广州天河体育中心

The Guangzhou Tianhe Sports Centre occupies 299 Tianhe Road, between the city's new central axis and the Tianhe South commercial district. Work began in July 1984 and the complex opened on 30 August 1987 for the 6th National Games; it was the first sports centre in reform-era China to deliver a stadium, an indoor arena and a swimming hall as one project, the so-called 'one ground, two halls' model. The site covers about 520,000 square metres, although figures from different periods range from 510,000 to 588,000, so any area quoted should carry its source. The stadium has a saddle-shaped profile and originally held 60,000 people; renovation for the 2010 Asian Games cut capacity to 56,000, and the 2024 upgrade for the 15th National Games settled it at 52,611 fixed seats while making it the first near-zero-carbon large stadium in China. The arena seats 8,628, and a swimming hall, baseball ground, tennis centre courts, bowling alley and basketball courts were added over the years to form a full venue cluster. Its history is unusually dense: the 1987 National Games opening and closing ceremonies with athletics and football; the 1991 inaugural FIFA Women's World Cup, for which it was the main venue and hosted the opening, closing and final; football at the 2010 Asian Games; and from 2011 to 2021 the home ground of Guangzhou Evergrande Taobao, when it held the hottest ticket in Chinese football. In 2018 the seating was replaced with a red, purple, pink and white kapok pattern, and after the 2021 track and lighting works the stadium earned dual first-class certification from World Athletics and the Chinese Athletics Association. The centre is also a national model for public sport: it has opened free of charge since 1995 and built China's first fitness trail, logging about 70,000 open hours a year. For organisers the appeal is a city-centre site with several halls: the stadium for stadium-scale concerts and ceremonies, the arena for indoor sport and mid-sized shows, and the surrounding plaza for festivals and sponsor villages, with Tiyu Xilu stations on metro lines 1 and 3 and Linhexi on the APM within walking distance to spread the crowd across several rail lines.