Marathon races make the contestants "hot", and the boats will be in waves one by one. This spring, many places have held marathon, boat, kayak and other popular sports events to increase traffic. The General Administration of Sport of the People's Republic of China, the Ministry of Commerce and the Ministry of Culture and Tourism have also recently issued the Notice on Carrying out the Activities of "Sports Events in Scenic Spots, Blocks and Business Districts", encouraging all regions to hold sports events according to local conditions. These measures not only stimulate new events and new scenes, but also transform the flow of sports events into an increase in consumption, adding new momentum to economic development.
For a long time, sports events have been known as the "pearl on the sports industry chain", with high attention, wide driving range, and can stimulate new consumption growth points. Large sports events will not only drive the market growth of sports watching and sports products, but also drive the expenditure on sports tourism, fitness and leisure, sports education and training. At the same time, the event can also enhance the reputation of the host city and surrounding areas, and display a good image of the city.
Taking the marathon as an example, according to the Blue Book of 2023 China Road Running Events issued by the China Track and Field Association, China's road running events in 2023 have basically recovered to the 2016 level, up to 699, with a total number of 6051900 participants. These events not only prospered the sports market, but also played a huge role in enabling regional development.
It should also be noted that some large-scale sports events are developing in a "blowout" manner in various places. While gathering popularity, increasing traffic, and building image, the problems also attract attention. For example, some events are still in the stage of "crossing the river by feeling the stones", lacking systematic and overall planning, low integration, not obvious brand effect, and limited coverage and radiation belt power. Some events lack professionals who are proficient in market operation and event product marketing, resulting in insufficient development of upstream and downstream industrial chains and unsustainable development of event derivative benefits. In this regard, we should give full play to the comprehensive benefits of sports events and better let the new scenes of events release new momentum of development.
On the one hand, pay attention to systematic planning and increase the top-level design and scientific layout of sports events. Grasp the development trend of domestic and international sports events, optimize the long-term development plan of sports events, and improve the layout of sports events. In particular, it is necessary to highlight the natural endowments, sports resources, cultural heritage and other characteristics of different regions, avoid homogeneous competitions, and build a scientific, diversified and distinctive special event planning. Based on the principle of scientization, specialization and refinement, and by means of digitalization and informatization, the intelligent operation of event registration, lottery drawing, result announcement and other links will be realized, and the event organization and service quality will be comprehensively improved.
On the other hand, we should promote the coordinated development of upstream and downstream industries. In combination with the existing urban infrastructure, optimize the consumption places such as hotels, business districts, cultural entertainment, etc., to meet the participants' derivative consumption needs for catering, shopping, accommodation, etc., especially to revitalize the existing resources such as catering, accommodation, transportation routes, improve the utilization rate of existing facilities, realize the synergy between "soft resources" and "hard support", and make sports events "flow" It can be better translated into "reserve" for cultural tourism consumption. (Chen Peng)
