Guest editorial: the impacts and legacies of sports events

Citation

Shipway, R. and Kirkup, N. (2012), "Guest editorial: the impacts and legacies of sports events", International Journal of Event and Festival Management, Vol. 3 No. 3. https://doi.org/10.1108/ijefm.2012.43403caa.001

Guest editorial: the impacts and legacies of sports events

Guest editorial: the impacts and legacies of sports events

Article Type: Guest editorial From: International Journal of Event and Festival Management, Volume 3, Issue 3.

This special issue examines a selection of key impacts and legacies associated with sports events. In doing so, it also investigates some prominent issues, trends and opportunities in the relationship between sport, tourism and events and how, irrespective of whether mega, leisure or community-based sports, event organisers and destination managers can tap the potential to be derived from sports events. The sports events sector has significant growth potential, and while larger-scale events tend to deliver a greater economic return, it is apparent that medium and smaller events can also deliver significant benefits. As participation rates in both sport and events continue to grow, the opportunities relating to sports events that are available to event organisations, other sport event stakeholders and destinations will continue to diversify and expand (Shipway and Fyall, 2012).

International sports events (ISE's) now form the basis of the events and tourism strategies for a growing number of towns, cities and regions around the world. As a consequence, the level of research into such events has intensified over recent years. The focus of much of this research, however, still tends to be on the larger-scale events such as FIFA World Cups and Olympic Games with a bias towards research from an economic perspective exploring their economic impact on the host region. Whilst there is little doubt that large-scale international sporting events have the potential for greater economic impacts than do the smaller events, although such impacts are often not realised, the medium and smaller events can have a much greater overall benefit for the host community. This helps explain the importance of enhancing our understanding of the broader “beyond economic” benefits of ISEs, as some of the papers included in this special issue will illustrate.

In the context of ISEs, impacts and legacies encompass a variety of positive benefits and negative impacts which might accrue as a result of a sporting event taking place. As the papers in this special issue highlight, these impacts and legacies may be apparent before the event takes place, during the event or after the event has occurred. They may also be felt by a variety of stakeholders including participants, local businesses, the host community and the host destination. The papers demonstrate that a sports event will affect people in different ways, and thus, there may be inequity in the distribution of impacts and legacies. The growth of demand for certain sports and the changing resource requirements of others may place considerable demands on host communities, event organisers and those managing destinations. Similarly, the relationship between sport and the social, cultural, environmental and economic environments is constantly changing, with the success with which these impacts and legacies are understood and managed very likely to impact on the success or failure of prospective sports events. As a selection of the following papers will illustrate, unless the diverse range of impacts and legacies of sports are managed carefully, the long-term sustainability of some events and their future development could be compromised. As previously alluded to, whilst the rationale for sports events is generally economic, they can generate benefits in the areas of sport (through increased sports participation); impact upon social aspects of a host community (including social regeneration, community and national pride or enhancing volunteer workforces); generate economic benefits (in terms of employment, inwards investment or investment in infrastructure); support environmental initiatives (through sustainable, accessible and inclusive facilities); and finally, provide opportunities for the enhancement of tourism (including the raising of service standards, destination repositioning and branding).

This special issue on the impacts and legacies of sports events is divided into three inter-related sections. The first two papers continue to explore the economic impacts (Saayman and Saayman) and social impacts (Pranić, Petrić and Cetinić) of sports events, highlighting the significant impacts that sports events can generate for destinations and regions. The first paper by Saayman and Saayman examines the economic impact of the Comrades Marathon, a world-renowned ultra marathon that takes place yearly between the cities of Pietermaritzburg and Durban in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. Their paper is one of few on ultra-marathons and the results indicate that the ultra-marathon contributes significantly to the provincial economy and that more than 600 jobs are dependent on the event. Pranić, Petrić and Cetinić then examine host populations perceptions of the social impacts of the 2009 World Men's Handball Championship in the Croatian city of Split, and suggest that the majority of respondents believe that the public monies spent on a new arena construction should have been allocated to construct facilities for which there is a greater public need, such as health care centres or schools. Additionally, this paper is one of the few papers to explore the social impacts of sport events in transition countries, in this case Croatia.

The third and fourth papers move the focus towards exploring the less tangible impacts and legacies of sports events through an investigation of volunteer motivations (Hallmann and Harms) and the potential inspirational effects of sports events (Ramchandani and Coleman). Both papers sheds light on these important intangible features of this debate, and illustrate how sports events provide a valued place within their social environment, act as a means to connect to others, and also provide the opportunity to enhance self-worth and self-esteem. Hallmann and Harms investigate volunteer motivations at two major events in Equestrian and Handball events in Germany, revealing that expressions of value and personal growth are the strongest factors influencing volunteer motivation and future behaviour. Their results also detect significant differences in volunteer motivation based on the type of event, and identify the need for practitioners to find suitable matches between the interests and abilities of the volunteers and the actual tasks undertaken at the event. Ramchandani and Coleman then explore whether attending one-off sport events inspire audiences to increase their participation in sport or recreational physical activity, and discover that the provision of information about opportunities to undertake sport is the most important lever to convert inspiration into participation. Their paper, based on data collected at three major sports events in the UK, debates the assumption that audiences are first, inspired by their own “event experience”, and in doing so, they aim to measure this basic sense of event inspiration.

