Are Hong Kong’s sporting events really mega, or niche occasions that lack mass appeal?
Rugby sevens and the odd football game aside, the sport Hong Kong hosts has little attraction in the global market, some fear
Hong Kong will have hosted 21 sports events in 2024 that have “M” Mark status – meaning they were eligible for government funding – ranging from the Standard Chartered Hong Kong Marathon to the World Taekwondo Poomsae Championships.
In September, Formula One will descend on Singapore for its iconic nighttime Grand Prix, while this week Macau hosts the world’s best table tennis stars for the world championships before UFC fighters come to town in November.
But as Hong Kong continues to focus on building an events-based economy, with sports playing a key role, there are some who question whether the city can compete with its regional rivals and if the occasions on offer really do have mass appeal.
“I think for [Hong Kong’s] sports events, many of them are for the niche market – only people who care about those sports would be drawn to those sports events,” Vera Yuen Wing-han, a political economy lecturer at the University of Hong Kong, said.
“They’re not for the masses, they’re not everybody’s interest … and that would not fit the definition of mega-events.”
Yuen said the term mega-events should be left for sporting spectacles such as the Olympics or Asian Games, which attract global attention, or when tens of thousands of spectators come together, such as the Cathay/HSBC Hong Kong Sevens.
