This book is written by Martin Robertson, Centre for Festival and Event Management, School of Marketing and Tourism, Napier University, Edinburgh (UK).
Introduction: Both the collection of papers presented here and the title given to this Leisure Studies Association (LSA) volume have grown out of the July 2005 Leisure Studies Conference entitled 'Festivals and Events: Beyond Economic Impacts'.
The conference provided an arena for participants to share and discuss current developing research, thought and case examples as related to festivals and events.
The papers included here provide an excellent example of how the subject area has included and grown far beyond the initial realms of description, management process or economic evaluation from which the subject area emerged.
Sport Special, Mega or Hallmark events bring with them a diffuse array of questions that need investigating, developing and answering. The conference, hosted by the Centre for Festival and Event Management, Napier University, served to address some of the areas that each question covers, and the papers herein indicate both the multidisciplinary nature of responses and the increasing synergy of sciences that these hold.
The education, research and training environment for sport events and event tourism: In 1998, Heather Gibson stated that sports and tourism "suffers from a lack of integration in the realm of policy, research, and education" (p. 45), later confirming that sport tourism has the capacity to narrate 'a wider analysis of sport as a social institution rather the micro-view of individual sports' (Gibson, 2002: p. 115). Accordingly, from this premise, the added dimension of reviewing sport and tourism in the context of special or mega sport events allows further avenues for procedural and scholarly engagement.
It is both dynamic and potentially allusive. The evolving nature of both the research environment for events and the sector itself is highlighted by Trevor Mules (2004: p. 95), who suggests that "event management is an emerging field of research and education, paralleling the growth in events themselves as part of the tourism industry".
He goes on to appraise what it is about events that makes models of basic management skills (education or training) ill-defined for managing events.
The uniqueness of events, the need to stage them as performances, the ever present levels of risk (financial, physical and legal), and the need to innovate gives the business environment a special and evolving dynamic.
It is concluded that this requires a designated form of management training, thus opening itself to new and innovative research and pedagogic formulae.
In Australia, there has been a country-wide attempt to form a research agenda for event tourism (Getz, 2002), in acknowledgement of the need for establishing academic recognition in this area.
Silvers, Bowdin, O'Toole and Beard Nelson (2006) opine that event management is an international industry awakening an international level of interest. Moreover, like Mules (2004), they traject that the uniqueness of events requires improvements in knowledge transfer, judging that educators, regulators, associations and practitioners look toward a clear enhancement of academic research, development and an improvement of related educational curriculum and - ultimately - the establishment of professional legitimacy.
Getz (2002: p. 13) voices the feeling of most who facilitate the development of event studies, in whichever discipline they may work: that it must not avoid challenging "the difficult theoretical, methodological and ethical issues" which it embraces.
Similarly, a great many would agree with Getz's assertion that the trend to house event studies in dedicated area associations (departments, schools or faculties) such as sports, tourism, hospitality or arts is more a reaction to increasing student numbers and the desire to make courses manageable (and malleable?) than it being a recognition of its own academic status.
It is an interdisciplinary field, harbouring a plethora of perspectives.
Getz (2002: p. 20) summarises these perspectives under the following subheadings: environmental; cultural and community; economic; production and programming; legal; management; psychological and political, concluding that they should be based on the foundations of management and the study of events in society.
As Silvers et al. (2006: p. 195) conclude, "the establishment of events as a profession or discipline is still generating discussion and has still not been decided".
Given the number of event management or event studies courses already established in the UK, North America, New Zealand and Australia (Getz, 2002; Silvers et al., 2006), and rapid development of event management in Asia (Arcodia and Reid, 2003), it is a discussion with worldwide application.
By way of introduction to the chapters in this volume, the following paragraphs serve to illustrate the evolution of that discussion around many of the components that form sport tourism and event tourism; and key questions that arise from these.
It is indicative of the subject area that this study is neither exhaustive nor entirely inclusive. The nature of this article and the expansive nature of this subject area do not allow it to be so.
The work serves to highlight the symbiotic opportunities open to practitioners and academics that the subject field of special events and sport event tourism offers.
Sport tourism: Sport tourism can be seen to include all participation - whether as performer or audience, active or passive - in sports activity which involves and motivates leisure based travel away from usual domicile (Gibson, 1995; Standeven and Deknop, 1999; Ritchie and Adair, 2002).
