Davos 2017 - Press conference with Alibaba and the International Olympic Committee

good afternoon ladies and gentlemen and welcome to this press conference from the 47th annual meeting of the World Economic Forum here in Davos we've kept you in the dark for a while but now you see some signs what this press conference is about it is definitely a very exciting partnership we're announcing here today and we're very pleased that the forum can offer this platform let me quickly introduce to you our panelists even though I think most of you might know them to my immediate left we're joined by Daniel Chang who's the chief executive officer of Alibaba Group next to him we're joined by Jack Ma who is the executive chairman of Alibaba Group right there in the middle of the panel we're joined by too much past the president of the International Olympic Committee or IOC and last but definitely not least we're joined by Timo luma the managing director of the IOC television and marketing services to give you a quick idea of what we want to do today we will hear two short statements from mr. ma and president BA on the partnership we're announcing here today and after that we'll open the floor for questions and answers thank you very much without the further ado a president bath let's start with you I'd like to invite you to give you a statement thank you thank you very much we're indeed very happy today to announce a historic strategic partnership in the digital world which will transform the global Olympic movement according to our roadmap for the future of the Olympic Games and the Olympic movement at the Olympic agenda 2020 Alibaba will become our digital partner and provide three major assets to the IOC and to the Olympic Games first whether they're first in class and the innovative cloud taking oh gee Alibaba will help the IOT to organize the Olympic Games more efficiently more effectively and more securely and will open for us the door to the world of big data analytics second with the creation of a global Olympic ecommerce platform all our stakeholders including all our 206 National Olympic Committee's will be able to engage and connect better with all the fans looking for Olympic licensed products third with the assistance to the Olympic channel which is our digital platform which is a programming about Olympic sports Olympic athletes and Olympic values 365 days a year with their resistance to this Olympic channel Alibaba will create even better opportunities for the billions of Olympic fans around the world to follow her the channels program so I think you can understand why the IOC is so excited about this partnership and that we could arrive to - to this moment in just about a year because this is about a year ago where a check and I met for the first time there in Lausanne at our headquarters and there with his first remarks they're about the future of the digital world and about the future of sport in the digital world he inspired me and from from the very first moment and since then we have been in touch and talking and now after these preparations we are here and can announce this exciting partnership thank you president Park mr. ma if you want to add to that place yeah Thank You President Kibaki and thank you IOC and thank you everyone we are very very excited and honor for you guys to join this historical day for Alibaba president justice said that we met last year and you know it's a great opportunity for me to meeting him last year so I talked about the digital and how it can make Olympic both digital but he inspired me by the Olympic spirit and the Olympic agenda 2020 that was something to get more young people involved because before Alibaba our vision and our strategy we believe 10 to 2 years later that Alibaba should focus on happiness and health we believe that we should make more young people join the sports make the world happier so we share the same valleys same vision and we think that Alibaba definitely can bring a lot of value to the Olympic Games on the ephemeris with our technology cloud computing and the Internet technology that can empower that more young people to reach an intact we see Olympic things and especially I think today our cooperation means a lot you know I'm a believer of globalization Olympic is the spirit of globalization make the young people connect to each other make every country connect to each other and I think the up Olympic sprit is about teamwork about working together about a peaceful fair and nice competition the is what we want and this is what we Alibaba want to join the force together with Olympics as our great great honor and this is a long-term commitment we're proud as the first Chinese company that have a three-term you know 12 years commitment and we wish we were making sure this thing work and we were sure to make this thing help and I think Alibaba is a company we will will found in China but we are beautiful the world so this is we have a global vision and with Olympics definitely can help our empower our dreams and our technology can improve that can empower the spirit of Olympics empower the Olympic Games even better thank you thank you mr. ma and I know there's a beautiful Chinese tradition of exchanging gifts to seal a partnership and we would be remiss not to live up to that so if I could please welcome you on the stage to bring the gifts our our gift has a certain symbol it's a the the IOC president's trophy and the theme of the trophy is the sky is the limit so maybe the sky is the only limit for our cooperation thanks thank you thank you and this hour maybe we'll