The Conceptualisation and Measurement of Mega Sport Event Legacies

This paper focuses on the legacy of mega sport events. First, the concept of legacy is defined before the problems of measuring and forecasting legacy are discussed. Benchmarking and the use of macro data do not correctly reveal legacy. Hence a bottom-up approach is introduced which identifies the event legacy by evaluation of ‘soft’ and ‘hard’ event-related changes in a host city. These changes are defined as ‘event-structures’ (infrastructure, knowledge, image, emotions, networks, culture). Many of them change the quality of location factors of the host city in the long-term. The benefits/costs through the transformation of the host city are the legacy of a mega sport event. Here a particular focus is put on…

• IO
  Institute of Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences