Jiangsu’s football boom: A model for China’s sporting future?

In the sun-baked summer of 2025, east China’s Jiangsu province discovered a potent formula: blend longstanding city rivalries with 10-RMB (US$1.39) tickets, blanket government backing and a torrent of social media memes. The experiment, formally the Jiangsu Football City League, dubbed “Su Super League”, now sees 13 amateur sides drawing 30,000-plus crowds and dominating online chatter.

The spectacle arrives at a delicate moment for Chinese football. After the men’s national team fell short of World Cup qualification, this provincial grassroots carnival has captured the nation’s imagination.

Jiangsu’s boom wasn’t a matter of luck — it was built on a solid foundation. All 13 prefecture-level cities rank among China’s top 100 by GDP, with no single mega-city dominating the rest. This economic balance makes every derby a genuine contest, not a mere formality.

Geography helped. The province is compact and flat, stitched together by high-speed rail and expressways. Most away trips are under two hours. Infrastructure played a part too. Each city already owns a professional-grade stadium — roughly 30,000 seats or more — a luxury many provinces lack.

Identity sealed it. Jiangsu is proudly “scattered”: people instinctively identify with Nanjing’s salted duck, Wuxi’s sweet peaches, Yangzhou’s fried rice and Changzhou’s dinosaur mascot. A playful post on Nanjing’s official WeChat — “Competition First, Friendship 14th” — went viral on 28 May. “We’re 13 siblings who compete fiercely but share the same blood,” chuckled a Nanjing fan waving a roasted-duck toy at Wuxi rivals.

Memes cascaded: “Thirteen Brothers” comic sagas, dialect taunts, even naval ships named after Jiangsu cities sending video shout-outs. Stadiums became civic theatres. Drones sketched mottos in the night sky. Halftime shows featured lacquerware and paper-cutting. Fans waved peach cushions and duck toys across terraces. People came not to watch superstar athletes — there are none — but to cheer for neighbours: students, air conditioning installers, firefighters, teachers wearing city colours.

The government kept stadium doors wide open. Municipal bureaus absorbed the cost of stadium rent, policing and volunteers. Tickets started free or at 10-20 RMB. Families poured in. “The crowd’s energy rises with every round,” said internet influencer “Daodao Fu”, who filmed the growing spectacle for his followers on short-video platforms.

Round One attendance averaged 7,745. By Round Three, it had topped 15,000. On 5 July, Nanjing vs Suzhou drew 60,396 — a record for this amateur league. Online views leapt from hundreds of thousands to tens of millions.

The carnival has translated into cash. In August 2024, China’s State Council urged regions to promote service consumption by creating distinctive sports IPs. A March 2025 follow-up pushed cities to expand “special event supply” and streamline approvals. Jiangsu followed the script to the letter — and proved that grassroots sport can be an economic engine if packaged right.

Sponsorships exploded. Eight backers at kick-off swelled to 27 by early July. JD.com, Xiaomi, KFC and Jiangsu stalwarts — Jiangsu Bank, Yanghe Distillery — piled in. Alibaba scrambled multiple business lines to grab different teams, dubbing itself “scattered Ali” to match “scattered Jiangsu”. Top slots reportedly hit 3 million RMB.

Tourism and transport jumped. Between 10 May and 15 July, 5.03 million passengers flew into Jiangsu, up about 5% year on year. Smaller airports like Yancheng and Changzhou grew over 20%. Didi says mid-June ride-hailing to Xuzhou’s Olympic Sports Center surged more than fivefold, with triple-digit jumps at other venues and over half of trips coming from outside the province.

Hotels filled up. On key weekends, five-star bookings in host cities climbed nearly 60%. Scenic-spot tickets jumped 255%. Despite losing to Yangzhou in the third round, Changzhou let Yangzhou fans into its Grade-A attractions for free. “I came for football but received a gift from the whole city,” said Chen Cheng, a Yangzhou native working in Changzhou.

Restaurants and late-night vendors thrived. Meituan data show out-of-town diners pushed Yangzhou’s restaurant orders up 83% on 5 July. Night-time spending on beer, fruit and even bags of ice doubled.

Local governments nudged it along: fan-only high-speed trains, free parking at shopping malls on match days, ticket-linked consumer coupons, bundled hotel-restaurant-show discounts. The Jiangsu Sports Industry Group pegs total seasonal impact above 3 billion RMB — roughly 200-300 million per host city.

For China at large, the Su Super League is a timely case study in sports-driven consumption. As the country looks for new demand drivers beyond exports and real estate, big concerts and imported mega-events have been touted as catalysts. Now, a homegrown amateur league shows a cheaper way: find what makes your locality unique and build a community event around it. 

Lu Ting, chief China economist at Nomura, cautions that not every province can copy Jiangsu’s success. Gaps in economic strength and infrastructure mean some lack the “critical mass” of evenly matched cities or accessible stadiums. Yet the core idea travels. Sichuan has launched a “Chuan Super League”, Zhejiang a province-wide basketball “ZheBA”, and Guangdong and Jiangxi have followed with “Yue Chao” and “Gan Chao”. If tailored well, these events can entertain residents, fill hotel rooms, and revive underused sports venues.

The frenzy cannot live on memes alone. As the inaugural season heads toward its playoffs, the harder question looms: what keeps people coming back next year when the novelty wears off?

“When the novelty fades, sponsorship could evaporate unless the league is plugged into a larger competitive ladder and a year-round participation culture,” warned Chen Jun, FIFA’s Football Development Manager for East Asia. A steadier mix of modest ticket income, transparent sponsorship tiers and shareable media rights will be needed if municipal coffers tighten.

Equally important is what happens off-season. Europe’s great derbies endure because stories, rituals and schoolyard kickabouts carry them through the calendar. Jiangsu’s inter-city banter has roots, but turning it into a living football tradition means open pitches, school leagues, weekend city cups and visible pathways for talented kids. 

China’s registered player base is still thin compared with Japan or the Republic of Korea (ROK). Broadening the base — making it normal for adults to play weekly five-a-side and for children to join community teams — is essential if the pyramid is to support itself from bottom to top.

The policy winds are shifting in that direction. China’s central planners want to move from being a “sports big country” obsessed with medals to a “sports-strong country” grounded in mass participation and viable pro leagues. 

China’s top sports official has emphasized the need to “deepen football roots in schools and communities step by step, with a focus on the long term”. The implosion of China’s “gold-rush” professional football decade — heavy spending, short-lived success, little grassroots spillover — still stings. By contrast, rising attendance and participation in amateur competitions are healthier signals of real marketisation.

It is clear that demand exists if the product fits. The Su Super League hints at what an organic Chinese football culture could look like: rooted in local pride, sustained by community participation, less dependent on superstar glamour. When hometown pride, smart policy and simple fun meet, even a low-stakes amateur match can feel like a cup final.

What matters is what remains when the hashtag fades. If, five years on, Jiangsu’s thirteen brothers are still meeting every summer; if kids kick balls because a cousin once played before 30,000 neighbours; if weekend match-going feels normal, then the Su Super League will have done more than entertain. It will have widened the base of China’s football pyramid — the prerequisite for any national revival — and offered a prompt for other provinces to find their own fit.

The blaze Jiangsu lit will not spread evenly. Not everyone has its wealth, rails or stadiums. But the principle holds: let football grow inside real communities. When the game lives in people’s routines as much as in their feeds, China’s football dream will rest on firmer ground than any single coaching change or tournament hype can provide.

Related: From Beijing to Shanghai: How China’s invisible migrants claim space through sports | How the football craze revitalised a city in Guangdong