change it our gift is that we believe small is beautiful small is powerful so we'll make the small people empower them and support the world thank you thank you we too small people hi thank you thank you very much thank you everyone before I open the floor for questions let me pitch in with one question myself mr. Xiang as the CEO of Alibaba Group the gentleman already hinted to it but could you explain a little bit more what will the technological benefits be for this from from this partnership first of all we are Alibaba Group are very honored to be the pattern of ILC and 2/15 powers IOC to experience x SS soldiers whole in english in the past changing digital world and our present Parker said actually our collaboration will Inc fit into three areas the first thing is that cloud service and Alibaba will be the partner of LC in cloud service and the by leverage our infrastructure build up in cloud business we want help ILC Olympic Games to be operating in a more efficient way in more effectively and in most most accurate way so that's the first one we want to we want to work together a second actually is that Alibaba is famous for a building of the e-commerce platform and we today we serve in China and in the world we saw about 4 500 million people consumers and today how these consumers actually they want to be part of our in cable and they want to participant so how to make it available for the Olympic licensed products and the boiling process for for the people not only in China but also in the world so we will look to go closely together to make this happen and the last one actually is that is a digital contents and the Olympic has a lot of a very as a fan of Olympics I actually I can remember very clearly when I was a kid and a lot of very important moments and how to make these digital contents available for four generations of generations so that's all about Olympic channel and we will work together with IOC to build a go to this digital platform Olympic channel to make it available for Chinese audiences thank you very much and mr. Loomer let me ask you it was set here on the panel this will help to reach more and more people so how will this change the way you engage with your fans with Olympic fans well I think there's a couple of ways I mean firstly the the Rio games was consumed the video coverage of the Rio games are consumed by over half the world's population we seek to continue to grow that and we don't want to just reach the people the Olympic fans during the two weeks of the games but also 365 days of the year be a be a brand and a platform that's available for them so Alibaba stated aim has been to reach two billion consumers by 2020 through their e-commerce platform so we hope to be able to harness that to create a truly global e-commerce platform whereby anyone in the world can buy any type of Olympic licensed merchandise for that to satisfy their own connection with the games and of course as a mr. Zhang mentioned we're very excited also to look at the collaboration in terms of creating of truly localized and locally relevant Olympic channel if you remember this was one of the two with with the e-commerce platform one of the two critical goals from Olympic agenda 2020 so they will help us create a truly localized Olympic channel in China which will reach the rapidly growing 700 million online digital consumers in China thank you very much let's open the floor for questions we have microphones so I think we have the lady here the two ladies in the front row we could get a microphone here if you could state your name and organization please for the sake of our online audience as well thank you even a consumer from CNN mr. martini put a figure on this deal how much is it worth to Alibaba and second question is the Alibaba brand going to be officially connected to the Olympics of the future thank you and could you pass on the microphone so we get the next question as well okay so think of probably I should ask our CEO just for me I'm I'm pretty interesting about the Mission Valley and the same go and how we can create a valley in sight but Daniel is actually the the being the partner of our English I think this is the evaluable and in terms of the influence in terms of the branch it a brand image in the global stage but more importantly we don't want Ari Barbra we don't want to be a another sponsor or two IOC but we want to be the truly partner to empower IOC to be the game changer in the Olympic game you know under the orientation or inter-gender to need 20 so that's the value we see from from this partnership yes it's true that when we discuss about this thing when when this idea came and my meeting with president Park last last year that we all are fascinated by the things that we can work out together we will say hands in hands with IOC into the digital time this is to us is more much more important and of course we're enabling IOC but IOC is also enabling us our dream that being a global company with our brand all the services thank you please I have to say that it's very difficult to have an interview in essential box turbos and smile at least the three times so you always run away from thinking for the price and yeah I want to ask you one question that you know you know quite a beauty is very important the insertion of society especially do in the fourth Industrial Revolution and what appealing about such creativity especially for young people thank you making credibility yeah creativity of creativity okay I I think you know the in the industrial time we make everything that is not standard they can't