The United Nations (UN) considers sports as an important enabler of sustainable development. The popular and fast-growing Participatory Sports Event (PSE) sector can play an important role in this regard, however, research that measures and reports sustainability in PSEs is scarce. Therefore, the aim of this paper was to construct and validate a research instrument based on the UN’s sustainable development goals, and to examine sustainability in PSEs. To this end, an online survey was administered among a representative sample of 303 PSE organisers, located in Flanders, Belgium. A confirmatory factor analysis affirmed the social, economic and environmental dimensions of the instrument and provided evidence for its validity and reliability. The results reveal significant discrepancies between the three dimensions, with a noticeable lower score for environmental sustainability compared to social and economic sustainability. Furthermore, challenges are highlighted in the field of the civil society sector and in walking sports events. The findings also indicate that large-sized events are more likely to be sustainable. The current study can act as a foundation for future research on sustainability in PSEs and can assist PSE organisers and policymakers to increase the sustainability-related performance of the sector.

Sport is recognised as a significant contributor to a sustainable future. Sport federations (SFs) in particular can play an important role in this regard. However, literature that focuses on enviro...

In this socio-economic study, the bidding processes for the Winter Olympic Games in 2022 and the Summer Games in 2024 and 2028 serve as case studies to scrutinize the decisions linked to the bidding process in democratic countries and authoritarian states. Transaction cost economics is employed as a lens to outline the problems that the findings pose for the IOC and to understand why the organization has to keep a certain proximity to authoritarian states for strategic reasons. This measure can be considered an insurance policy because of the high and likely sunk ex ante transaction costs that characterize bids from democratic countries. It will become apparent that keeping good working relations with authoritarian governments helps the IOC to secure the future of its main revenue driver, the Olympic Games, thus providing for its own future. Furthermore, the IOC’s decision to include the Summer Olympic Games in 2028 in the bidding process originally geared towards the Games in 2024 will be outlined as a logical consequence of the developments that are analysed in this study. This strategic move will turn out to be a logical consequence of the developments that are analysed in this paper.

Against the backdrop of an increasing use of the term ‘doping’ in circumstances other than the classical understanding, this theoretic article provides a new and comprehensive inter-disciplinary reflection of the doping concept. The aim is to elaborate a broader understanding of doping in relation to socio-economic contexts. Besides addressing the question which structural similarities in general justify the label ‘doping’, a comparison between ‘classical’ doping and the so-called financial doping in European club football is developed. These insights serve as a basis for a consideration, to what extent insights of social-scientific research on drugs in sport may be consulted to analyse socio-economic practices of performance enhancement in sport. Following the considerations of Schetsche, a model is drafted according to which different forms of performance-enhancing behaviour are categorized subject to the dimensions legality and legitimacy. The results may provide a contribution for further research on doping as well as for policymakers in the fight against doping in sport (both medical and financial). Due to numerous structural similarities between the policy of anti-doping and UEFA’s intended policy to fight financial doping, in particular the latter may learn from former experiences.