“Su Chao” became popular with its regional stalks and competitive atmosphere, with an average attendance of more than 9,000 people per game, and tickets were hyped. It has driven the consumption of cultural tourism in Jiangsu, and the number of related searches has increased significantly, driving the rise of sports concept stocks and providing reference for the holding of events in other regions.
This summer, the “Su Super League” (2025 Jiangsu City Football League) is becoming a phenomenal “top stream”.
Slogans such as “competition first, friendship fourteenth” and “lost peaches and salt” have already rushed out of Jiangsu along the Internet and become popular all over the Internet. According to official data, the average attendance per game in the first two rounds of the league has reached nearly 9,000, exceeding the level of the Chinese League One (that is, the Chinese Football League A, one of the top leagues in domestic football) in the same period, and the average audience per game of the third round of events held during the Dragon Boat Festival exceeded 10,000, and the audience in Xuzhou, Yancheng and other venues exceeded 20,000.
“Su Chao” is the first city football league in Jiangsu Province, jointly sponsored by the Jiangsu Provincial Sports Bureau and the districted municipal governments, and the 13 districted cities in the province have set up teams named after cities to participate, which officially started on May 10 this year, with a schedule of 7 months and a total of 85 games. According to official information, a total of 516 players participated in this league, ranging in age from 16 to 40 years old, of which more than 65% of the players came from all walks of life, including teachers, students, couriers, programmers, etc.
According to CCTV, after the start of the competition, the organizers were worried that no one would pay attention, and the ticket price was set at about 10 yuan. But with the continuous rise of the popularity of the competition, at present, a ticket with an original price of 10 yuan has even been speculated to nearly 600 yuan a ticket. The popularity of the national attention has also made the sports community rush to launch a points column for the “Soviet Super League”, and it is tied with professional super leagues such as the Premier League, Chinese Super League, La Liga, and Bundesliga.
(Left: Su Chao tickets were fried to 600 yuan each; Right: Tiger Pu launches a points bar for Su Chao)
During the Dragon Boat Festival holiday, Changzhou, Xuzhou, and Zhenjiang launched free ticket policies for scenic spots for visiting citizens; Yancheng, Nanjing, and Taizhou have customized cultural and sports tourism packages such as “watching the game + tourism + food” in combination with ticket stubs. According to Meituan data, the keyword search volume of “Su Super League” in the past week surged more than 16 times compared with the previous week, and from June 3 to June 8, bookings for scenic spots in Jiangsu Province increased by 305% year-on-year.
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The “football heat” brought by Su Chao also ignited the secondary market. On the morning of June 5, the sports concept rose by nearly 3.4% again, hitting a new high in half a year. Jinling Sports, a sports industry chain company located in Jiangsu, rose by 20% in a straight line less than 10 minutes after the opening, and closed the board for the third consecutive day, and the stock price hit a two-year high.
(The outbreak of the Soviet Super League led to a rise in the stock price of the football concept)
In fact, the Su Super League is not a particularly pioneering competition system, in addition to Guizhou’s village BA and village super, the Guangxi Gui Super League, which has held 14 competitions, and the “Zhejiang Super League”, which has been developing for nearly ten years, are mostly mediocre. What kind of advantages does Su Chao rely on to have such a high level of attention shortly after the start of the game? In the face of this wave of traffic, how should major cities in Jiangsu undertake it? Will there be the next “Su Chao”?
01 In addition to regional stalks, why is Su Chao so popular?
“Bulk Jiangsu” is no longer a secret, and the “open and secret fighting” and refusal to admit defeat between the 13 districted cities seem to have been engraved in the DNA of every Jiangsu person. Even during the epidemic prevention and control period, other provinces have one-code passes, and 13 “bulk” health codes in 13 cities in Jiangsu.
Su Chao officially pulled this “infighting” directly to the football field, and the slogan “game first, friendship fourteenth” shouted by Nanjing officials ignited the desire to participate and compete of citizens everywhere, and many Jiangsu fans bluntly said, “The victory or defeat is also determined by life and death”. Through the hot stalk out of the circle, it is the traffic password of many Internet celebrity cities in recent years, and all kinds of “regional war stalks” have naturally pushed the popularity of Su Chao to the phenomenal level.
However, in addition to this joyful atmosphere of “contrast and harm”, behind the explosion of Su Chao is actually the guidance of local governments and the support of professional competition systems.
In November 2024, the Jiangsu Provincial Sports Bureau piloted the “Football Key Development City Competition”, with Nanjing playing against Suzhou, attracting 32,000 spectators in a single game, verifying the mass base of the city competition and being regarded as a test of the waters of the “Su Super League”. According to Wang Xiaowan, vice chairman of the Jiangsu Football Association, it was after this competition that Jiangsu Province organized a kick-off meeting for the preparations for the city league in 13 cities.
In terms of the rule design of the competition system, in order to strengthen the sense of regional belonging, the participating players are inclined to college students, individual industrial and commercial households and other amateur groups, each team is limited to 3 professional players, and each game does not exceed 5 college student players at the same time; Through the age limit of 16-40 years old, as well as the screening of territorial conditions such as household registration, student status, and social security, the team is fully represented by the city. According to official data, 29 of the 13 teams in the Suzhou Super League are professionals, the remaining 154 are students, and 337 are amateurs, with an age span of 16 to 40 years old, with an average age of 24 years.
In terms of details such as the information and statistics system of the event, the selected technical officials, referees and other details, the Su Chao is implemented in accordance with the model and standards of the professional league. According to Wang Xiaowan, the holding of the Su Super League has received strong support from the Football Federation, and the schedule is also arranged using the software of the Chinese Football Federation, and the referees of some games are still the referees of the Chinese Super League.