stand it and in the digital time you should make every standard of things our standard so creativity is something that can we can wing the machines and I think by working with the sports sports is not like it's only about muscles spotted by brain sports about the creation and I think we want making sure that Olympics that's president Park on the agenda 2020 is that we want to get more young people involved without more creation inside in this game this is we feel that we will make sports more creative we should make a sports which my belief right I don't always have it fee if you want to be successful you should have to EQ but if you don't want to sell you should have it IQ but if you want to be respected you should have the L Q the Q of love and these recuse by sports is the best way to train your EQ and L Q if you do not respect your competitors if you do not respect your team you will never have chance to win so this is what we love about this is creativity that I hope I acid wash you thank you very much we have a question from the gentleman there Donna Donna the gentleman here with a blue shirt yes excuse me you will come to you in a moment all right thank you very much now Obama gentlemen my name is Marcos Etherington la stampa le you forgive me if I blunt where you have two very short questions first of all how do you like Donald Trump and second question is can you really create did you we promised to create 1 million new jobs in the u.s. thank you okay thank you very much this press conference dedicated by the way to a partnership between the IOC and Alibaba but and yeah you're very welcome here okay just very short answer with a very productive meeting and he's fair open mind and listen to my suggestion of small business trade and he's very open-minded and the second is that I'm serious because I'm not not talking to abnormal person I'm talking to president-elect about creating jobs if that is not serious is going to be the joke thank you yes um could we get the phone to the gentleman there I noticed knew by now we'll get to you I talked it from Phoenix TV and actually a gentleman's Phoenix TV is broadcasting the this press conference now so for better communications we should buy our hundreds of millions audiences in China can may I just ask questions in Chinese sorry about it and not receiving how we should respond how issues or form around the teachers out here without in winning - when you're pointing to May 20 now what fidelity in China to settle on podium account owner is now in session yeah yeah sure Roberto de Santiago DNC Hurricane Katia nany interchanges teh enchilada sauce even condo two Mexican Puyo Malika Cindy Hsu Chien Conan of Meteorology's militia now what else England ninja way italiano digestion enjoy Ohno Makoto ha pockets and soda thank you sorry that today we probably not ask you answer the questions about the US and China Trail relationship I prefer that we can if you really interested that we can ask our team to arrange another mouth line discussion about that and let thank you for it let me put the relevant people on the spot we have Jennifer over here for Alabama yeah Jennifer can arranging a time offline about answering that questions today we'll be more focused on the Olympic population Amanda Lee and Nana so Donna yeah so I think it's in everyone's interest to get the microphone to the lady in the back there yeah could you wait for the microphone please thank you thank you what I just seen on tithing on fingers so much oh yes I call brown signal Fernan channel to Nam Kham I have only one question about sports mr. Mapp where you increase your investment on football and Chinese football all around thank you so much thank you will I increase my investments Foca board well I think a lot of people know that I know very little about soccer football the only one I competition I joined when I was a sophomore in the university I kick the ball into my own goal so so I give it up but I think alike for a sports the reason especially team sports because that will make the team work China young people we only have one child of family in the past almost 30 years one child of Emory the children are always the kings and queens we have to make them to work like a ping so this is uninterested in that Sports is about teamwork and not I don't know because personally and couple companies have to ask again you that the whether we will put more money on the spell but definitely we will put more money on the sports so making sure sports can make people happier and healthier thank you thank you very much can we get the microphone to the same of the red dress in the middle here please huh finally all right I'm Cindy FSGS from South Korea well actually next Winter Olympic is housing in Tong town in South Korea and their Korean government and Korean company has been prepared a lot for the next year so what do you guys have a specific plan or any do you guys even have a plan tips that I got opening next year right away so I want to hear what the specific plan for the next year thank you for the question I think she said do you guys so I guess it goes to everyone on the panel yes please thank you very much for question yes you're absolutely right the the next Olympic Winter Games in Pyeongchang I will kick off in just over a year so on remember this is a long term agree agreement going through Twitter 12 years through to 2028 so we will immediately start implementing and working on all these various areas whether it is the the the efficiency and increased security of the Olympic Games organization through the cloud the