This National Day Golden Week witnessed the quiet emergence of a new tourism trend - "traveling to a city for a single match." Sports events are no longer merely competitive stages, but have become important engines driving consumption and revitalizing urban economies. From Beijing and Shanghai to Wuhan and Inner Mongolia, high-level competitions have ignited public enthusiasm while detonating the holiday consumption market.
During this year's National Day Golden Week, international high-level events including the China Open Tennis Tournament, WTT Grand Slam, Shanghai Rowing Open, and Wuhan Open successively commenced, making sports tourism a new holiday hotspot.
The 2025 Gangshika Ski Mountaineering Invitational in Qinghai attracted mountaineering enthusiasts nationwide, with local specialty guesthouses achieving 100% booking rates during the holiday. The Inner Mongolia Hangjin Banner Automotive Cross-Country Championship combined desert adventure with folk experiences, driving local tourism revenue up 80% year-on-year during the event period. In Beijing, the simultaneous hosting of the China Open Tennis Tournament and WTT Grand Slam attracted over 200,000 spectators, with nearly 40% being out-of-town visitors, boosting surrounding hotel bookings by 65%.
In Wuhan, the 2025 Wuhan Open main draw began on October 6, featuring the "strongest lineup in history" including all four Grand Slam champions from this year. Particularly noteworthy is the 6,000-square-meter sports consumption theme park - Wuhan Open Carnival - located near the venue, featuring diverse market exhibitions, interactive installations for tennis and basketball, and multiple distinctive city check-in points. Fans can not only visit training courts to closely observe players' preparation but also enjoy exclusive benefits through the "Wuhan Open Fan Card," including signature island interactions.
According to Ministry of Culture and Tourism statistics, during the National Day cultural and tourism consumption month, over 29,000 cultural, sports, and tourism integration activities were held nationwide, with "watching games + tourism" and "participating in games + tourism" projects accounting for 43%, up 12 percentage points year-on-year. Multiple tourism platform data indicates that holiday sports tourism product orders increased 120% year-on-year, with per capita consumption exceeding 2,500 yuan, demonstrating sports tourism's transformation from niche experience to mass consumption, becoming an indispensable growth pole for holiday economy.
National Sports Administration data shows that China's sports industry total scale has maintained an average annual growth rate of 10% over the past five years, significantly higher than the approximately 6% average GDP growth rate during the same period. Sports industry added value accounts for over 1.5% of GDP, becoming a new highlight of economic growth. During this year's National Day holiday, sports consumption's driving effect on holiday economy became more prominent, with national sports service consumption scale growing 28% year-on-year, with subdivided sectors including event tickets, sports training, and fitness leisure all exceeding 30% growth.
Typical city practices have shown significant results. Taking Wuhan as an example, the 2024 Wuhan Sports Golden Autumn Consumption Season generated 5.412 billion yuan in economic benefits and drove employment growth of nearly 20,000 people. Since the Wuhan Super League kicked off in August this year, tickets priced as low as 8 yuan have created miracles: the opening match set the second-highest attendance record for domestic amateur football events, with affordable ticket prices leveraging nearly 100 million yuan in direct consumption and approximately 200 million yuan in indirect consumption. The Wuhan Open Carnival, a key activity in the 2025 Wuhan Sports Golden Autumn Consumption Season's "Fun Net" series launched on October 4, attracted approximately 100,000 on-site spectators in just three days.
In Beijing, the WTT China Grand Slam 2025 generated direct revenue of nearly 154 million yuan, with over 88,000 tickets sold and ticket revenue of nearly 88 million yuan, up 54.3% year-on-year, setting a WTT event sales record. Organizing committee data shows this year's China Open achieved overall box office revenue of 88 million yuan, up 10% from last year, with tickets sold out for multiple time slots. During the tournament, total visitors to the National Tennis Center reached 360,000, up 20% from last year, including nearly 10,000 overseas spectators. Single-day visitors on September 27 exceeded 45,000, breaking the event's historical record, with matches featuring Sinner and Zheng Qinwen being particularly popular, with Diamond Court occupancy exceeding 95%.
The Shanghai Rowing Open continued the World Championships' momentum, with the riverside viewing platform on the Huangpu River receiving over 50,000 daily visitors, and related cultural tourism package sales growing 50% year-on-year. Shanghai created a "Sports Consumption Map" digital platform integrating citywide sports venues, events, and surrounding commercial information, with platform visits exceeding one million during National Day.
