A TOTAL of 1,618 sports venues are accessible to citizens by making a reservation via the “i深圳” platform on its app.

The number of available venues on the platform has increased from 1,359 to 1,618 since it was launched June 18 last year, the Shenzhen Municipal Culture, Radio, Television, Tourism and Sports Bureau recently announced during an event to promote the platform.

Citizens can book the sports venues around the city via the app by selecting “体育场馆预约.”

Among the venues, 625 are provided by schools, while 6,438 sporting grounds are open to the public for various sports such as soccer, basketball, volleyball, table tennis, badminton, tennis, track-and-field and swimming. The platform has recorded 686,000 registrations with 6.22 million views. A total of 5.14 million visits were made with 27,000 visits daily on average.

The app function’s biggest advantage is allowing citizens to reserve school sports facilities during holidays and other available time.

In 2022, the city and district government departments handed out sports coupons worth 49 million yuan (US$7.12 million) to over 2 million residents. This year, the departments made a plan to provide more subsidies with coupons worth 60 million yuan. Coupons worth 7.5 million yuan were handed out during this year’s Spring Festival.

“We will further improve the functions on the platform, such as adding new ones to check competitions and events, and add the sports venues into favorite collection,” Wang Zhiqiang, an official of the city’s sports bureau, said. He added that, the platform is trying to introduce have 100 new sports venues this year. The bureau encouraged enterprises and institutions to provide sporting service on the platform.

(Chen Siqi)