There has been a meteoric rise in the numbers of sport events set with a target of attracting tourists to the area in which the event is held (Penington-Gray and Holdnak, 2002).
Gratton and Henry (2001) and Gratton and Taylor (2000) contend that in the UK sport events can be seen as having established a strong role for its tourism industry.
There are still many questions to be asked, not least of which is 'why do sports tourists do what they do?' (Gibson, 2004).
Similarly, what does or doesn't make a sport event tourist different from a sport tourist?Both of these questions have received responses (Gammon and Robinson, 2003; Kurtzman and Zauhar, 2003; Gibson, 1998, 2002, 2004) and this area of analysis continues.
Sport events and a widening policy range - the background to sport event development: Following the 2000 UK Sports Strategy, increased focus was given to sport events as tools for both economic and social benefit, with the UK Commons Select Committee on Culture, Media and Sport (third report, 2001), stating that: "The staging of international sporting events must be seen as a means, not an end.
Public support for the staging of events must be justified by proper analysis of the extent to which events are an effective means towards other ends, both sporting and non-sporting.
The staging of events cannot be justified simply by vague assertions about national prestige." Recognising that for the governing bodies the primary purpose of special events was a sporting one, but concerned that there was a need for these events to fulfil other social and economic functions, the committee recommended systematic analysis and measurement of all sport event outcomes. Further evidence of this public sector interest is shown by UKSport, the government agency accountable to the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, who commissioned Dr Adam Brown and Joanne Massey, Manchester Institute for Popular Culture, to undertake as baseline research for the sports development of the Manchester 2002 Commonwealth Games a review of literature related to impacts of major supporting events.
Similarly, in 2002 the Scottish Executive pronounced that it would "deliver a viable portfolio of major events to attract visitors to Scotland, to enhance Scotland's International profile, and to maximise the economic, social and environmental benefits of events to all parts of the country" ("Scottish Executive", 2002).
It further proclaimed that this would encourage participation in sport at a local level and excellence in sport at a national and international level.
The Scottish Executive and VisitScotland joint venture company, EventScotland, was founded as the enabling guardian of these principles in 2002. A 2004 literature review of the evidence base for culture, the arts and sports policy (Janet Ruiz, "Scottish Executive") determined that social costs and benefits of major sporting events, with particular reference to communities, had to be evaluated.
Moreover the review concluded that "there is a need for longer term research/evaluations of major events to assess whether and in what way the short-term economic benefit has been sustained" (p. 137). The same developments and conclusions can be seen in other countries.
Only in respect of involvement in a mega sporting event - e.g. the Olympics - whether hosting it or bidding for it, can the linkage between social policy and sport event be seen as being applied on a global scale (Hiller, 2000).
Again, this is an evolving region of analysis. Sport events and impact evaluation: Despite the social pronouncement by governments and their agencies, evaluations of events still focus predominantly on the economic factors rather than on implicitly social or community ones.
The fact remains that the economic importance of festivals and events is widely recognised by major event organisers and their funding agencies (Carlsen, 2004). More often the evaluations for these take the form of multiplier calculation derived from a balance of payment approach, i.e. an economic input and output analysis. Gratton and Taylor (2000) and Baade (1996) both state that mega sport events clearly generate additional expenditure, income and employment and are thus are appropriate to multiplier analysis - most particularly at a micro level.
Whilst the sophistication of multiplier analysis has developed considerably from a basic relationship between expenditure and employment and/or income, the fact remains that they are only estimations, albeit well-defined ones (Hughes, 1994; Crompton and McKay, 1994; Hiller, 1998).
Indeed, it is also the case that results vary greatly from one undertaking of multiplier analysis to another (Wall and Mathieson, 1982; Wall, 1997). Hiller (1998) comments that all evaluative analysis has tended to take a cause-effect approach, in which a predominance of study on 'mega event', such as European or World Championships or indeed the Olympics, has seen the event itself as being the main receptor and adjudicator of related benefits (as audited in the economic projections and evaluations that pre-empt and record their occurrence, respectively).
Given that Olympic host cities are frequently "left to manage a legacy of negative social and economic impacts" (Higham, 1999: p. 89) one must request, as Higham suggests, that the government and other associated stakeholders undertake and attain a greater depth of response to the question, 'why and for whom do we want this event?' No one would choose to ignore the significance and importance of economic evaluation when attributing values to special sport events - but as an avenue of enquiry, and as an indicator of special sporting event success, it is only one of many.
