Abstract:
The high-quality development of self-initiated rural sports events represents as one of the effective approaches to achieving national strategies such as rural revitalization, building a sports power, and advancing the Healthy China initiative. This study highlights that self-initiated rural sports events in the country exhibit key characteristics, including organizational autonomy, extensive participation, self-funding, and cultural locality. Their development motives stem from farmers’ yearning for a better life, the preservation and promotion of regional traditional culture, the support for rural industrial revitalization, the enhancement of collaborative governance, and the promotion of green and sustainable development. At the present stage, the quantity and scale of self-initiated rural sports events are steadily growing; the influence of their dissemination keeps expanding; and their comprehensive benefits are significantly enhanced. However, challenges persist, including unclear event goals, severe homogeneity among events, incomplete event support systems, insufficient resources for event organization, and ambiguous rights and responsibilities of hosting organizations. To address these challenges, this study proposes practical pathways to promote the high-quality development of self-initiated rural sports events: establish clear development goals to guide the healthy growth of events; explore regional characteristics to create differentiated event brands; strengthen policy support to improve event support systems; leverage digital and intelligent technologies to build robust development platforms; and strengthen the synergy among the main bodies and refine event governance systems.