Seven provinces including Hebei and Zhejiang coordinated efforts, hosting 511 key events in the first half of the year, forming significant scale effects. These events achieved precise traffic diversion through "one event, one strategy" personalized operations combined with local industrial characteristics. For example, Zhejiang leveraged digital economy advantages to host e-sports competitions, with online viewership exceeding 30 million; Hebei utilized ice and snow resources for Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei skiing challenges, driving surrounding ski equipment sales up 40%. Statistics show these events cumulatively drove sports and related consumption of 16 billion yuan, fully demonstrating regional coordination's multiplier effect.
Jiangsu's innovative "Jiangsu Super" football league extended audience stay time by setting up match viewing areas, fan interaction zones, and specialty merchandise exhibition areas. Data shows surrounding commercial district foot traffic increased an average of 28% during events, with dining and entertainment consumption rising approximately 16%, achieving win-win results for sports and urban commerce. Additionally, "Sports + Culture and Tourism" initiatives launched canal cycling events, boosting hotel occupancy rates in cities along the route by 25%.
Experts point out that the sports industry is transforming from single venue services toward integrated ecosystems of "Sports + Health," "Sports + Culture," and "Sports + Technology." Future development requires further integration of industrial chains, improved policy support, and making sports consumption a lasting driver of high-quality economic development.
The State Council recently issued "Opinions on Releasing Sports Consumption Potential and Further Promoting High-Quality Development of Sports Industry," outlining a clear development blueprint for China's sports industry: by 2030, total sports industry scale will exceed 7 trillion yuan, with added value accounting for 2.8% of GDP, gradually making sports industry a pillar industry of the national economy. This goal is being accelerated through systematic policy frameworks, with central government adding 7 billion yuan in sports consumption guidance funds this year, focusing on smart venue construction and event brand cultivation.
Local governments are actively aligning with national strategies, forming characteristic development paths. Hebei Province focuses on building an event pattern of "brand in every city, characteristics in every county," having arranged 200 characteristic sports events this year, cultivating regional brands like Chongli skiing and Hengshui Lake Marathon. Shandong Province innovatively created the "Four Along" event system along the Yellow River, Grand Canal, Qi Great Wall, and Bohai Sea, organically combining cultural heritage with sports events, generating over 8 billion yuan in sports tourism revenue through series events this year. Meanwhile, Chengdu leverages Universiade legacy to develop sports exhibition economy, while Guangzhou builds international sports hubs using Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area advantages, both demonstrating differentiated development characteristics.
Wuhan's practice is particularly systematic, achieving year-round sports consumption through a four-season event system of "Marathon in spring, river crossing in summer, tennis in autumn, ice and snow in winter." In 2024, the city's total sports industry scale reached 95.8 billion yuan, with total sports consumption of 53.2 billion yuan and sports service industry revenue growth of 39%. Sports has become a new engine driving urban economic transformation and upgrading.
In fact, beyond Wuhan, multiple locations nationwide are reshaping sports industry structure through event economy: Sports + Urban Consumption - "ticket stub economy" continues heating up, with spectators enjoying dining and accommodation discounts with ticket stubs; Sports + Agricultural Tourism - grassroots events like national "Village BA" bring more villages into national spotlight; Sports + Bidirectional Traffic - integrating sports with multiple business formats, promoting resource integration and industrial convergence.
Looking at sports beyond sports, developing sports beyond sports. The "Sports+" industrial structure has become a major trend and norm. Experts point out that achieving the 7 trillion yuan target requires continuous optimization of industrial ecology. Next steps should focus on cultivating leading sports enterprises, supporting "specialized, refined, distinctive, and innovative" small and medium enterprises, improving supporting services like venue operations and event planning, and driving sports industry transformation from scale expansion to quality improvement, truly becoming an important force for stimulating domestic demand and promoting employment.
Using one match to leverage consumption markets, connecting multiple scenarios with one ticket stub - practices nationwide demonstrate that the true potential of sports consumption lies in the transformation from "one event" to "one lifestyle," from "industrial driving" to "urban empowerment" upgrades. The sports consumption boom has created a 7 trillion yuan industrial blueprint, with sports industry becoming a new highlight of China's high-quality economic development!
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