Yantai Drives Tourism and Urban Development?Through Sporting Events, Promoting Consumption Upgrade & Industrial Integration

The 2025 Yantai Marathon will fire the starting gun at 7:00 a.m. on October 19, 2025, at Binhai Square in Yantai, marking the official countdown to another top-tier sporting event in the city’s sports calendar.

Reporters learned from yesterday’s press conference that the 2025 Huang-Bohai Cities Sports Alliance (Yantai) Consumption Season will kick off on October 17, 2025, at the Yantai International Expo Center. The consecutive holding of these two major events embodies Yantai’s approach of “multi-day stays from a single race” and “multi-person consumption from one participant.”

As major sports brand events are held in Yantai, the “event economy” generated by sports competitions is becoming a powerful new engine driving the economic growth in this “trillion-yuan city.” According to preliminary statistics, last year, the city actively integrated sports events into scenic areas, blocks, and business districts by organizing various large and medium-sized sports events at all levels. 

From creating spectacular events to elevating the city’s profile, the Yantai Marathon will bring more tangible benefits to city’s development. In 2025, the Yantai Municipal Bureau of Sports will also leverage the event economy as a strategic pivot to vigorously boost urban consumption upgrading and industrial integration through three major initiatives, injecting strong momentum into economic and social development. 

City Building Through Sporting Events: The City of Olympic Champions Shines with Vitality

The joint launch of the 2025 Huang-Bohai Cities Sports Alliance (Yantai) Consumption Season and the Yantai Marathon aims to promote exhibitions through sporting events and extend industrial chains through exhibitions. It makes the event a highlight of the expo while leveraging the expo as a communication platform for the event, achieving mutually beneficial and win-win results.

This initiative not only creates an integrated scene of “Race Baggage Pickup + Sports Exhibitions” but also upgrades the Yantai Marathon’s baggage pickup route into a consumption route. Combined with “Yantai Marathon+” activities such as quality product fairs, intangible cultural heritage exhibitions, and tourism packages, Yantai is striving to create an immersive, diversified sports consumption scene integrating participation, experience and social interaction, forming a “sports+” platform throughout the entire event cycle.

Looking back at the 2023 and 2024 Yantai Marathons, they have received widespread acclaim. The race baggage pickup has repeatedly integrated with the Yellow River Grand Bazaar and intangible cultural heritage products, achieving the transformation and upgrading from a “baggage pickup route” to a “consumption route” and establishing a new sports consumption scene of “must-visit for participants, enjoyment for citizens.”

The simultaneous holding of these two large-scale events represents Yantai’s new model of “driving events through exhibitions, promoting exhibitions through events, and integrating exhibitions with events.” It will also become an innovative model for the integrated development of culture, tourism, commerce, agriculture, and sports, as well as a “golden business card” for the city’s high-quality development. Yantai, the City of Olympic Champions, is leveraging the marathon to create a one-stop “Sports + Entertainment + Consumption” experience and expand new consumption scenes of “Race Baggage Pickup + Sports Exhibitions.”

Leveraging Sporting Events as a Medium: Building a Land-Sea-Air All-Dimensional Sports Matrix

“Coastal Wonderland · Lucky Yantai”—Rich sporting events form the foundation of the city’s diversified development. In recent years, Yantai has meticulously planned and organized each event, continuously optimized the market-oriented event-hosting environment, increased event supply, focused on its innovation, introduced international and domestic brand sporting events, enhanced the influence of Yantai-style IP brand events, and actively held mass events. 

This year, the Yantai Municipal Bureau of Sports has anchored the general goal of building a strong sports city and issued the Notice on Boosting Event Economy and Stimulating Sports Consumption. Focusing on the city’s general sporting event brand of “Coastal Wonderland · Lucky Yantai,” it aims to create new business cards for ice and snow sports of “Coastal Wonderland · Ice-Snow Journey,” new signboards for marine sports of “Timeless Yantai · Blue Harbor,” new landmarks for outdoor sports of “Timeless Yantai · Mountain-Sea Connection,” and a new highland for regional events of “Huang-Bohai Cities Sports Alliance.” Through a dual-driven model of “introducing high-end events + cultivating local characteristics,” it plans to host a batch of events with high professional standards, great social influence, and strong economic driving effects. The plan will build a Land-Sea-Air All-Dimensional Sports Matrix by organizing one international sports event, 10 national sports events, 30 events with over 1,000 attendees, 15 “Lucky Shandong” cross-border integrated events, and more than 4,000 characteristic IP sporting events. While giving full play to the unique advantage of sporting events in boosting public engagement, it aims to enhance the city’s visibility and establish a new highland for regional events through coordinated efforts with the Huang-Bohai urban cluster, injecting vitality into the coordinated development of urban clusters.   

Promoting Tourism through Sporting Events: Transforming Event “Traffic” into Economic “Growth”

Sporting events serve as windows for cities to showcase themselves, especially the hosting of high-quality large-scale events, which rely on a city’s strong hard and soft power. Located on the eastern Shandong Peninsula, bordering the Yellow Sea and Bohai Sea, Yantai boasts superior geographical advantages and a solid mass sports foundation, earning it the titles, such as Hometown of Athletics, Hometown of Basketball, and Hometown of Martial Arts. It is also the first city in Shandong to be awarded the title of City of Olympic Champions by the Chinese Olympic Committee. 

In recent years, Yantai has continuously carried out the Travelling Yantai with Sporting Events campaign, creating a full-domain, full-year, all-age multi-scene for sports consumption. The city is the arena for sports, and events are the stage for the city. The continuous holding of events in Yantai will further cultivate and drive the event economy, continuously stimulating the surging momentum for the city’s high-quality development.

Taking the 2024 Yantai Marathon as an example, Yantai rolled out a series of hospitality measures such as the Yellow River Grand Bazaar, preferential policies for scenic spots, accommodation package discounts, dedicated shuttle services, and late check-out, providing thoughtful and warm logistical support to make runners fully feel its enthusiasm. These efforts also bridged sporting events with leisure tourism seamlessly, extending the economic benefits of sporting events into comprehensive tourism development and achieving integrated development of the “Sports+” model. 

Nowadays, the combination of the Yantai Marathon and the Consumption Season not only strengthens the integration of events and industries and expands new event consumption scenes but also improves the added value of event activities. It vigorously develops the “game-day economy,” strengthens the “Sports+” multiplier effect, transforms event “traffic” into economic development “growth”, and enhances the vitality of its event economy development. 

Photo Reported by YMG All-Media Journalist Liu Jin