e-commerce platform the Olympic Channel and so as much as we can we will also bring try and bring benefits in a very short time available to the to to the to the RPM Chung Games I think we should make gear if this was the background of you know your question that there are a lot has been a and invested by Korea we will we will offer but we will not impose there of course for for viewing chunk so where the preparations which are going pretty well therefore for chunk as they will continue in the way they do so this cooperation will offer added value to to to the preparations thank you very much the gentlemen here and the lady in action maybe we can get two questions together hello Sam segment from The Wall Street Journal's question for mr. ma can you tell us what the acquisition plans are for Alibaba Group in the coming year which areas of your business and geographically which regions I hope the IOC is not the target so let's let you the second question then we welcome tense and you just talk about a year ago you started a discussion about this appointment with repeat a little bit more about how you get okay to know each other and what's your major different disappointment and how to solve the problem how do you solve the problem why you discuss about this partnership and a question for mr. ma what's your favorite arcade games and a question for mr. Bach have you ever bought anything on Alibaba platform just the tempura thank you very much all very interesting questions so we have the questions on the acquisition from the gentlemen from The Wall Street Journal how you get to know each other you already spoke about laughs earlier and maybe we start with these two questions we just finished by Wall Street question right arm honestly I'm not interesting with that increase in acquisition I'm interested in about partnerships very impulsive the difference between Alibaba go global and the the other multinational cover global is that we want looking for partners and empowered them to be powerful this is our so we don't have a specific plant I think about McDaniel has it but I my plant is always looking for partners thank you for this very kind question you know we are here to announce our wedding and getting asked about the disagreement there actually as I could not see any any substantial disagreements that when such a contract is negotiated it's unavoidable that there are lawyers implicated and they are very good in creating some disagreements but what in the end there was I think the red line through all these negotiations was in fact that we we share a vision our Olympic agenda 2020 is about leading the Olympic Games leading the IOC into the digital age and in this way achieving two major goals of volume big agenda 2020 this is to engage better with a younger generation and they're also using the different digital platforms and opportunities to motivate young people to play sports you know we want as we say in in in the Olympic agenda 2020 we want to get the couch potatoes of the couch and to make the young generation that familiar with sports to to show them that the sport is good for education it's good for the health but most of all it's it's enjoyable it's a part of the Detroit of life and the second goal is to make the organization of the Olympic against more efficient means also less costly more secure to have an even better and knowledge transfer from one organizer to to to to the other being able to offer solutions to the organising committee and this vision together with a vision of globalization and cooperation was what was a determining thing on both sides for for this cooperation because in our sport was global before the world globalization in in business existed we're the Olympic Games are maybe the first global event in the world for four decades and they are very much about cooperation there are about understanding different cultures as an enrichment to our global society and respect not only respecting different cultures but taking them both taking them as enrichment and they're creating an Olympic unity in in all the diversity and these are together with the overarching aim of sport to contribute to the joy of life there also which corresponds to Ali Baba's mission about better health and more happiness this was of the spirit of this of this negotiation and this is why we both are very happy today because we both see the great potential to make our our visions coming true with this partnership thank you very much we I think we have the time for three more questions please the gentleman he could keep it short and also say our name and organization my name is Jamie Keaton and journalist to the Associated Press mr. ma what is Alibaba doing to ensure that Olympics branded items of merchandise that appear to be counterfeit won't be solved sold through the e-commerce site and to mr. Bach Alibaba was just last month put on a u.s. black list of notorious markets for counterfeits how concerned is the IOC about that just by way of example a search right now for Olympic mascot on alibaba.com seems to turn up results of products that look like they could be based on ripped off designs of earlier Olympic mascots do you have any concerns there can I answer the question first first we are dealing with more than 12 million small business around the world especially that the most of the small business on our platform are from developed countries and lifting more than 1.2 billion products our site so managing and of course we have damages that we have 500 million buyers every and every day through mobile got 200 million so this is