The smoke of the “2025 Wuhu Wugou Football Finals”, which can be called the “Wuhu Mini World Cup”, has not yet cleared, and another national-level event is about to start at the doorstep of Wuhu people.
As one of the most influential high-level badminton events in China, the 11th to 14th rounds of the 2025-2026 China Badminton Club Super League were held from December 25th to 28th at the Wuhu Aviation New City Sports Center in Wanjun.
2024-2025 China Badminton Club Super League.
High-level competitions were staged one after another, with passionate Wanjun, turmoil, and continuous applause! It is reported that the district has grasped the trend of “event economy”, using branded events as the traction, deep integration as the path, and industrial upgrading as the support, to fully promote the transformation of sports events from “lively for a while” to “driving a party” – from January to November, the district received 8.3761 million tourists and realized tourism expenditure of 10.248 billion yuan.
Among them, 34,000 athletes participated, and the event attracted nearly 200,000 other related participants, with an average stay of 3 days. Sports tourism has demonstrated strong comprehensive consumption power and has become an important engine for promoting tourism economic growth.
Create a matrix energy level jump
The starting gun sounded, and thousands of horses rushed to be the first. Just after the Spring Festival of the Year of the Snake, the Wuhu Marathon, which gathered runners from all over the country, played a high-spirited prelude to spring for Wanjun District. With Wanjun District’s insistence on “long-term success”, the marathon event is unique in the industry with its “aviation” theme and its influence continues to grow. This year, the event’s standards, aviation features, and service experience have been fully upgraded, successfully attracting registration from more than 50,000 enthusiasts across the country, driving regional comprehensive consumption of approximately 120 million yuan, and was awarded the title of “Yangtze River Delta Sports Tourism Premium Event”.
After a hearty marathon, various events took turns in Wanjun District, kicking off a whole year of excitement. In the process of being deeply integrated into the integrated development of the Yangtze River Delta, Wanjun District has taken the initiative to introduce and host various high-level events, achieving the goal of “big competitions lead to small competitions, there are events every month, and there are activities every week.”
Wuhu Wugou Football Tournament Finals.
Take the National Badminton Super League mentioned above as an example. This year is the second consecutive year that Wanjun District has become the home venue of this event. The Wugou Football Finals is no exception. This year is the third consecutive year that the event has been held in Wanjun. The organizer is currently negotiating in-depth cooperation with the district, and the project headquarters is expected to be located in the district in the future. Professional competitions frequently offer olive branches, indicating that Wanjun District has the ability and conditions to host high-level professional leagues.
According to statistics, in 2025, the district has successfully hosted and hosted 11 international and national-level events and 17 provincial-level events. China Basketball Open, China Tour International Basketball Star Challenge, Stika Cup Table Tennis Tour, China Staff Table Tennis Badminton Finals, National Youth Volleyball League and other events have successively settled in Wanjun, which has greatly enhanced Wanjun’s popularity and urban vitality.
Integrate characteristics and move forward side by side
How to transform various “lively” competitions into an inexhaustible driving force to “drive one side”? Wanjun District’s answer is to use the event experience to boost the quality of cultural tourism, integrate city characteristics into all aspects of the event, and truly realize that cultural, sports and tourism can empower each other and “walk side by side”.
Wuhu Bayjun Aviation New City Sports Center.
Taking the Wuhu Marathon as an example, this event deeply explores the elements of aviation culture and creatively integrates aviation elements into aviation culture and tourism, aircraft piloting, event packaging and other aspects to provide participants and tourists with an immersive experience with unique urban characteristics, promote the transformation of “sports traffic” into “industrial increment”, and realize the two-way empowerment of aviation industry resources and sports development. Let a marathon become a new stage for Wanzhu District to display the city’s image and promote industrial development.
Relying on its ecological endowment, Wanjun District has continued to create distinctive and deeply rooted local event brands in recent years, such as the Wanjun Town Yangtze River Delta Cycling League, the “China Liulang·Water Slow City” Cycling Challenge, Taoxin Dragon Boat Race, Hongyangshan Off-Road Vehicle King Competition, and Huaqiao Town Light Aircraft Challenge. These events are closely integrated and deeply integrated with high-quality ecological resources such as mountains, rivers, polders, tea gardens, and villages in the region. They not only demonstrate the charm of competition, but also become an important window to promote rural tourism and help rural revitalization, achieving a virtuous cycle of “promoting tourism through competitions and revitalizing sports through tourism.”
“Sports + Culture and Tourism + Industry” integration drives development
With the help of events to divert traffic, Wanzhu District’s “sports + tourism” and “points, lines, and areas” have been deeply integrated to create a number of influential key sports event venues, improve a number of event supporting service nodes, and greatly enhance the overall tourism reception service capabilities. In recent years, the district has successively built outdoor sports projects such as Oriental Flying Valley Aviation Camp, Xianghe Aviation Camp, Jiangnan Xianggu Camping, Hongyangshan RV Camping, and Jiuzi Bay, building a long “sports + cultural tourism + industry” ecological chain, attracting more than one million tourists through events, and injecting strong impetus into the high-quality development of Wanjun District.
Eastern Flying Valley Aviation Flight Camp.
In conjunction with various events, the district issues millions of cultural, tourism and sports consumption coupons every month, covering scenic spots (spots), sports venues, new cultural and tourism formats, B&Bs, travel agencies, hotels and restaurants; it explores the ticket stub economic model and launches a tour to Wanjun with events to enjoy discounts in scenic spots and new formats. A cultural, tourism and sports market will be opened to use events to attract traffic and promote Wanzhu tourism resources, intangible cultural heritage and special activities; during the event, a free tourism line will be opened, switching to the “sports + travel” mode, with buses going directly to Xiaotao Village, Xihe Ancient Town, Taoxin Shuiyun, Dongfang Feigu and other places.
Hosting national-level events is a concentrated expression of the city’s comprehensive strength, and it is also a key fulcrum to leverage the integrated development of culture, tourism and sports and activate industrial vitality. In today’s Wanzhu District, national fitness has become a trend, and sports have become the “traffic code” for opening up rural tourism. The “traffic” brought by sports events is accelerating to transform into an “increase” in cultural tourism consumption. Following this line of thinking, Wanjun has not only achieved the concentration and efficiency of passenger flow, information flow, and capital flow, but also explored a new path to drive high-quality economic and social development through the integration of culture, tourism, and sports.
2025 Wuhu Marathon.
It is reported that the 2026 Wuhu Marathon certified by the Athletics Association A1 category has been scheduled to start on March 29, 2026. With the marathon scheduled for the new year, Wanjun District’s “event economy” will surely usher in a new climax. (Wan Xuanwen/Photo)
(Editors: Liu Ying, Han Zhenzhen)
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