The Politics of Sports Mega-Events
| Author | Jonathan Grix |
| Published date | 01 April 2012 |
| Date | 01 April 2012 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.2041-9066.2012.00090.x |
environmental factors (including snakes,
monkeys and Deng fever), and corruption
making headlines. Once the action started,
however, attention was diverted, and after
the event the general consensus was that
the Games were successful.
Do Mega-events Work?
The assumption that sports mega-events are
good for states and their citizens rests on a
number of conjectures that also serve as an
event’s (hoped for) ‘legacy’. Among these
the following five are most prominent:
• Elite sport and sports mega-events, and
particularly success at these, can inspire
the masses, including youngsters, to take
up sport or some form of physical activity,
thereby improving their health.
• Such events are economically lucrative,
bringing revenue from, among others,
increased tourism.
• Sporting mega-events engender a ‘feel-
good’ factor among citizens of the host
nation, which has knock-on effects for
their wellbeing.
• Much-needed urban regeneration is ac-
celerated, improving society.
• States benefit by showcasing themselves
internationally – leading to an increase in
so-called ‘soft power’, or their ability to
pursue national interests in international
relations.
The Politics of Sports
Mega-events
The political salience of sport has
increased dramatically in the past 30
years. Governments in regimes of
every type have shown a new willingness
to invest and intervene in sport directly,
steer and develop sport policy more pur-
posefully, and, recently, engage in bidding
for and hosting sports mega-events. With
the London 2012 Olympics on the horizon,
it is an apt time to reflect on the reasons
behind the increasing politicisation of sport
and sports mega-events, and the increas-
ing competition between states to host an
Olympic Games, FIFA World Cup or one of
the smaller international competitions, such
as the Commonwealth Games. It was not
always this way, though – until the 1980s it
was difficult to find a state willing to take on
the financial burden of staging the Olympics,
for example. In recent years, there has been a
major shift from advanced capitalist states to
developing, small or even emerging states to
compete with one another to put on a sports
mega-event, including those that make up
the so-called BRIC countries (see Box 1).
Few commentators have considered the
whys and wherefores behind the growing
trend of wanting to stage such expensive
and elaborate events. (The Beijing Olympics
cost an estimated £21.5 billion; London is
set to cost £9.3 billion in public money, a
far cry from the capital’s previous ‘austerity’
Olympics in 1948.) It is generally accepted
that sports mega-events are good for us: the
prevailing narrative surrounding such events
– especially post-event – is almost without
exception positive, such that commentators
critical of them are generally looked upon
as killjoys. Yet, with such sums of public
money being spent, questions of who gets
what, when, how and why seem justified.
Such ‘manufactured consent’ on the ben-
efits of elite sport is less true in the build-up
to the start of events – as the debacle of the
Delhi Commonwealth Games proved, with
a series of setbacks, collapsing infrastructure,
Why do countries compete so fiercely to host international sporting events? Is the legacy worth the billions in
costs? With the 2012 Olympics on the horizon, Jonathan Grix looks at the politics of staging a sports mega‑event.
Box 1 Recent and upcoming sports
mega-events in emerging states
2008: Olympics, China (Beijing)
2010: Commonwealth Games, India (Delhi)
2014: Winter Olympics, Russia (Sochi)
2014: FIFA World Cup, Brazil
2016: Olympics, Brazil (Rio de Janeiro)
2018: FIFA World Cup, Russia
The evidence base that these conjectures rest
upon, however, is relatively shaky. There is
very little evidence – beyond the anecdotal –
to back up the suggestion that there is a causal
relationship between elite sport success and
the take-up of sport or physical activity. The
root of this assumption can be traced back to
the spectacular successes of the former Soviet
satellite states, most notably East Germany,
that had the most medal-intensive sport
system of all. During the Cold War there
was a sports arms race that saw funding for
elite sport ratchet upwards in pursuit of ever
greater glory on the international stage. On
the surface, East German sport appeared
a well-oiled and harmonious system that
thrived on the mutually supportive relation-
ship between elite and mass sports, providing
ample provision for both. In reality, the East
German model was elite-driven and focused
on a number of carefully selected disciplines
with the greatest potential for success at
international level, largely at the expense of
mass sport provision. So the idea that ‘elite
sport inspires mass participation’ rests partly
on a misreading of former communist states,
their sport systems and their success ( Dennis
and Grix, 2012).
Empirical evidence since the 2008 Beijing
Olympics, in which the Great Britain team
achieved unprecedented success by collect-
ing 47 medals and finishing fourth in the
all-important medal table, reveals that adult
participation in almost all sports shows a
downward trend (Active People Survey,
2011). Yet the coalition government has
just increased the budget for the London
Olympic and Paralympic opening and
closing ceremonies by £41 million (to £81
million), while, in a clear case of ideology
over reason, it cut the school sports partner-
ship scheme, which had greatly increased
the amount of sport children play at school
between 2003 and 2010.
The laudable aim of getting people more
active in order to improve their health
4Political Insight
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