Villagers compete during a dragon boat race at Xixi National Wetland Park in Hangzhou, east China's Zhejiang Province, on May 31, 2025. (Xinhua/Huang Zongzhi)
BEIJING, June 12 (Xinhua) -- Popular sports events have been held consecutively in China recently, stimulating sports vitality among the public, and the accompanying "sports event economy" has also ignited consumption boom.
Industry insiders pointed out that with the continuous integration of commerce, tourism, culture, sports and health, sports-related consumption involving watching or participating in competitions and broader aspects is expected to inject new impetus into boosting consumption and economic growth.
-- Sports events surge in various regions
During this year's Dragon Boat Festival holiday which fell on May 31 to June 2, dragon boat races became a hot spot.
The dragon boat drift competition held in Diejiao Village, Foshan City of south China's Guangdong Province attracted a lot of tourists. According to data from Chinese online travel platform Ctrip, during this year's Dragon Boat Festival holiday, flight bookings in Foshan surged by 138 percent year on year, while hotel bookings went up 51 percent year on year.
On the day of the Dragon Boat Festival, Wenzhou City in east China's Zhejiang Province saw the holding of multiple grand dragon boat races in its districts, county-level cities and counties, which formed a linkage effect of "sports events plus cultural tourism consumption".
The 16th Beijing Grand Canal dragon boat carnival continued the popularity of previous years, with approximately 180,000 spectators received during the 3-day competition.
In addition to dragon boat races, a number of local featured sports events also led to a wave of sports boom.
The Jiangsu Football City League kicking off recently in east China's Jiangsu Province has sparked a football craze, refreshing people's impression of local football matches.
The 2025 Asian Weightlifting Championships was held in May in Jiangshan City, Zhejiang. It's the first time for the Asian Weightlifting Championships to be held in a county-level city in China. According to statistics, during the event, the total number of tourists and overnight tourists received by Jiangshan increased by 25.48 percent and 27.37 percent, respectively.
-- Diversified scenarios stimulate consumption vitality
The popularity of sports events is expected to boost consumption and economic growth.
The comprehensive driving effect of the "sports event economy" is significant, said Wang Yuxiong, director of the China Center for Sport Industry Development Research at the Central University of Finance and Economics. The driving effect involves multiple aspects such as consumption, related industries, residents' employment and income, urban branding, and real estate prices, and will ultimately lead to macroeconomic growth, Wang added.
Take the dragon boat races in Foshan as an example. Data from the Foshan Municipal Bureau of Culture, Radio, Television, Tourism, and Sports showed that during the three-day Dragon Boat Festival holiday in 2025, 38 of the 41 A-level scenic spots in the whole city received a total of 1.3418 million tourists, a year-on-year increase of 52.69 percent on a comparable basis, with the operating revenue hitting 60.7378 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 37.36 percent on a comparable basis.
Beijing also launched a series of cultural and tourism activities with the Dragon Boat Festival folk culture as the core, attracting many citizens and tourists, with 8.211 million tourists received, a year-on-year increase of 5.4 percent, and the total tourism expenditure reaching 10.77 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 6.7 percent.
Sports events have continued to promote urban-rural integration and regional coordinated development in recent years, and the popularity of sports events is becoming an economic increment, said Feng Jun, an associate professor with Beijing Sport University.
Local governments are also actively promoting sports events to catch up with the opportunity.
Zhejiang proposed in a plan to hold more than 30 international sports events, more than 200 national sports events, and more than 1,000 provincial and municipal sports events in 2025.
East China's Shandong Province recently announced its support for cities to introduce high-end sports events, with plans to hold 200 sports events of national levels and above in 2025, while further cultivating and building independent-brand sports events.
International sports events are the "golden business cards" of city brands, which can drive the linkage of multiple industries and form a consumption scale of hundreds of millions of yuan, said Li Qidi, head of the College of Physical Education and Health Sciences at Zhejiang Normal University.
In the future, by continuously introducing high-level sports events, optimizing supporting services, and deepening the integration of sports and tourism, cities will further activate new economic drivers, enhance international influence, and achieve two-way empowerment of the sports industry and urban development, Li added.
-- Integration of business forms boasts huge potential
Industry insiders noted that the popularity of sports events will further stimulate the potential for the integrated development of diverse business forms such as commerce, tourism, culture, sports, and health.
Beijing's Huairou District created innovative consumption scenarios for cross-sector integration by promoting the integration of "film and television plus sports", and during the holding of sports events such as the Kunlun Fight World Championship, the surrounding catering and accommodation consumption increased by 8 percent year on year.
Guangdong's culture and tourism authority sent out hotel room vouchers, scenic spot tickets and other gift packages to consumers, and the "dragon boat economy" propelled folk tourism, sports event tourism, rural tourism and other business forms, as well as catering, accommodation, cultural and creative product consumption.
Sports events are increasingly integrated into daily life, expanding from traditional venues to where new consumption booms, promoting the improvement of consumption quality and efficiency, said Feng Jun.
With the launch of a series of activities, sports events have extended the chain of event viewing and participation, and catalyzed the integration and mutual promotion of culture, sports, tourism, and commerce, Feng added, noting that numerous events have entered scenic spots, neighborhoods, and commercial districts, becoming a model showing that the "sports event economy" tailors to local conditions, times, and needs.
Consumers' demand for comprehensive one-stop consumption with strong experiential value and high added value is increasing day by day, and the integration of multiple business forms precisely fits the current trend of consumption upgrading, noted Yang Jianfei, associate researcher and head of the Department of Cultural Industries Management, Communication University of China.
On the market side, integration breaks the limitations of a single industry, and complementarity between business forms and resource integration can tap into the maximum value of each business form, achieve overall profit maximization and efficiency improvement, Yang stated.
(Edited by Gu Shanshan with Xinhua Silk Road, gushanshan.1987@163.com)
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