During this year’s National Day Golden Week, there will be a lot of great sports events. Top international professional events such as the China Tennis Open and the World Table Tennis Professional League (WTT) China Grand Slam are gaining popularity; grassroots events such as the Guizhou Village Super League International Friendly Match and the Village BA National Finals are also extremely popular. From watching the screen to checking in across the city, watching games and enjoying sports have become a new trend in mass leisure consumption during the National Day holiday.
Sports events are connected to people's spiritual and cultural life and carry people's livelihood needs for leisure and fitness; they are connected to the cultural and sports industry and service consumption, and are a high-quality track to activate consumption potential. How to turn the excitement of the stadium into an increase in economic development? The "Opinions on Developing Sports Events to Stimulate Consumption Vitality" issued by the General Office of the State Council proposes that by 2030, a modern event system with Chinese characteristics will be basically formed and a number of sports events with world influence will be cultivated. This is a key move to cater to the increasingly diversified cultural and sports needs of the masses, break the bottleneck of economic development of events, and continue to unleash the potential of domestic demand.
Why can a sports game set off a nationwide consumption boom? The answer lies in the change in public consumption concepts. The concept of national fitness is gradually gaining popularity, and the logic of mass consumption is changing. People are no longer satisfied with basic consumption of food, clothing, housing and transportation, but are pursuing healthy life, spiritual pleasure and immersive experience. Watching an event or participating in a city run is not only a relaxing lifestyle, but also a healthy choice. The iterative upgrade of consumer demand has laid a solid mass foundation for the rise of the event economy.
The event scene is a connector for the integration of culture, sports, business and travel. The venues of top-level events have become a stage for domestic brands to demonstrate their strength; local grassroots events activate the vitality of cultural tourism in counties; urban fashion events cater to the preferences of young groups and continuously expand the boundaries of sports consumption. High-quality events can quickly gather crowds, revitalize business formats, heat up business districts, and release a powerful multiplier effect.
However, the popularity of the competition does not mean that the industry is mature. Looking around the world, mature event economies rely on long-term accumulated event IP to form a full-chain profit model of ticket copyright, brand sponsorship, derivatives development, offline experience, and cultural and tourism linkage, releasing long-term value. my country's event economy is still in the cultivation stage, and the industry still has a tendency of "focusing on hosting events and neglecting operations." Many events only have the popularity of the competition and no industrial thickness. After a period of excitement, the traffic hurriedly dissipates, making it difficult to translate into stable and long-term consumption increases.
The key to revitalizing the event economy and amplifying event dividends is to meet the needs of the public, make up for industry shortcomings, and transform the popularity of the competition into sustainable dividends for people's livelihood and economic growth.
Whether the event is good or not ultimately depends on whether the public likes to watch it and whether they are willing to participate. It is necessary to take into account the needs of different groups of people and set up a multi-level event stage. It is necessary to deepen the development of high-end sports venues, focus on creating top-level event IPs with international influence, improve the professionalization and internationalization of professional events, and polish the business card of Chinese sports events; it is also necessary to take root in the market and continue to cultivate village super, village BA, city marathon and other people-friendly events, and actively arrange trendy events such as skateboarding, cycling, and BMX that young people love, and build an event system that is high-low and suitable for all people, so that professional athletes have a venue and ordinary people have a stage.
We also need to break down the walls of the stadium and integrate sports into daily life in the city. Relying on the event traffic to connect cultural tourism, business, and scientific and technological innovation resources, we will create event-themed cultural tourism routes, business district viewing experiences, and intangible cultural and sports linkage activities to achieve attracting traffic to the stadium, retaining customers at the scene, and increasing business revenue.
Improve the long-term IP operation model and lay a solid foundation for sustainable development of the industry. Open up the derivative development chain such as event cultural creation, peripheral derivatives, theme activities, skills training, etc., get rid of the income dependence on single tickets and short-term sponsorship, and build a diversified and stable profit system. Through government-enterprise collaboration, business linkage, and professional operations, scattered events and activities can be precipitated into exclusive city IP, cultural IP, and industrial IP, truly realizing traffic volume retention and popularity becoming normal.
Vigorously developing the event economy is not just to gather popularity and earn traffic, but is a systematic layout based on the long-term and empowering the overall situation. Keeping the vitality of the stadium in the city and leaving it to the public is the proper meaning of the long-term development of the event economy.
