Twenty years of sports venue provision in China: National evidence from official statistics, 2004–2024

Long-term surveillance of sports venue provision can help document changes in national infrastructure and provide a baseline for future spatial, behavioural, and public health research. China has expanded its sports infrastructure substantially, and the official observation series provides a national administrative record that can complement regional and population-specific empirical studies. This study described changes in national sports venue provision in China across the available official observations from 2004 to 2024. A longitudinal descriptive ecological analysis was conducted using official national sports venue statistics published by the General Administration of Sport of China. The series comprised the fifth national sports venue census reported in 2004, the sixth national sports venue census reported in 2014, and annual national sports venue statistical surveys reported from 2015 to 2024. Three indicators were analysed: number of sports venues, total sports venue area, and per-capita sports venue area. Descriptive measures included absolute increase, relative increase, endpoint-based average annual increase, endpoint compound annual growth rate (CAGR), indexed values (2004 = 100), and period-specific growth rates. Between the 2004 and 2024 observation endpoints, the number of sports venues increased from 850,000 to 4.842 million (+ 469.6%; endpoint CAGR: 9.09%). Total sports venue area increased from 1.33 to 4.23 billion m² (+ 218.0%; endpoint CAGR: 5.96%), while per-capita sports venue area increased from 1.03 to 3.00 m²/person (+ 191.3%; endpoint CAGR: 5.49%). The number of venues increased faster than the two area-based indicators, and this divergence became more apparent after the 2014 observation. All annual observations from 2015 to 2024 were higher than the preceding observation, although the annualised growth rates varied across intervals. The findings provide a national descriptive baseline for the 2004–2024 study window and show that venue number, total area, and per-capita area capture distinct dimensions of recorded infrastructure provision. These statistics do not directly measure accessibility, public availability, quality, utilisation, physical activity, or health outcomes; future research can integrate them with spatial, behavioural, and facility-level data.