Tianjin recently approved its 15th Five-Year Plan (2026-2030) for the integrated development of culture, commerce, tourism, sports and exhibitions. The plan calls for making coordinated use of historical and cultural resources, commercial venues, and festival, sports and exhibition resources; building distinctive consumption clusters; developing the street-front economy; expanding the mixed-use functions of cultural, sports and transport public spaces; and rolling out a batch of Tianjin-style consumption scenarios that are beautiful, refined, distinctive and novel, while forging local Tianjin IP.
This prompts three questions: Is integration merely a platter of several sectors? How can a single ticket stub organize an entire consumption chain? And if integrated development is the lever for urban consumption, what is the lever for integrated development itself?
I. The spending power of one ticket stub
Integration is not a platter, and a platter is not mere addition; integration seeks a multiplier.
According to industry estimates, large concerts have an average spillover coefficient as high as 1:6.85 - every one yuan of ticket revenue drives nearly seven yuan in transport, accommodation, dining and shopping. In 2025, large concerts across China directly drove more than 220 billion yuan in related consumption beyond box-office revenue. A single Phoenix Legend concert in Jinan lifted hotel bookings in surrounding business districts by 12.8 times year on year; traveling to a city for one concert has shifted from a marketing slogan into a real travel decision.
Sports events show an even stronger multiplier. This year's F1 Chinese Grand Prix drew more than 230,000 spectators over three days, a near-20-year high, and foreign arrivals through Shanghai ports exceeded 27,000 on race day alone. During the China Open tennis tournament in Beijing, consumption in the Asia Olympic business district rose 110 percent year on year, with the event's pull on the district reaching 1:11.1.
This helps explain the rise of the ticket-stub economy. According to media reports, the Beijing International Film Festival pioneered ticket-stub linkage, letting one movie ticket unlock offers across shopping districts, museums, restaurants and hotels; by its 16th edition it had upgraded to Ticket-Stub Economy 2.0, driving 18.02 billion yuan in consumption during that edition.
According to official statistics, in 2025 services accounted for 46.1 percent of residents' per-capita consumption; revenue of cultural-service industries reached 8.58 trillion yuan, up 12 percent; and the experience economy totaled 19.67 trillion yuan, on track to exceed 59 trillion by 2035.
There is a striking parallel. The exhibition industry was once hailed as a green, sunrise sector, and its 1:9 pulling effect two decades ago was both a key driver and a key rationale behind its rapid expansion. Today, the 15th Five-Year Plan outline includes the pledge to deepen the integration of commerce, tourism, culture, sports and health.
Integration is not a buzzword riding a trend; it is the natural outcome of urban development in the age of service consumption. The value of one ticket stub will ultimately be defined by the depth of a city's integration. In other words, urban competition is no longer about how many events are held or exhibitions attracted, but a harder question: how to turn cultural resources, event traffic and exhibition visitors into measurable, sustainable increments in urban consumption.
That view has merit, but it is clearly not the whole story - integrated development has never been a matter of simple addition or multiplication.
II. The path of integration
Six currents are now converging across culture, commerce, tourism, sports and exhibitions.
First, from staging events to creating scenes. Event traffic is a pulse; only the appeal of a scene endures. Chongqing is building 200 Mountain City Alleys; Shanghai is converting old factory sites into cultural and sports consumption venues; Beijing is laying out four differentiated vitality zones.
Second, from riding hotspots to building IP. Xi'an's Tang Mystery Box and Upside-Down Figurine performances generated more than 22 million yuan in annual cultural-creative revenue; Guangzhou distilled the Eight New Sights of Yangcheng Consumption; Shanghai is pushing IP-plus crossovers. Imported events only rent traffic; proprietary IP accumulates assets.
Third, from offline to digital-physical fusion. The two-kilometer MR immersive block at Xi'an's Tang Dynasty Mall, the digital avatar Little Zhuge at Chengdu's Wuhou Shrine, and Beijing's super-live ecosystem show technology becoming infrastructure for reconstructing experience and extending dwell time.
Fourth, from case-by-case approval to institutional arrangements. Shanghai has codified its coordination mechanism through legislation, and Beijing's Chaoyang District has set up an annual policy-fulfillment mechanism. The biggest barrier to integration has never been creativity but departmental silos; institutionalization clears the institutional cost standing in the way of the multiplier effect.
Fifth, from single-point ignition to citywide linkage. Beijing proposes traveling to a city for one play, one exhibition, one festival or one tournament, letting traffic spill from core venues into the city's capillaries.
Sixth, the three carriages of exhibitions, sports events and performances are taking shape and converging. Under enhancing the function of trade-promotion platforms, the 15th Five-Year Plan outline pledges to continue running well the China International Import Expo, the Canton Fair and the China International Fair for Trade in Services; the plan for expanding consumption sets a target of 60 trillion yuan in total retail sales of consumer goods by 2030.
As a result, the yardstick for an exhibition is no longer only its value to its own industry; it is extending from transaction volume to how much accommodation, dining, retail and repeat visitation it brings to the city.
III. What is the core of integration?
When a city begins measuring an event by its consumption multiplier rather than its booth area - moving from exhibitions to mega-events and on to integrated culture-commerce-tourism-sports-exhibition development - the professional value of exhibition practitioners is actually amplified. What they operate is no longer a single mega-event (an exhibition, tournament or performance), but the main gateway and dispatcher of a city's traffic.
Integrated development is certainly a good thing; whether through addition or multiplication, the total grows. Yet what is lacking today is not policy alone. What truly produces a chemical reaction is never the combination itself, but the supply of quality content. Only when content is good and appeal is strong will people be willing to travel, to stay and to enjoy.
Policy certainly matters. With policy, a single ticket stub can weave culture, commerce, tourism, sports and exhibitions into one organic whole. Going deeper, more departments must take part: transport authorities ensure mobility, fire departments hold the safety baseline, and health and other departments must coordinate as well.
Mega-events have never been simple. In the past, local departments held differing views on the value of mega-events; integrated development now requires every department to act on its mandate, take initiative and cooperate closely in expanding and upgrading the service sector. That mega-events have come this far, and that integrated cultural and tourism development is now written large, reflects both the need of consumption upgrading and the inevitability of industrial evolution. It tests not only creativity and traffic, but urban governance, public services and cross-departmental coordination.
The next step is to move from physical combination to chemical fusion, from traffic to retained traffic, and from single events to an industrial ecosystem. Ultimately, what counts is the power of content appeal, institutional coordination and urban governance.
Four points follow. First, content is king: without quality content, integration is only a platter; with good content, people are willing to come and to stay. Second, policy is a catalyst rather than an endpoint - it is the igniter, and the ticket-stub economy is an entry point, not the whole answer. Third, departments must coordinate: transport, fire, health, security and market regulation must form a joint mechanism. Fourth, industry must close the loop: mega-events are both consumption demand and industrial development, and must ultimately form a sustainable ecosystem.
The integration of culture, commerce, tourism, sports and exhibitions is not simple addition; it is a multiplication driven jointly by content, policy, services and governance. Integration truly succeeds only when visitors come drawn by reputation, stay to the full and want to return. What decides the endgame will not be whose subsidies are higher or whose events are more numerous, but who first builds a lasting mechanism that keeps traffic in the city, accounts clearly for consumption and lets brands stand firm.
(By Yu Yang. Source: Global Expo media platform. The views expressed are those of the author.)