Thanks to the flourishing development of bridge, there are now tens of thousands of players in Beijing. With the 1st World Mind Sports Games to be held in Beijing in October 2008 and National Mind Sports Games to be held regularly in the years to come, more and more students will surely be attracted to the sport of bridge. Meanwhile, as the aged population is growing, more places are needed for the retirees to learn, practice and compete in the sport of bridge. Therefore, the BBL once needed a special indoor space of fairly large size for training and competition of bridge due to the lack of a fixed place to hold regular bridge activities.

Thanks to the strong support from the Beijing Municipal Sports Bureau and the Beijing General Association of Sports, the BBL constructed the Beijing Bridge League Clubhouse (BBLC) — a large-scale, brand-new and modern complex to meet the needs of and provide better services to the bridge enthusiasts in the city.
With an area of 650 square meters and well-arranged layout, the BBLC can hold 40-50 tables for competitions at the same time, or can be divided into 3 independent areas for various competitions. The BBLC is well equipped to allow high-tech communication methods including multi-media teaching and online broadcasting.

Located adjacent to the newly-built Olympic Central District (OCD), the BBLC is easily accessible by a dozen routes of buses and the No.10 subway line, which makes it convenient for bridge lovers to get there and take part in various bridge-related activities.

During the two months’ renovation and refurbishment of the BBLC, the BBL stuck to the principle of frugality based on making the best of the existing facilities, to achieve the purpose of simple refurbishment, modern infrastructure and comfortable services.

Equipped with portable POS machines for settling accounts, the BBLC has designed seven kinds of pre-paid cards, namely Member Card, VIP Card, Gold Card, Silver Card, Ordinary Card, Elder’s Card and Student’s Card, in order to meet the various needs of different client groups. The website “www. bblabc.com” has been set up to provide all-dimensional services for all bridge enthusiasts in Beijing, including news release, competition reservation, competition results database, exchange of comments, questions and answers, data downloading and connections to other relevant websites.

The establishment of the BBLC has primarily addressed the issue of lack of proper places for carrying out sport-for-all bridge events. The promotion efforts by the BBL will enable the BBLC to contribute to the development of sports industry and Fitness-for-all Program in Beijing.