The National Sports Industry Work Conference held in Jinan, Shandong on April 11 sent a strong signal: China’s sports event economy is undergoing a strategic transition from scale expansion to quality leap. Gao Zhidan, Director and Party Secretary of the General Administration of Sport of China, emphasized the need to refine policy frameworks, deepen cross-sector integration to unlock industrial potential, and focus on modernizing industrial systems, industrializing sports disciplines, digitizing technological empowerment, regional collaboration, and brand-driven quality enhancement. These efforts aim to comprehensively elevate the development level of the sports industry.  

Standardization Upgrade: Reshaping Industry Ecology

The dazzling success of the Beijing-Zhangjiakou Winter Olympics marked a new phase in China’s ice and snow economy. During the Harbin Asian Winter Games, sports-related consumption surged to ¥25 billion, reflecting a 35% year-on-year increase, underscoring the sector’s robust momentum. This winter sports boom not only ignited public enthusiasm but also catalyzed industrial transformation. For instance, Zhangjiakou’s Ice-Snow Equipment Industrial Park developed a ski board dynamic stress testing system with 0.01mm precision, setting a new industry benchmark. This innovation drove the market share of domestically produced high-end ski boards from 12% in 2019 to 34% in 2023, creating a tripartite growth model driven by technological standards, manufacturing upgrades, and consumer experience enhancement, fostering a healthier competitive ecosystem.

Digitization Upgrade: "Event+" Systems Become a Trend

Digitally empowered sports event models are reshaping urban development. The global hype around the Paris Olympics has spurred a domestic "sports+" consumption wave. The Hangzhou World Cup Asian Qualifiers attracted over 70,000 spectators, setting a record for Chinese football attendance. Behind this success lies a comprehensive upgrade in digital viewing experiences, blending on-site immersion with cloud-based interaction to create a "core event day + tourism" consumption ecosystem. Today, event economies have evolved from single-scene activities into key engines for urban digital transformation, emerging as a defining trend of the era.  

Intelligent Upgrade: AI Revolution in Venue Services

The digital transformation of Hangzhou Asian Games venues set a global benchmark for smart sports facility management. By adopting a "digital twin smart hub," these venues achieved full lifecycle intelligent management, pioneering an AI-driven service revolution. Modern sports facilities now prioritize comprehensiveness, integration, and sustainability. Following this trend, Olympic centers, public fitness hubs, and university stadiums across China are upgrading facilities to enhance technological, intelligent, and professional standards, sharing smart sports achievements with the public and improving accessibility to recreational infrastructure.  

The sports industry is undergoing a three-dimensional leap—standard reconstruction, digital empowerment, and intelligent innovation—ushering in a new era of high-quality development. This all-encompassing revolution, spanning product standards to service models, has not only incubated emerging sectors like smart venue management and sports data analytics but also forged an integrated "tech + sports + consumption" innovation system. These advancements reflect China’s shift from scale-driven growth to value-driven excellence, accelerating the industry’s rise as a pillar of the national economy through the cultivation of new productive forces.