their core four main areas where they believe countries need to act in order to increase levels of physical activity.
So we need mass participation events, policy environments, making sure that there’s policies around physical activity that are actually funded and implemented. Making sure that there is infrastructure available for people to do active transport. Obviously, there’s some environmental things in terms of temperature and everything that I know you have to accommodate. But making sure that the environment around people, the policy environment, the infrastructure environment, and the communications all encourage people to be more active. To encourage it as something that they inherently believe is good for them and that they want to do.
Maybe you’re the same as me. You’ve tried to give up chocolate every so often. I’m not very good at it. You don’t stick to it because I love to do that. But we have to find a way to embed movement back into life because for the past 10, 20 years, we’ve essentially been engineering it out of our lives, and particularly that next generation. So I think, I don’t know the exact policies from the Dubai government or any of the UAE nations, but if there is a government that is investing in a clear strategy and putting in place policies, funding them, holding in place opportunities for people to be more active and infrastructure that supports it.It’s a great start. It’s a great start. But it won’t happen overnight. That’s the problem.
But you work with the businesses. And today I was speaking to somebody about women’s health and how businesses that work within that space are supporting and pushing the agenda. And they’ve partnered with Prada, for example, the fashion companies which have such influence into decision making, which can accelerate change. What’s your take on that?
From my perspective, I can only comment on our industry. But genuinely, I really believe that the private sector and the public sector have to find meaningful ways to engage together because these topics that we’re dealing with, whether it’s climate change or an activity, are far too big for just a government to solve our private sector. So we have to find meaningful ways for engagement to take place, to really see the true impact of collaboration. I think from our perspective, we’ve been focusing on a couple of different things. So making sure that our industry is aligned around the fact that this is an issue and that we have a role to play. We vehemently believe that we are and that we have a positive role to play. So making sure that the industry is aligned around that objective. Last year we had a really great first moment where industry leaders, 25 CEOs, 48 different companies came together to sign off on a statement basically saying, this is a really big issue and we as the sport and goods industry have a role to play.
So that’s a meaningful example of the voice being aligned and we’re able to bring that to the table. The first is your classic programmatic interventions. So a lot of our companies run social community impact programs, typically with not-for-profit local community organizations, trying to break down barriers to access. Whether it’s cost of access, whether it’s challenges around inclusivity, whether it’s getting more women and girls into sports through better coaching. There’s a lot of investment that happens there that could be scaled with better partnership. Then there’s the communications, reach, and engagement that our brands have with their communities and with their consumers. Our industry is not the biggest industry in the world.
But what we do have is this amazing storytelling ability, whether it’s with our athletes or influencers or through the medium of sport. So that power to change perceptions on this topic I think, is a really critical aspect of our industry. We might have seen, I think at the tail end of last year, that ASICs ran a campaign with Logan Roy, the character from Succession. It was called Deskbreak, and it was basically using him as a pop culture icon, talking about the fact that you shouldn’t be afraid of me in the boardroom, you should be afraid of inactivity. And it was this amazing moment because it was this combination of pop culture with a really critical message. And you saw it cutting across the narrative. And I saw people from across my community commenting on this who I’ve never seen comment on physical activity before. So there’s different ways of telling the story. And I would say we’re still experimenting on what’s the right way to get that through. But there’s some really nice examples like that. The third is product innovations. So our industry is nothing, if not innovative when it comes to the products.
We started to talk a lot about climate change. It is so important to talk about planetary change, but we also have to talk about human change. We have to talk about the fact that we move less, we have higher stress, we have higher mental and physical challenges. We’re all here with this phone-based lifestyle. Physical activity can’t resolve every problem in the world, but it can be a solution for a lot of these inflicted societal and lifestyle behavior challenges.
Is it only about that age bracket, 11 to 17? Because globally, there’s a larger issue with mid-aged adults who are increasingly sedentary, perpetuating a vicious cycle. Yes, it starts with kids that need the education to start. But how about that lifestyle changes for people who really have seen comments on various social media? Oh, I’m 45 or pre-men. I’m embarrassed to go to the gym. I want to be more active. But how companies working within the sports industry can help that and can change perception and can encourage the different generations to be more active?
It’s a really great question. And funnily enough, I’m a former athlete, so I come from that sports side. But I had my first child in July ’22. I also had this challenge about coming back to fitness because it wasn’t immediately available to me that I could move my body in the same way as before. I remember I started back in a very different way, different exercises, different activities. I remember talking with friends at the time and saying, I’m so lucky that I had that education about how important movement is, because this is so uncomfortable, and I don’t feel like myself. If I didn’t have that knowledge, that education, and faith that doing this movement was going to be so beneficial for me, I probably wouldn’t have done it. So I really agree with you. And I think it’s not that seeing youth is such a big focus that we’re not addressing that. I mean, many of the companies that we are working with are also looking at this issue around female participation in the adult population. So there’s been a couple of really great campaigns.
Talking about the fact that women feel unsafe running alone at night and really trying to break down that barrier. Why is it that women feel uncomfortable in that environment and running alone, and what is it that we can do as an industry and as other societal players to tackle that?
There is a lot of work that’s also going on in the core adult population. I think generally women in sports, the requirements for women in sports, the differences for women in sports versus men in sports is a topic that has grown over the last 5, 10 years. You start to see the adaptations, not just of sporting goods products, but also of training methodologies, accessible disability, female-only gyms, environments that make women feel more comfortable. So I do think there’s progress. Never enough, right? But I do see a positive trend, actually, and especially on our side of the sporting goods industry. We published a report with McKinsey back in 2020, which said that of the three core drivers for growth that we saw, was pre-COVID, right?
But still, I think it still plays out. The three core drivers we saw for the sporting goods industry, the rise of the female consumer, not just as someone holding the purse strings in the household, but as actually spending for herself was one of the biggest growth drivers. So we do see opportunity there.
But also the male population, it affects everybody across the board and the different generations.
Are there particular regions that are leading in terms of that or companies and what fields are these companies? Is it the female?
I would probably say the greatest potential influence on the adult population is in the workplace. Because unfortunately, I shouldn’t say that because I bet my boss will listen. But unfortunately, we spend most of our time in the workplace, but it is the reality that we spend a significant or the majority of our adult lifetime in the workplace. And that means that your employer or your colleagues are your greatest touch point and your greatest influence as an adult. We’ve done some work with the forum and with the McKinsey Global Health Institute. They just published a joint report on holistic well being in the workforce. We’ve been encouraging it from the physical activity standpoint because we see that if companies, employers, and colleagues were able to actually embrace this as a normal, then you have a really interesting opportunity. Because it’s so difficult to implement behavior change unless you have a community around you that is supporting you to do it.
And so in the workplace, if you have that positive feedback loop of, you know what? Let’s go for this walk at lunch. Let’s go for that running straight after work. That positive feedback loop within a company can grow and expand from office to office, from company to company. So it’s also another reason why we think the forum has great value, because you have this opportunity for all industries to hear this and to buy into this, not just from a health and well-being perspective, but the stats are there around improved well-being, increased physical activity, drives mental and physical health outcomes, It also drives productivity, it reduces absenteeism, increases creativity, all of these- And diseases that keep you away from your place. Exactly.
It reduces healthcare because immunity boosts immunity.
Exactly. Maybe We, collectively, as people who are engaged in this, haven’t done, up until recently, the best job of articulating that from a bottom-line perspective. But this report that the Forum and the McKinsey Global Health Institute published, it set out that you could unlock 12 trillion.