How Rural Sports Events Facilitate Returnee Entrepreneurship and Employment: Evidence from China's Village Super League

Rural outmigration has weakened communities worldwide, making returnee entrepreneurship an important pathway for rural revitalization. Yet existing research has paid limited attention to how place-based events reshape the opportunity structures available to returnees. This study examines how the Village Super League, a rural sports event in Rongjiang County, Guizhou Province, China, facilitated returnee entrepreneurship and employment. Drawing on the entrepreneurial ecosystem framework, it analyzes nine semi-structured interviews, and a range of textual and documentary materials collected during fieldwork in August 2025. The findings show that the rural sports event reconfigured the local entrepreneurial ecosystem across four dimensions: market access, cultural resources, institutional support, and collaborative networks. These changes, in turn, empowered returnees by expanding market opportunities, strengthening cultural asset awareness, improving access to policy tools, and embedding them in broader networks. The study develops the concept of an event-based ecosystem catalyst, showing how a place-based cultural and sporting event can activate dormant entrepreneurial resources in a resource-scarce setting.