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Beyond the Screen: Chinese Cinemas Broadcast China Open Tennis and Host Heritage Markets During National Day Holiday
Reporter 欧亚时报编辑部
During China's 2026 National Day holiday, cinemas across the country moved well beyond their traditional role as screening-only venues, experimenting with bringing sports broadcasts, intangible-cultural-heritage (ICH) displays, craft workshops, music performances and themed markets into theater spaces — creating what media have dubbed a "cinema+" immersive cultural-leisure scene. According to CGTN and other outlets, this trend was especially concentrated during the National Day holiday period, emerging as a notable storyline alongside this year's holiday box office.
The most closely watched example was a collaboration between China Film Co-Production Corporation's "Huaxia Film Chaoxianchang" ("Super Live") project and more than 100 cinemas nationwide, which for the first time brought live match coverage of the 2026 China Open tennis tournament onto cinema screens. On the evening of September 30, the tournament's opening match was simulcast in roughly 100 cinemas across 28 provinces, regions and municipalities — the first time in the China Open's history that tournament coverage has been broadcast simultaneously in cinemas, and the first time Huaxia Film has brought a top-tier tennis event to movie theaters.
Reports indicate the Huaxia Film "Super Live" initiative will also simulcast all of Chinese player Zheng Qinwen's matches at this year's China Open, including coverage of the men's and women's semifinals and finals. Participating Huaxia cinemas are using high-frame-rate LED screening halls paired with immersive surround-sound systems, presenting ball trajectories, spin and landing points in high-frame-rate, high-brightness detail while recreating the crack of racket strikes and crowd noise; some theaters are also selling matching themed combo packages and merchandise, aiming to offer tennis fans a big-screen, immersive viewing experience distinct from watching at home on television.
Notably, the cinema broadcasts of China Open matches represent just one facet of this year's broader commercialization strategy for the tournament. The 2026 China Open also launched a "Beijing Colorful Opening" campaign, using a "Super Live + ticket-root economy" model to link the tournament with cultural, commercial and tourism resources across Beijing — including Quanjude restaurants, the Water Cube, the 798 Art District and Longfu Temple Square. Under the scheme, spectators can use their match tickets or related consumption receipts to unlock linked discounts across multiple commercial districts, scenic spots and restaurants, aiming to convert the tournament's traffic into incremental urban consumption spanning viewing, shopping, dining, lodging, sightseeing and exhibitions.
Policy has helped drive the trend. According to public reports, in July 2026 the National Film Administration and the State Administration for Market Regulation jointly issued a notice encouraging cinemas to transform from pure "screening venues" into comprehensive cultural spaces combining moviegoing, socializing, entertainment and consumption — providing a policy basis for cinemas to expand into diversified business lines. Since then, cinemas in multiple cities have progressively rolled out new formats such as sports broadcasts and immersive performances.
On the intangible-heritage and craft side, Beijing's Tianhui Cinema partnered with the Museum of the Communist Party of China's History to hold a themed market over the National Day holiday that combined ICH performances and handicraft experiences with cinema consumption, including an interactive "retrace the Long March" challenge segment. In Huaihua, Hunan, several cinemas partnered with local museums to build "cinema + intangible heritage" scenes, setting up more than 30 ICH craft stalls covering techniques such as filigree inlay, traditional rubbing and pottery-making for visitors to experience firsthand.
Similar innovations appeared in Wuxi, Jiangsu, and Luoyang, Henan. Wuxi launched a "lounge chair movie-viewing plan," offering free outdoor screenings of nearly 20 domestic films from September 25 to October 7 while combining traditional ICH fish lanterns with lighting technology to create a dreamlike Jiangnan nighttime theme. In Luoyang, local cinemas held "cinema + choral singing" flash-mob events over the National Day holiday, distributing national flags and providing professional singing guidance to create a ceremonial, participatory National Day-themed activity that drew large numbers of attendees into on-site group singing.
Beyond sports broadcasts and intangible-heritage markets, cinema chains in multiple cities have in recent years experimented with other cross-sector formats. Some Wanda Cinemas locations, for instance, have added small bookshops alongside their screening halls, while a growing number of theaters have introduced virtual-reality concert experiences and 4DX special-effects auditoriums, continually expanding the boundaries of cinemas as comprehensive cultural-consumption spaces and offering audiences a wider range of options that combine moviegoing, socializing and leisure.
Market data show National Day-holiday box-office revenue climbed steadily throughout the break. According to multiple media reports, cumulative holiday box office (including preview screenings) passed 100 million yuan on the first day of the holiday, then successively crossed thresholds of roughly 300 million, 500 million and 600 million yuan as the holiday progressed, with new releases including "Traces," "What Is a Couple" and "Peppa Pig: The Perfect Holiday" leading the rankings. Industry analysts say the rise of diversified "cinema+" consumption scenes is generating fresh incremental spending beyond traditional box-office revenue.
One attendee told reporters that watching the match in a cinema felt "fairly novel": compared with watching the tennis tournament live last year from seats far from the court, viewing it on a cinema screen put them much closer to the action, with players' facial expressions coming through clearly and realistically — an experience they said "felt especially good." Reports also noted that, hurt by a lack of phenomenon-level blockbusters in recent years, China's total box office has declined for three consecutive years, forming an important industry backdrop for cinema chains' accelerating shift toward diversified formats such as sports broadcasts and intangible-heritage experiences. Watching sports at the cinema is moving from being merely a "substitute option" to an increasingly deliberate choice for sports fans.
Looking at the broader industry picture, data cited by outlets including Guangming Online show China added a net 438 cinemas nationwide in the first nine months of 2026, with the total number of theaters still growing — even as the traditional business model relying purely on ticket sales faces growth bottlenecks, pushing many cinema chains to actively pursue diversified operating strategies. Bringing in live sports broadcasts, ICH cultural experiences and music performances is seen as an important attempt by theater chains to capture incremental consumption and raise revenue per square meter in an era of stock-market competition.
As multiple outlets have put it in their headlines, the phenomenon has been described as a shift "from a single screen to multiple scenes" — meaning cinemas are no longer simply endpoints for watching films but are gradually evolving into comprehensive consumption venues that combine moviegoing, sports viewing, socializing and cultural experiences. That framing also reflects how official media and industry observers increasingly view the diversification of cinema business models as an important bellwether for the broader upgrading of China's offline cultural consumption.
Taken together, the "breaking out of the box" practices seen at Chinese cinemas during the 2026 National Day holiday reflect a broader shift of domestic theater chains from single-purpose content-screening terminals into comprehensive offline cultural-consumption spaces combining moviegoing, sports viewing, socializing and cultural experiences. The trend is not only opening new revenue streams for cinemas but also giving the public more diverse options for holiday cultural leisure, offering a fresh vantage point from which to observe the broader upgrading of China's offline cultural consumption.
