From September 9 to 14, the EA SPORTS FC PRO Champions Cup and FC PRO Football World Challenge started at Hongkou Stadium Thermal Power. As a top international event in the FC football world field, this event is not only a competitive stage for top players in the world, but also an innovative practice of Hongkou to explore the diversified integration of "sports e-sports + cultural, tourism, business and sports exhibition", injecting strong momentum into the development of regional virtual sports and the improvement of economic vitality.
As a benchmark event in the global football e-sports field, this event uses "double competition linkage" to create a multi-level competitive system. The FC PRO Championship Cup, which was first launched from September 9 to 12, focuses on the showdown of top Asian power. 12 teams in the FC Online program held high-intensity competition with 6 Chinese, Japanese and Korean players in the FC Mobile program, showing the highest level of Asian football e-sports. The FC PRO Football World Challenge from September 13 to 14 innovatively adopted the "professional player + game community creator" mixed teaming model. The 10 global teams cover 11 countries including China, the United States, France, Brazil, South Korea, Australia, etc. There are top players such as 2025 FC PRO Masters champion Wang Mingqiang, and traffic representatives such as tens of millions of fans and bloggers, further narrowing the distance between the event and the public.
▲Picture of some contestants in the FC PRO Football World Challenge
The FC PRO Champions Cup FC Football World Project Professional Group Championship, a Chinese player from Shenzhen Oga Esports Club (AJ), showed the top competitive level on the field: "The key to winning this championship is to adapt to both server differences and the style of new opponents." Speaking of the international competitiveness of Chinese players, Yang Zichu was full of confidence: "In the field of FC Football World Esports, the Chinese team belongs to the first echelon. In this year's Masters and Champions Cup, Chinese players won the championship."
▲FC PRO Champions Cup FC Football World Project Professional Group Champion
It is understood that the predecessor of the FC football world can be traced back to the first generation of FIFA series games released in 1994. After more than 30 years of iteration and upgrading, the IP has grown from a single football simulation game to a global phenomenal sports e-sports IP. Today, FC Football World has more than 30 million daily active players and more than 70 million monthly active players. The huge number of players has laid a solid foundation for the event ecosystem. It is worth mentioning that it was successfully selected as the official event of the Hangzhou Asian Games in 2021, marking the move of football e-sports to mainstream sports competition, and the electronic economy is becoming an important part of sports events.
▲FC PRO Football World Challenge, Chinese players celebrate after winning the game
▲FC Mobile In-game display-official promotional image
The event was launched in Hongkou, fully demonstrating the regional integration advantages of "cultural, tourism, business and sports exhibition". Hongkou not only has rich cultural and tourism resources, but also accumulates mature "event + consumption" experience through various activities. During the event, contestants and internet celebrity bloggers from all over the world transformed into "Hongkou Cultural and Tourism Experience Officers", strolling and exploring the charm of Hongkou, allowing global audiences to "travel" Hongkou while watching the game, realizing "e-sports breaking the circle" to drive cultural and tourism communication, opening up new paths for the region to attract young tourists and activate the consumer market.
At the same time, this event has also become an important opportunity for Hongkou to promote the development of virtual sports. It not only builds an international virtual sports exchange platform, but also broadens the boundaries of virtual sports audiences through the "professional events + mass participation" model and promotes the integration of virtual sports and the real economy.
In the future, Hongkou will take this event as the starting point, continue to deepen the integration model of "e-sports + cultural tourism" and "events + consumption", create more cultural and sports IPs with Hongkou characteristics, further expand the influence of the sports e-sports industry, and make the business card of "charming Hongkou" shine more on the global stage, injecting lasting vitality into the high-quality development of regional cultural and tourism business and sports exhibitions.
Reporter: Liu Yang
Picture: Competition organizer