a huge war is a virtual world like a real world anything happened on the on the real world happens on the virtual world governing and managing a world like that is not easy all kinds of things situations like a fake products conflict we've been fighting for 17 years since the day we set up we know this is the wall fighting against the human greedy you can never finish the wall by single company you can never finish the wall by 2 years or 3 years and I think today we have the world leading technology fighting against that and we have put two thousand people focus on fight area this is the largest er cap anti-counterfeit team in the world we put the 1 billion and be more than 1 billion and be every year fighting against them so it's getting cleaner and cleaner and I would say we are the leader on that but of course this thing cannot be finished within short time but using our dated technology and I think we want the partners together solve the problem because now when we part in is the Olympic IOC we know exactly who are the real one not real and who them with the data we can trace who's by who's selling so as I said yesterday that it's easy to think a point it's difficult to clean all the dirty things within one night especially the world has been big mass about counterfeit not only in China around the world and it is not easy to kill this human greeting but we are confident by working together we will make a masterpiece trust me this is something that I'm going to fight full and our team going to fight for centuries and we'll finish the war made in Dec 10 to the year with a digital trace who's starting who's buying it was transforming whose to doing that and I promise president Park and IOC will will clean the carpet and after the rooms thank you thank you very much No maybe I can add that just because of this determination and all these measures have been being undertaken we are we are more than confident that this issue of counterfeit will be addressed in a proper way because it's also in our in our interest and but you know on the contrary we we even see a potential to address this issue better through a centralized a platform because of what is happening now is a you know how can let's say the National Olympic Committee of Argentina control counterfeit and on the on the market in in Chile or in in South Africa because of the distribution channels nobody knows and they don't have access to to to the information if with the Olympic platform we have a centralized platform and then the goods have to go over to this catalyst it can even offer us a better potential to to control this counterfeit issue I finish one last sentence about that today concentrate and the fake products they are globalized with criminals so we have to work in together i reaiiy think i is e know the situation we never hide because we are marriage we tell each other everything we're good were that good this is the way I think it's the right way that we work together part in it together and do good things and solve the problems together that's what we want and we encouraging all the people work together thank you very much can we get the microphone to the gentleman with a red tie there between the two cameras all the way in the back yes please thank you I have a relatively relaxed session proposed miss Martin could you also share with us your name and organization Leroy from tyshee its types of coincidence that miss a check matter president-elect Trump recently and mr. Perham met Chinese President Xi just I think a few days ago I don't know whether you have any information on president Trump's preference or likings of sports but we know for sure whether she is very into sports and especially soccer are you confident that with presence she's enthusiastic saina can overcome its institutional problem in its sports sector and from the commercial side mr. ma is only commercial side and how will you help chinese sports to be more professional and from the institutional side how will I'll see how China to make the sports a more modern kind of existence there Thanks thank you very much as a German I'm pleased to get so many soccer questions but we're straying a little bit from the purpose of this Peskin played sports thank you much you still give a brief answer yeah very devilís question very big right okay you change the world most of the times we change ourselves better well yep we are doing tiny things we wanted as a company as a commercial company the e-commerce company as a company have a lot of young people we are thinking that we can do tiny things to change the institution of China or sports and definitely by working with the IOC we are honored to be part of the IOC family and then I think we will work with the government it's it's well honestly when I was young I think I can change the world but now I'm getting 50 years old I no change myself and change the people around us and giving support and empower those people who can do really good things is more important the sports I think mr. Shi as I know that he's he loves sports not only soccer yeah thank you very much I'm afraid we have to close this press conference you will understand as newlyweds they would like to have some time on their own thank you very much for being here today thank you for all your questions thank you for watching and thank you for everybody here on the panel thank you very much

Channel: World Economic Forum

Views: 42,953

Keywords: world economic forum, WEF, Davos, Davos 2017

Id: y_BFAC6i4n0

Length: 37min 32sec (2252 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 19 2017