Branding Taiwan Through Sports

This year’s World Masters Games (WMG) delivered a number of firsts. They were the first WMG to be held in Asia and had the largest number of competitors in the games’ history, and even featured the games’ oldest-ever competitor, 105-year old Sawang Janpram from Thailand.

A total of 25,590 athletes, trainers and other personnel from 107 countries and territories took part in the event. Competitors not only challenged themselves in accordance with the WMG’s 2025 slogan, “Sports beyond age, life without limits,” but also enjoyed Taiwan’s food, hospitality and convenient transportation while they were here.

Experiencing Taiwan

To help convey the warmth and sporting spirit of Taiwan’s cities, organizers gifted each foreign competitor an EasyCard preloaded with NT$1,200. And, whether releasing sky lanterns in Pingxi, drinking tea at Maokong, or shopping in the Yongkang, Dadaocheng or Ximen­ding retail districts, athletes needed only to present their competition badge to receive discounts at more than 2,000 restaurants and shops.

Chang Sheng-chieh (Elwin Chang), director of the WMG 2025 organizing committee, says that organizers eased foreign competitors’ participation in the Taiwan games by arranging more than 2,000 vehicle trips between the airport and the registration center over a five-day period. They were also given an Olympics-like reception during the opening ceremony. One Australian athlete remarked that his experience of the 2025 games had prompted him to add Taipei to his personal list of vacation destinations.

The Taipei Dome hosted the baseball finals of WMG 2025.

104-year-old Lin Yu-mao, the world’s oldest competitive badminton player, dances during the WMG 2025 opening ceremony.

Taiwan-branded competitions

Chen Mei-yen, a member of the Chinese Taipei Olympic Committee executive board and professor in the Graduate Institute of Sport, Leisure and Hospitality Management at National Taiwan Normal University, says that a fellow attendee at the November 2024 general assembly of the Association of National Olympic Committees shared with her the great impression he had gained of Taiwan while visiting for the World University Games in 2017.

Taiwan’s hosting of international athletic competitions, and integration of its cities, local culture and tourism destinations into the marketing of these competitions, underlies this positive impression. It is the result of a deliberate effort: in 2018 the Executive Yuan began implementing a plan to systematically build a unique “Taiwanese brand” through the hosting of international sporting events.

Incorporating “Taiwan” or a city’s name into the name of sporting events held here has been an important part of this strategy.

Chen, who worked on the plan, offers examples of this in action: the ROC Open badminton tournament became the Taipei Open to raise the profile of the host city and link the tournament to Taiwan. She explains that the underlying reasoning is that instead of being confused by the “ROC” designation, competitors searching online for the host city will recognize that Taipei is in Taiwan, and therefore connect the tournament with Taiwan, just as they associate Wimbledon with England and the Melbourne Open with Australia.

Elwin Chang says that the WMG 2025 not only drew top competitors to Taiwan, but also raised our island’s international profile.

The Songshan Cultural and Creative Park hosted an immersive exhibition on sports, technology, culture and sustainability during WMG 2025.

Competition plus local scenery

Chen also cites the example of the Tour de Taiwan cycle race, the name of which deliberately echoes that of the Tour de France.

She says that while in Denmark one year, she happened to see a broadcast about the Tour de Taiwan with the event’s name emblazoned on the screen. This was great because the broadcaster, Eurosport, airs in 20 languages and more than 100 countries. And when bicycle manufacturers Giant and Merida joined as early sponsors and fielded their own cycling teams, it further elevated the tour’s international profile and spurred the development of Taiwan’s cycle racers.

The Tour de Taiwan attracted even more international professional cycling teams once it joined the UCI Asia Tour. And competitors from abroad are sure to try pearl tea, pineapple cakes, and Ding Tai Feng’s soup dumplings while here. After all, these treats are less expensive to sample here in their homeland than in Europe or the US!

Like the Tour de Taiwan, December’s annual Taiwan Open of Surfing allows athletes to compete while taking in magnificent scenery. Held at Jinzun Harbor, Taitung County, this World Surf League competition attracts top surfers from around the world. Taitung’s blue seas and the good waves raised by the Northeast Monsoon encourage many surfers to stick around for a long stay every year.

International competitions enable cities to showcase their culture, tourism destinations and technology. The photo shows the WMG 2025 opening ceremony.

Athletes love to visit Taiwan

Athletes arriving early to warm up for a competition make sure not to miss out on the chance to eat and shop in Tainan. Competitors from Cuba and Panama are particularly known for buying Taiwan-made gloves, bats and athletic shoes while here.

