23 Jun 2023 – Worldwide Olympic Partner Alibaba is celebrating this year’s Olympic Day with a series of sporting challenges and online activities across its campuses to promote a healthy lifestyle among its employees.

The Hangzhou-based company has designated 23 June as “Alibaba Sports Day” to encourage its employees around the world to make time for daily physical activity. The activities align with the International Olympic Committee (IOC)’s Let’s Move initiative, which aims to inspire and enable people to move more every day. Led by Olympians and created in collaboration with the World Health Organization (WHO), Let’s Move invites everyone to make time every day for movement for better health.

“We want to encourage our employees to actively participate in sports, maintain a happy and healthy lifestyle, inspire others to prioritise fitness and infuse their lives with renewed vitality,” said Chris Tung, President of Corporate Development, Alibaba Holding Group.

Alibaba Cloud, which is working with the IOC to support the digital transformation of the Olympic Games and is supporting the first Olympic Esports Week with its digital technology and cloud computing services, hosted a two-day sports festival at its Hangzhou headquarters from 20 to 21 June.

The festival featured a range of fun challenges and activities, including an Olympic-themed quiz, three esports games, a hurdle race and a group spinning bike class.

During the two-day event, employees at Alibaba’s 26 campuses in China also participated in other physical activities including table tennis, badminton, skateboarding, jump rope, and planking, while staff at e-commerce platform Lazada, based in Alibaba’s Singapore office, celebrated Olympic Day with a run around the city.

For those unable to join the activities in-person, Alibaba also launched an online social media campaign for its global employees to share the proudest moments they had experienced in sport. So far, more than 21,000 people have participated in the online discussion on Alibaba’s employee forum.

Olympic Day is a global celebration of sport and getting active. It takes place on 23 June each year to commemorate the day the International Olympic Committee was founded in 1894 – the birth of the modern Olympic Games.

Alibaba Group and the IOC entered a historic, long-term strategic partnership in January 2017. As the official “Cloud Services” and “E-Commerce Platform Services” Partner through to the Olympic Games 2028, Alibaba is committed to helping the IOC transform how fans engage with the Games year-round and upgrading the largest sporting event’s cloud-computing technology and spectator experience for the digital era.