It is likely that many benefits have yet to be pursued as event management gains the legitimacy previously mentioned in this article. Moving special sport events and sport event tourism out of the city: For a good length of time mega-sport events have been united with the development of cities, tending to focus - in the deliberations of academics and consultants, and in the minds and purse strings of the public sector - on their long-term enhancement potential for city tourism and the city product; and, secondly, on their role in urban regeneration (Bull, 2004).
The number of articles that relate to urban development and special events pays testament to that.
However there are also many opportunities for sport tourism and special events in the rural environment (MacArthur, 2003; Costa and Chalip, 2005), bringing with them opportunities for new dimensions for both the community and new forms of tourism.
This remains an area for multi-disciplinary endeavour.
Loyalty and sport event tourism: Despite a well established anthology of research looking at the factors of repeat visitation to destinations per se there is relatively little research addressing repeat visitor segmentation and special sport events (Gandhi-Arora and Shaw, 2002: p. 46). In evaluating the motive for attending sport events, Gandhi-Arora and Shaw find that novelty seeking was less of a motivation characteristic than has been suggested in other tourist experience studies, and could thus be seen as less susceptible to consumer service switching (Oliver, 1999).
An implication of this is that sport tourism has the capacity to create loyalty on the basis of consumer intention to visit specific events, and to benefit from consumer desire for novelty through attraction to other events.
Whilst there is an ongoing discussion surrounding the related issues of consumer intention to attend events, plus their latent and inducted attitude and correlation of this to satisfaction levels (Hede, Deery and Jago, 2002), the issue of sport event visitor loyalty requires continuing multi-disciplinary investigation.
Reference to the areas of event perspective as drawn by Getz (2002) would obviously be a suitable vantage point from which to map routes of exploration.
Special sport events and the destination: In respect of the relationship between sports and their locale (destination), Higham (2005: pp. 2-4) in his analysis of prevailing literature in the field identifies ten core areas which are valuable to destination managers.
These are: tourist demand; tourism development; service sector development; event sport tourism; visitor experience at tourist destination; destination profile; destination media markets; destination image; uniqueness of tourism destination, and tourism seasonality.
Whilst each area has a well-developed body of data there is much to do and the progression of a better-defined multidisciplinary body of knowledge for event studies and management (as above) will aid in this.
The chapters: Chapter 1: In employing lessons learnt from the international arena, and utilising world examples to animate points made, John Horne argues that those responsible for development of sport mega-events often choose to manage or interpret special mega-events development in a way that wilfully (or as an act of institutional collusion, or 'social amnesia') recreates the same mega-event impact failings (most notably financial loss and social displacement) or fails to take the positives further. Investigating the 'known' and 'unknowns' of involvement with sport mega-events, the article starts with an exploration of the spectacular rise of interest in mega-events by host nations and the incumbent motivations of attaining global audience, of receiving corporate sponsorship and in the selling of the host place.
It then looks at the legacies to which mega-events pertain but so rarely take successfully or fully beyond the conceptual intention first voiced.
It is suggested that academics and researchers have a duty to be imaginative, to respond to the 'unknown unknowns', and offer rejoinders to questions relating to all elements that comprise a sport mega-event.
Concomitantly, in the final analysis, evidence of 'social amnesia' is shown within the political, economic and ideological context of a number of significant sport mega-events.
Chapter 2: Examining the Cricket World Cup 2007 in the Caribbean, Leslie-Ann Jordan records and forms a critique of the official managerial process and the required orchestration of an event to be held in eight countries with separate and independent governments. In attempting to address the potential economic, social-cultural and political impacts of this mega-event, the stakeholders, she suggests, have set themselves a Herculean task.
In drawing analysis from public government, agency and media sources, Jordan provides a rich study of the challenges of managing a truly unique mega-event, extrapolating from this a range of critical success factors.
The paper as a whole should, as she suggests, be seen as a launching pad for future research in mega-event management per se, with particular ramifications for the management of mega-events held in small island developing states.
Chapter 3: Debbie Sadd and Caroline Jackson provide an extensive investigation of the potential role of the 2012 Summer Olympic and Paralympics for regeneration of Weymouth and the neighbouring Isle of Portland.
First mapping and updating the theoretical boundaries identified as reasons for hosting Mega-Events, the authors then test resort lifecycle theories as a guidance model within the context of using events as resort regeneration. In positioning their investigation of the event within the tourism planning procedures for Weymouth and Portland, Sadd and Jackson detect the strategic shortfalls and strategic opportunities that the event offers for area regeneration.