The Jialeshuei International Surfing Competition, held at Jialeshui in Pingtung County’s Manzhou Township and sanctioned by the Asian Surf Cooperative, is marking its 20th anniversary in 2025. Ryan Lee, an event marketing manager for the competition’s organizer, the Taiwan Ocean Recreation Sports Association, says that even though it’s a relatively small event, ­diehard surfers from more than ten countries turn up every year to compete.

NTNU professor Chen Mei-yen says that international sporting events are great for promoting innovation and exchange.

Making friends and becoming stronger through international sporting events.

The Tour de Taiwan’s visibility and influence has spread to Europe and Southeast Asia, making it a great platform for marketing Taiwan. (courtesy of the Sports Administration, MOE)

A forum for international exchange

“We are also making friends through the international associations of various sports,” says Chen. “We see korfball, which requires teams to have an equal number of men and women on the field, as a sport that stresses equal rights.” Members of the Chinese Taipei Korfball Association hold important positions in both the International Korfball Federation and IKF Asia, and were able to gain Taipei hosting rights for the 2023 IKF World Korfball Championship. The Chinese Taipei team’s second-place finish elevated it into the top tier of international teams.

The International Children’s Games (ICG) were founded in 1968 with a largely European membership. Chang Fen-fen, a former deputy secretary-general in Taiwan’s presidential office, became a member of the ICG executive committee in 2005, just a few short years after Taipei hosted the games in 2002. During her 16 years in the post, Chang has built strong ties with the committee and won the right for New Taipei City to host the 2016 ICG. 

More recently, Hualien County has won hosting duties for the 58th ICG in 2026.

At the behest of the Sports Administration of the Ministry of Education (MOE), the National Association of Small and Medium Enterprises (NASME) annually hosts five international forums on Taiwan’s branding through sporting events. Sandy Chou, assistant director of NASME’s Development Center, explains that administrators of international sporting events and city representatives attending the forums are also invited to tour Taiwan’s sports and competition facilities. This year, participants visited the Yonghe Civil Sports Center and inspected its ceiling and lighting equipment. Perttu Pesa, chair of the International Association of Event Hosts and the major events director for the city of Tampere in Finland, complimented Taiwan on the professionalism of its community sports centers.

The world-class waves brought by the Northeast Monsoon attract top-tier windsurfers from around the world to compete in Taitung.
(photo by Lin Min-hsuan)

International sporting events are incorporating the ingenuity and charm of Taiwan’s cities and countryside. Here, Malaysia’s Team Infin17y Triathlon takes a group photo after winning several prizes in Taitung’s 2025 Puyuma Triathlon.

Public-private cooperation

Taiwan’s first World Athletics Gold-Label-certified marathon, the Wan Jin Shi Marathon, is a public‡private partnership between the Chinese Taipei Athletics Association and the New Taipei City Government that integrates local scenery and agriculture with a sporting event.

Chou recalls that in 2024 she arranged a meeting between the Wan Jin Shi Marathon and the Tokyo Marathon. Tad Hayano, chairman of the Tokyo Marathon, was the originator of the concept of “integrated running”—turning a simple footrace into a festive event that embraces the city and involves the whole populace.

International sporting events offer an ideal opportunity to showcase Taiwan. In the photo, Tsai Yu-feng wears an Amis-themed outfit at the opening of the 2024 World Junior Figure Skating Championships. (courtesy of the Sports Administration, MOE)

Hosting an event can provide home field advantage. In the photo, Taiwanese fencer Yu Pin-rui wins his first medal at the 2024 Asian Cadet Cup Taipei. (courtesy of the Sports Administration, MOE)

Sustainability

The Wan Jin Shi Marathon is the only sporting event in Asia to meet ISO 14067’s carbon footprint standard, and aims to reduce its emissions by a further 10% every year. In addition to moving to online registration and electronic finishing certificates, the marathon recycles its coffee grounds and PET bottles to make running suits, and also has its staff jackets and winners’ trophies made from recycled materials.

Taiwan is known for its technology. Chou says that the Sun Moon Lake International Swimming Carnival’s real-time positioning system can monitor whether athletes have gone off course or are in danger of drowning, and that the Wan Jin Shi Marathon’s use of RFID chips to track race times enables athletes to better pace themselves.

With the new Ministry of Sports due to be inaugurated in September of this year, Sports Administration director-general Cheng Shih-chung says: “Athletics provides opportunities to connect with the world, and branding opportunities for marketing Taiwan.” The many carefully planned international sporting events that Taiwan hosts every year are a platform for competitors to demonstrate their passion for sports, for cities to highlight their cultures and tourism facilities, and for Taiwan to reveal its unique charms.

Come compete in Taiwan! l

Young dancers flocked to the Kaohsiung Respect Culture Breaking International Championships. (courtesy of the Sports Administration, MOE)

The Wan Jin Shi Marathon passes through the magnificent coastal scenery of Yeliu. (photo by Wang Weisha)