On the other hand, for the memes of netizens, the cities have also taken the initiative to take the lead in creating memes, taking advantage of the strength to transform the geographical tension between cities into more traffic entrances under the secondary processing and promotion of netizens.
Although the “verbal confrontation” between the 13 districted cities in the province continues, they all adopt the attitude of “only attacking place names and characteristics, not elevating individuals”. During the Dragon Boat Festival holiday between Changzhou and Yangzhou, the Changzhou government also generously declared that regardless of whether the game was won or lost, all A-level scenic spots in Changzhou were open to Yangzhou citizens for free during the three days of the Dragon Boat Festival.
It is not difficult to see that whether it is stalking, ridiculing, or competing, all the links of “Su Chao” hit people’s emotional value and helped Su Chao’s fission spread.
02 Compete the field, and business off the field does not stop
As the only economically strong province in the country where all the districted cities in the province are among the top 100 in the country’s GDP, Jiangsu will naturally not miss the opportunity to monetize the flow of “Su Chao”.
The first to benefit is the cultural tourism consumer market in Jiangsu. According to statistics, more than 180,000 fans flocked to various home cities to watch the game during the Dragon Boat Festival holiday, driving the total cultural tourism consumption of UnionPay off-site channels in 6 home cities to increase by 14.63%, and the number of night tourists in Zhenjiang Xijindu Scenic Area increased by 3 times compared with weekdays; The “bird watching + game watching” package launched by Yancheng has more than 20,000 bookings.
To achieve the closed loop of “traffic-monetization” consumption, there are also special delicacies from all over the world.
Despite repeated defeats on the field, the “9.9 yuan ticket + dried radish fried rice” package launched by the Changzhou division has doubled the online sales of local dried radish brands. On June 1, after Nantong defeated Taizhou 4:0 and Nanjing defeated Wuxi 1:0, the popularity of special food in Nantong and Nanjing also heated up significantly. According to Meituan data, on June 2, the search volume of “Nanjing Saltwater Duck” in Jiangsu increased by 74% compared with the same period last week, and the order volume of “Saltwater Duck” dish set increased by 58%; The search volume for “Nantong morning tea” also surged by 367%.
In addition to cultural tourism and food, in order to support the “Su Chao”, citizens from all over the world have also set off a boom in gathering and watching the game. According to the data, in the past week, the search volume of keywords related to “watching the ball bar” increased by 407% month-on-month, and the search volume of “football bar” increased by 426% month-on-month. In Jiangsu Province, the top 5 cities in the search for “bar watching” are Nanjing, Suzhou, Wuxi, Xuzhou, and Changzhou.
Winning and losing on the field is only temporary, the business off the field is eternal, and Jiangsu people firmly grasp the business opportunities around the event in their own hands. You must know that most of the peripheral products related to major sports events are produced in Yiwu, Zhejiang.
opened the Taobao APP, and the sales of a “Su Chao” fan uniform exceeded 1,000, and became the first place in the new football uniform list; a “Su Chao” team emblem sticker sold more than 800; a canvas bag printed with “called Nan Ge” also sold more than 1,000; The three peripheral products are shipped to Nanjing, Yancheng and Changzhou.
03 How does Su Chao copy?
When Su Chao has evolved into a national carnival that has swept sports, cultural tourism and economy, whether it can replicate “Su Chao” has also become a hot topic.
In fact, Jiangsu is not the first place to host a football league in the province, the “Zhejiang Football Super League” was founded in 2016, and the “Guangxi Football Super League” was founded in 2011.
The last domestic football event that attracted the attention of the whole network was the 2023 Guizhou “Village Super” (Rongjiang Hemei Rural Football Super League). Unlike the Su Super League, which is sponsored by the government, the Guizhou Village Super League is a rural event organized by the people. On May 13, 2023, the opening ceremony of the Village Super League attracted more than 10,000 people to watch the game on the spot, and in 2023, the comprehensive number of views of the “Village Super” exceeded 58 billion, and the number of people watching the live broadcast online exceeded 600 million.
After the explosion of the Guizhou village super, some places have also followed suit and held local “village supers”, but they have not caused a big sensation. In addition, compared with the hot period in 2023, the current attention of Guizhou Village Super is not as good as it was at that time. According to the Economic Observer, compared with the tens of millions of views in the live broadcast room during the peak period, the number of viewers in the live broadcast room of the Douyin platform “Guizhou Village Super” is currently about 100,000 or 200,000, and the popularity has stabilized.
How to promote the evergreen of the event is a more critical issue for Jiangsu at present.
Wang Xiaowan said in a recent interview with the media that in his opinion, (Su Chao) as a league, will definitely gradually move towards marketization in the future. However, at this stage, it is necessary to analyze and judge more calmly, how to do a good job in scientific and professional planning of the broadcasting rights and interests of the event, sponsor returns, franchise products, event peripherals, etc., which is also the focus of the next step.
For areas that want to copy the popularity of the Soviet Union, “copying homework” must also copy the method, rather than blindly “drawing a gourd and drawing a ladle”, and the different cultural soil and economic conditions of each region need to be “taught according to aptitude”. Wang Xiaowan also said that if similar competitions are to be held in other places, the positioning of the event should be considered, as well as combined with its own regional characteristics. For example, Guizhou Village Super League drives rural development through football, and Qinghai’s Qingchao combines football with the tourism characteristics of Qinghai.
In short, in the Internet era, if you want to achieve the ‘sports +’ effect, in addition to blindly copying and imitating, you also need to have enough operational strategies that are suitable for local characteristics to “snowball”. If you want all kinds of “X super” to move from “Internet celebrity” to “long red”, you also need to build a stronger event culture and commercial monetization path as support.
