By Zoey SUN
Hong Kong’s first five-year plan and the latest Policy Address were unveiled on Sept. 16, offering, for the first time, a more comprehensive medium- and long-term roadmap for where the city is headed—and how that direction can be translated into concrete policies. One particularly revealing lens is Hong Kong’s ambition to become the “Events Capital of Asia.”
In recent years, Hong Kong has steadily built a year-round calendar of major events. The city welcomed 49.9 million visitors in 2025, up 12 percent year on year, while visitor-related spending is expected to reach HK$238.1 billion this year. Since the Kai Tak Sports Park opened, it has hosted more than 170 international and local sports, cultural and entertainment events, drawing more than 2.6 million spectators. In 2025, the Kai Tak Stadium ranked first in Asia in both ticket sales and box-office revenue.
These figures show that Hong Kong now has both the infrastructure and market appeal to host major international events. But hosting events and building an events economy are two different things. An international sporting event generates far more than ticket sales. It can drive spending on hotels, restaurants, retail, transport and sponsorship, while creating demand for professional services ranging from event operations and venue management to media production. More importantly, when athletes, spectators and media from around the world converge in Hong Kong, a major event becomes a natural platform for international exchange. The next stage, therefore, should not be measured simply by the number of events Hong Kong hosts, but by whether each event can generate longer-lasting consumption, industrial and communications value chains.
One of the most significant features of the first five-year plan is that it does not treat mega-events as merely a tourism issue. Instead, it places them within a broader framework of sports industrialization and closer integration among sports, culture and tourism. The plan calls for the development of sports through “elite development, mega-events, professionalization and industrialization”, making full use of Kai Tak Sports Park and the “M” Mark system to attract more international sporting events across a wider range of disciplines and at a higher level. It also supports the establishment of Asian and international sports federations in Hong Kong and seeks to use “sports plus mega-events” to drive the development of related industries and professional venue services.
More significantly, the plan sets clear targets for the sector: cumulative sports development resources are to increase by 20 percent over the next five years, while the value added of sports and related activities is targeted to rise by 10 percent. This signals a shift in ambition—from simply being able to host events to ensuring that events leave behind economic value. The goal is not merely to bring spectators to Hong Kong for a tournament, but to use those events to build lasting expertise in event operations, venue management and sports services, gradually turning one-off international events into a sustainable industry ecosystem.
The Policy Address takes that thinking a step further. The government proposes to structure the year around an “International Arts Season”, a “Chinese Arts Season” and a “Festive Mega Events Season”, while regularizing additional funding for flagship events so that the Hong Kong Tourism Board can plan more sustained and forward-looking promotion. It is also introducing a “ticket stub economy”, with event schedules to be announced earlier and the Tourism Board serving as a one-stop bridge between event organizers and the retail, catering and tourism sectors, helping channel crowds from venues into local communities. The significance of this approach lies in its move from individual events to a year-round strategy. A mature events economy should not mean that a city suddenly becomes packed for one weekend. It should allow airlines, hotels, restaurants, retailers and tourism operators to plan ahead, extending the impact of an event beyond a few days and spreading it beyond a single venue into the wider city. The five-year plan provides the long-term direction of industrialization and greater integration among sports, culture and tourism, while the Policy Address begins to fill in the mechanisms for annual implementation and market coordination. The two are therefore beginning to form a clearer policy continuum.
With Hong Kong now capable of hosting major international events, the significance of those events should go beyond attracting visitors. Hong Kong already has a powerful set of advantages: an international aviation hub, sophisticated financial and professional services, a mature convention and hotel industry, and a distinctive position at the intersection of Chinese and Western cultures. Mega-events can bring these otherwise separate strengths together in a single, highly visible setting. Externally, they can serve as a gateway through which international sports organizations, cultural institutions, businesses and overseas media engage with Hong Kong. Domestically, they can give local companies and professional services providers more opportunities to connect directly with international markets. In other words, the higher goal of hosting mega-events should not simply be to bring people into Hong Kong, but to use the flow of people, capital and information to reinforce the city’s role as an international platform for exchange.
Hong Kong should also use mega-events as a vehicle for industrial upgrading. An international sporting event, for example, involves much more than ticket sales and visitor spending. Behind it lies a wide range of professional services, including event planning, venue operations, sports marketing, broadcast production, ticketing systems, legal services and insurance. If these capabilities can gradually be developed among local companies and professionals, Hong Kong will gain far more than a temporary influx of visitors. It will build a pool of expertise that can serve the next event and, eventually, the next market—creating a form of competitiveness that other cities may find harder to replicate.
The government has already begun taking steps to channel event-driven traffic into local consumption. The next step could be to go further by incorporating local business participation, talent development and procurement of professional services into the selection and funding of major events with significant international reach. This would allow more Hong Kong companies to become part of the event value chain—from planning and production to marketing and broadcasting—rather than benefiting mainly from short-term spending in restaurants and retail during the event itself. In this way, public resources would support not simply an event, but the gradual accumulation of a professional capacity that can be replicated and exported.
Over the next five years, one of the opportunities is to connect individual mega-events into an industry ecosystem, turn repeated international encounters into a lasting city brand, and convert the people who come for an event into longer-term flows of consumption, talent, investment and cooperation. The ultimate test of Hong Kong’s “Events Capital of Asia” ambition is therefore not how many events it can host, but how much lasting competitiveness each event can help build—and how far Hong Kong’s story can travel from the shores of Victoria Harbour to the rest of the world.
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Tag:·five-year plan· Events Capital of Asia· mega-events· ticket stub economy· Policy Address· Kai Tak Sports Park· events economy· events economy· sports industrialization
