During the National Day holiday, watching sports competitions became a new travel choice for many tourists. Many places combined events with scenic spots, dining, and intangible cultural heritage to attract visitors to travel to a city for a single match, further turning event traffic into cultural and tourism consumption.

In recent days, multiple rounds of the Zhejiang City Basketball League, known as the Zhejiang BA, were held. In Jiangshan City, Quzhou City, Zhejiang Province, for example, the fourth round of the provincial championship group stage took place, with the Jiangshan team hosting the Putuo team. On the court it was a competition, but off the court it felt like a small city meet-and-greet. In Jiangshan, local specialties such as green peony tea, glutinous rice cakes, and kiwifruit entered the event market. Making more people aware of Jiangshan is itself a gain from hosting the event, said Mao Wujun, a member of the Party Leadership Group of the Jiangshan Sports Bureau. He noted that the first home game coincided with the kiwifruit harvest, and one vendor sold about 1,000 jin on site, with many spectators adding WeChat contacts and later placing online orders.

In the view of Huang Yafeng, a member of the Party Committee of the Jiangshan Culture, Radio, Television and Tourism Bureau, the key to the event economy is not only attracting people to the venue, but also linking consumption scenarios such as tourism, dining, and accommodation so that the event forms a more complete consumption chain. In Jiangshan City, Quzhou City, Zhejiang Province, the opening segment of the fourth round of the Zhejiang BA provincial championship group stage. Photo by Zhu Ziyang.

Across Zhejiang, the province is exploring ways to convert event traffic into consumption growth. In the first stage of this year's Zhejiang BA qualifiers, cumulative on-site attendance exceeded 1.02 million, while online viewership surpassed 180 million, driving comprehensive consumption across culture, business, tourism, sports, and agriculture of 1.458 billion yuan. Around the event, Zhejiang launched themed cultural and tourism products under the slogan Follow the Zhejiang BA to Travel, set up 419 secondary viewing venues across the province, integrated 75 food-themed travel routes and more than 1,900 ticket stub discounts, and brought together resources from more than a thousand partner merchants including scenic spots and restaurants. Tourists can enjoy discounts with their Zhejiang BA ticket stubs.

The combination of events and tourism also expanded further during the National Day holiday. In Fuding City, Ningde City, Fujian Province, for example, the 2026 Fuding Volleyball Association National Day Celebration Fuding White Tea Cup inflatable volleyball invitational tournament was held. The event invited 23 teams from the Fujian-Zhejiang border to compete and incorporated Follow the Event to Travel into its activities, using sports exchanges to boost local tourism. In Dalian, Liaoning, the 2026 Northeast Regional City Football League, known as the Northeast Super League, concluded on the evening of October 5, with 63,259 spectators setting an attendance record since the event began. As China's first cross-provincial and cross-regional city football super league, the event allowed northeastern cities to connect across regions and deepen integration through football, while also attracting more tourists to the northeast.

From Zhejiang's basketball events to Fuding's inflatable volleyball invitational tournament and the first Northeast Super League, the focus of exploration differs from place to place, but all are trying to extend the consumption chain of events. The General Office of the State Council recently issued the Opinions on Developing Sports Events to Stimulate Consumption Vitality, making arrangements to promote the development of sports events, stimulate consumption vitality, and cultivate new momentum for economic growth. Yang Shuo, academic vice dean of the School of Sports at Ningbo University and executive head of the Economic Research Center of the School of Sports at Ningbo University, pointed out that the event economy is continuing to heat up, and sports events are building more connections with cities' daily consumption scenarios and spectator groups, with watching competitions gradually becoming a lifestyle. For most counties and cities, exploring the events plus cultural tourism model still requires further combining events with distinctive local resources, using communication leverage to expand tourist source networks, and promoting the conversion of traffic brought by events into the stock of cultural and tourism consumption.