Soccer tournament lifts Bay Area consumption

A soccer tournament featuring competitions mainly between industrial workers from the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area has helped boost local consumption, along with cultural and tourism development.

Since the start of the tournament two months ago in the Sanshui district of Foshan, Guangdong province, it has helped boost consumption at night and the catering business around Yunxiushan Stadium, the event's organizers said.

More than 40,000 consumption vouchers have been distributed in the past two months around the event venue. The cumulative number of visitors to the night markets of a beer square and a warehouse, which are located around the stadium, exceeded 700,000 people, with sales exceeding 3.7 million yuan ($512,000).

The monthly average business revenue of specialty restaurants featuring local river fresh seafood around the competition venue increased by 22 percent to 153 percent in the months before the tournament.

Additionally, the tournament has played a major role in driving the local accommodation and tourism industries, organizers said.

Three A-level tourist attractions in the central urban area of Sanshui received a total of 240,000 tourists, an increase of 96.8 percent over the same period last year. The monthly average revenue of surrounding hotels increased by 10 to 44 percent compared with the periods before the start of the competitions.

The final of the tournament ended on Thursday evening with two teams mainly consisting of industrial workers from two enterprises based in Foshan competing for the championship.

The two-month tournament, dubbed the Sanshui-version of the La Liga, attracted 26 teams from the GBA, with attendance of more than a million people, according to organizers.

The Sanshui district of Foshan, a major base for China's beverage industry, has developed a large number of professional soccer players over the past few decades.