The final two papers, with a focus on both the summer and winter Olympic Games in Athens 2004 (Ziakas and Boukas) and Vancouver 2010 (Williams and Elkhashab), respectively, explore themes that are clearly grounded in the tourism dimension of sports events. Ziakas and Boukas examine the challenges and potential of post-Olympic Athens to exploit its Olympic legacy for the development of sport tourism, and also propose a framework for the strategic planning and sustainable development of sport tourism in Athens. Their findings indicate that Athens 2004 stakeholders responded with ad hoc policies in their attempts to capitalise on the potential post event legacy, and were constrained by the absence of a comprehensive sport event policy and lack of appropriate coordination mechanisms which could have fostered mutually beneficial links between sport, tourism and event stakeholders. Williams and Elkhashab then conclude this special issue with an analysis of the processes, interactions and activities pursued by stakeholders to strategically leverage benefits from the Olympic Games, and in doing so consider the extent to which this can lead to potentially positive social capital legacies for the host destination's tourism industry. Their paper explores the extent to which different types of social capital emerged from the activities of stakeholders participating in an “Olympic Tourism Consortium”, formed specifically to leverage tourism benefits from the Games, and they examine this social capital from the perspectives of those involved in the organisation's planning and programme delivery activities.

One common theme that runs through all the papers in this special issue is the places (destinations) in which such ISEs take place. As noted in Shipway and Fyall (2012, p. 5), “destinations are notoriously difficult entities to manage due to the multiple stakeholder scenarios that underpin their development, management and marketing”. For all sport event destinations, no matter how large or small, this entails collaboration between the public, private and quite frequently voluntary sectors in combining their talents, agenda and perhaps most importantly, budgets, in being able to deliver a destination-wide experience. What remain challenging for most sport event destinations, however, as illustrated by both the Ziakas and Boukas and Williams and Elkhashab papers, are the challenges for stakeholders across the tourism, events and sport domains to come together and work harmoniously on a single agenda to achieve a seamless sport, tourism and event experience for their respective markets. Whilst there has been recognition of the social impact of sports events, much research is still needed to uncover the full range of benefits and the means by which to maximise such benefits. Included in this area is the potential for increased sport participation amongst the host community as a result of hosting a sports event. This is touched on in the papers by Ramchandani and Coleman, and Pranić, Petrić and Cetinić who both indicate that there is scope for more research, as the potential benefits for the host community of success in this area are substantial. There is a need for unique and innovative research that can reach these event destinations (places) that host sports events and in doing so enhance the body of knowledge on the impacts and legacies of sports events. In doing so, it is anticipated that this will have implications for participants (spectators/fans/active participants); practitioners (stakeholders/event organisers/national governing bodies and federations); policy makers (government/local authorities); and places (host destinations/countries), as advocated by Shipway and Fyall (2012).

Encouragingly, several of the papers in this special issue also identify the implications of their findings for industry practitioners. This point is one consistently echoed by Leo Jago, the co-editor of IJEFM, in several of the preceding editorial articles. A clear message emerges that further studies are required which work with sports events stakeholders (coaches, community groups, coaches and volunteers, event planners, sport federations and clubs) to develop events, while there is also a need to undertake research at events which deliver practical outcomes that are of relevance to sports events industry practitioners. At the most fundamental level, the industry implications of research should be considered along with the wider economic and societal impact of emerging work. It is important to explore research that engages private, public and voluntary sector sport event organisers.

Whilst this special issue makes a valuable contribution to knowledge in the field of sports events, in recognition of the fact that ISEs make such broad-based contributions to the host towns, cities, regions and nations, there is now the need to consider the holistic benefits of sports events and the fact that this cannot be done by simply adding together the different silos of evaluation in areas such as economics, social and environmental. These papers illustrate that sports events can have substantial benefits that are wide ranging for stakeholders but they must be considered as a package. It is a substantial step forward that there is now recognition of the longer-term impacts and legacies of sports events and agreement that such impacts and legacies are generally more substantial than the immediate economic impact that was so much the focus of attention in the past. These are but a few suggestions of topics for future research that build upon the papers presented in this special issue. To conclude, based on the empirical findings that emerge in this special issue, it is anticipated that future research in this area will give consideration to the potential for future works that demonstrate impact and acknowledge the importance of sports legacies. In doing so, the potential for innovative and ground breaking future studies on ISEs is both a likely and envisaged outcome.

Richard Shipway and Naomi KirkupGuest Editors

Reference

Shipway, R. and Fyall, A. (Eds) (2012), International Sports Events: Impacts, Experiences and Identities, Routledge, London