Recently, Wuhu's "Gong BA" workers' basketball league opened. Deep participation by nearly a hundred companies — including Chery Automobile and Wuhu Fangte — broke the boundaries of traditional events. This three‑month tournament not only drew spectators but also used "scenario linkage" to spur spending. The Dajiang Market launched exclusive discounts, Fangte offered event‑specific packages, and restaurant brands promoted themselves off the back of the games, forming a "traffic → consumption → brand" closed loop.

With "government guidance + market operation," Wuhu achieved geometric growth in sports consumption. "The event is expected to drive nearly 100 million yuan in consumption over the year," a person in charge of the organizing committee said.

The maturation of new consumption scenarios depends on policy guidance from the government. In March this year, Wuhu Municipal Sports Bureau, together with the Wuhu Municipal Commerce Bureau, Wuhu Municipal Development and Reform Commission, and Wuhu Municipal Bureau of Culture and Tourism, issued "Several Measures to Stimulate Consumption Vitality and Establish the 'Wuhu Consumption' Brand," setting up a special 4-million-yuan fund to guide development. The leverage effect of this policy is clear: six events held in the first half of the year attracted 12,000 participants and directly drove 23 million yuan in consumption and tourism revenue.

Policy empowerment has led to increasingly large‑scale events. This year Wuhu has continued branded projects such as the "Shenshan Park Fitness Run" and "University Dragon Boat Race," while actively planning new IPs like the Yangtze River Marathon and the G60 Championship, and upgrading the quality of commercial events such as the Hongyangshan Auto Challenge and the China Badminton Open.

At present, new formats such as event economy, ticket‑stub economy, pet economy, "goods" economy, and national‑trend economy keep emerging, becoming new consumption hot spots and growth drivers. How to seize these opportunities, create consumption boom points, and activate the new "blue ocean" of consumption has become a powerful measure to promote spending.

On October 10, in the basement level of Wuhu’s Yaohan Department Store, a pet supplies shop was crowded; a dashing dachshund being affectionate and cute drew many shoppers to stop and take photos. Small pets can drive a large industry. Wuhu seized the development opportunity of the pet market, actively laid out the pet industry, attracted companies in the pet supply chain, and built a Wuhu pet supplies industry base. The base now gathers more than 70 related enterprises, with output value reaching 820 million yuan in 2024.

In recent years Wuhu has targeted the pet economy track to build differentiated competitiveness. "New consumption isn’t a windfall you wait for; it is a work designed with an industrial‑chain mindset," a relevant official from Wuhu’s Agriculture and Rural Affairs Bureau said. Recently Wuhu drafted a pet economy development plan (2025–2030) to promote improvements in factors and policy guarantees, industry standards, industrial layout, and scenario supply for the pet economy.

To continue amplifying the consumption vitality brought by new scenarios, Wuhu set up a municipal task force to boost consumption and established a 220‑million‑yuan special fund, strengthening support through measures such as tax exemptions, discounts, and issuing consumption vouchers. For example, the "Take High‑speed Rail · Visit Wuhu" campaign partnered with railway departments to drive visitors, raising hotel occupancy by 20% during the summer; the "Lobster Food Season" linked 1,100 merchants and generated 20 million yuan in consumption. In the first half of this year, the city’s total retail sales of consumer goods grew by 6%.

Wuhu is cultivating new formats with regional characteristics: leveraging its general‑aviation industry strengths to develop study‑tour products combining "helicopter sightseeing + aviation science courses"; hosting night music festivals at old shipyard industrial heritage sites, integrating steel‑frame structures with holographic projection technology; and renewing Squirrel Town through technological innovation, attracting 320,000 visitors and 17.5 million yuan in revenue. Among these, two consumption scenes — Wuhu’s Squirrel "bulk‑style" IP town and the "Huizhou Aerial Route" low‑altitude tourism circuit — were selected among the top ten new consumption scenes in central Anhui for 2025.

Source: Anhui Daily