Economic, sport development and elite performance consequences of sports events

The hosting of major sports events is commonly assumed to generate positive outcomes and impacts for different beneficiaries, which often is the premise for public investment in them. Set against a backdrop of increased competition for elite sporting success and the desire to host events globally in recent years, the author's published research investigates some of these consequences. One aspect of the research critically analyses the consequences generated by event attendees for non-attendees in economic impact terms. It also addresses the issue of attendance measurement, which is of particular relevance to event economic impact analysis, in the context of events that are free-to-view. Furthermore, the research evaluates non-monetary consequences for event attendees from the perspective of spectators and competitors. In terms of spectators, it focuses on potential sport development effects (attitudinal changes towards sport participation) arising from event attendance. For competitors, it concentrates on elite performance issues including the home advantage phenomenon. The research was quantitatively driven and utilised a combination of primary data collection via surveys (for the economic impact and sport development aspects) and secondary data analysis (for the elite performance aspect). This paper identifies the main gaps in knowledge that are addressed by the research and teases out the contribution of the published works to contemporary academic thinking and industry practice. In doing so, it reveals the capacity of sports events to deliver monetary and non-monetary outcomes and impacts, technical issues and practical challenges associated with their assessment, and the nature of relationships between the work themes. The practical implications of the research programme for event organisers, national governing bodies and public funding agencies are discussed and general direction for future research is proposed.