Having evaluated the possible and appropriate impacts of tourism in 2012, the paper then draws up a strategic action framework for Weymouth and Portland.
Significantly, the research for this paper was undertaken prior to the announcement that London had won the bid to host the Olympics.
It is possible the findings are all the richer for this reason.
Chapter 4: Phil Binks and Bob Snape also invite reference to the immediacy of the research and writing up of their paper with the announcement on the first day of the LSA 2005 conference that London was to host the 2012 Olympic Games.
Here they request that the excitement of the announcement should have also caused an awakening to and addressing of the issues surrounding the often unholy alliance of the public, private and voluntary agencies that sport mega or special event partnerships form. In analysing the development of the Bolton Arena, a large sports venue, they direct analysis to many of the issues that these partnerships must face in ensuring that the post-event actions meet the pre-event plans.
The research was exercised through examination of documentary sources and semi-structured interviews with the arena's governing body and local government officers.
The authors conclude that a number of issues, both political and physical (most notably the proximity to the Manchester Commonwealth Games, and the apparent funding opportunities that this spurred), served to distort the continuity of the policies and plans for the stadium.
Chapter 5: From an initial recording of the growth and definition of sports tourism and special event tourism in Canada, Margaret E.
Johnstone and G. David Twynam focus on the motivation and behaviour of spectators at special sporting events: an event form they appraise as bridging both sport tourism and special event tourism.
Research was undertaken in Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada, principal town for the Nordic World Ski Championship.
Their research sought to assess spectator involvement at a number of levels. The results of two questionnaires, one for resident spectators and one for non-resident spectators of the event, indicated that non-residents were significantly more involved in the event than the residents, although both groups showed high levels of recreational and competitive behaviour.
The authors go on to suggest further process to add depth to the understanding of spectator behaviour.
Chapter 6: As the first phase in a longitudinal study of the legacy of the 2005 Women's European Championship, in the North West of England, Barbara Bell presents and interprets the initial findings in respect of their part in the longer term potential of the legacy.
She also examines the issues surrounding analysis of the impacts of the event, most particularly in assessing participation in women's football in the region as a result of the Championship.
Her evaluation draws on a context-mechanism-outcome matrix methodology, comparing and appraising mapped-out legacy expectations with outcomes of legacy programme activities. Her work, she explains, is part of a further exploration of opportunities for sport access and perception by women to sport, and the function and meaning it can be seen to attribute to different groupings.
Chapter 7: Leanne White's work assesses the opening and closing ceremonies of a mega-event of world renown, the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games.
Concerned with determining the symbols and images utilised to transmit 'Australia' and 'Australianness' in these ceremonies, a mixture of qualitative semiotic analysis and quantitative content analysis methodologies were employed for this phenomenological study.
Investigation of the ceremony components and 'formalities' allows a deconstruction of the broadcasted images of Australia.
The conclusions both commend (the event was a success, and the images conveyed appropriate and well-received) and criticise ('cultural cringe', as White calls it, could have happened) how the games ceremony conveyed a national identity.
Conclusions: Bringing these papers together opens a dialogue that spans four continents (and by association touches on all seven). The area of sports tourism special and mega event study and analysis is one which brings with it a great many pedagogical, philosophical and managerial disciplines.
The body of knowledge that is growing around sports tourism and event tourism indicates at least a partial rescission of the sense of academic illegitimacy that Gibson (1998: p68) suggests sport and tourism has suffered for many years at the hands of the 'parent disciplines'.
The articles contained in this publication add legitimacy, giving not only sport and tourism more strength in its multi-disciplinary research base, but also contributing to the development of sport event and special sport event tourism as a research area.
Sport mega-events will continue to inspire hyper-interest and awe in many, whether they are part of the potential audience, the community, or in the realm of politics, the media, in academia, or involved in event operation, research and practice.
Impacts, plans and opportunities (as demonstrated in all the articles included here) may be lost in the sense of other-ness that sport mega or special events are often seen to evoke. I would suggest that any such attitude of holiness or unchecked singularity surrounding the management, partnerships and hosting of mega-events must be replaced by a legitimate event management discipline.
This will ensure that it is checked, analysed and developed appropriately.
The proper development of study and research in events as a legitimate discipline would positively demand this.
