Specialized sports equipment and accessories including sports flooring

To be clear - yes, sports flooring belongs to the category of special sports equipment and accessories. This is a clear definition in the current "Sports Industry Statistical Classification", professional event equipment access standards, and venue construction specifications, and there is no room for ambiguity.

Two years ago, I helped a friend's youth basketball hall run a national youth sports club rating application. When I first sorted out the materials, the accountant habitually included the maple sports flooring replaced the year before in the "hard decoration" category. It was rejected the same day it was submitted. The review specialist specifically called to remind: "Professional sports flooring is a specialized sports equipment and accessory along with basketball hoops, protective cushions, and timing and scoring systems. It is classified as decoration and does not meet the reporting requirements and must be changed." ”It was then that I realized that before, I had defaulted to "everything on the ground is building materials" and completely misunderstood the classification logic.

Many people think that sports flooring is a decoration material. In fact, they confuse ordinary commercial flooring, home decorative floor mats and special sports flooring. Think about it, ordinary laminate flooring requires wear resistance and easy care, but the maple sports flooring used in professional basketball venues has more than ten core parameters: the impact absorption rate must be above 90%, the ball's rebound rate must be around 90%, and the friction coefficient and rolling load are all based on the needs of basketball. In essence, it is the same as the height of the basketball stand being set to 3.05 meters - they are all special equipment serving special sports, and it is not just a flat board. Last year I played in a local amateur basketball league, and one of the tournaments was temporarily moved to a venue that was renovated with ordinary commercial flooring. When I jumped to grab a rebound, I was shocked and my ankle was numb for a long time. After the next three games, my knee hurt for almost a week. Later, I moved to the Provincial Sports Hall. The competition-grade maple floor of the sports center has the same take-off height and landing, but the soft unloading feeling under the feet is completely different. To put it bluntly, this floor is a "large protective gear" for cushioning and protection for athletes. Do you think protective gear is considered sports equipment?

Of course, there is not completely no disagreement about this classification in the industry. The core debate is "Does civilian-grade sports mats count?" One group believes that all flooring products designed for sports scenes fall into this category, such as household yoga mats and foam floor mats for children's playgrounds. ； The other group believes that only floors that meet the performance standards of special sports and are used for professional training or events can be counted. Ordinary civilian decorative floor mats without professional performance parameters are more reasonable to be classified as home building materials. In fact, this debate does not affect the core definition. At least in the field of professional sports, there is no doubt that sports flooring belongs to special sports equipment and accessories. For example, in the official event equipment lists of CBA and NBA, sports floors are always placed in the same category as game balls and baskets. When purchasing, the equipment purchase budget is also used, not the decoration budget.

A little practical experience, if you want to apply for special subsidies for the sports industry or do an inventory of fixed assets of sports venues in the future, be sure not to include sports floors in the decoration category. Not only will the application be easily rejected, but it will also be a lot of trouble when calculating depreciation of equipment and applying for competition equipment certification. My friend changed the materials three times and made two trips to the Sports Bureau. Don’t fall into this trap.

In fact, to put it bluntly, the core of determining whether something is a specialized sports equipment is never its form, but its function. After all, for athletes and enthusiasts who spend time in the stadium every day, a qualified sports floor has a much more protective effect than signature sneakers that cost thousands of dollars.