A mega sport event involves huge investments in city infrastructure. After the event, the structures that remain may be an asset to the stakeholders, or they may be a burden. Faced with high costs, the taxpayer demands that the event-related social, economic and ecological changes will in the end have improved living conditions for the host city. But it is not easy to identify sport event legacies in their entirety, because event-related changes may be confused with non-event-related development, and because a wide variety of areas and stakeholders are affected. This paper looks at how to identify legacies, who is affected by the legacies, how long they last, and how to judge whether a legacy creates or destroys value. It stresses that legacies affect stakeholders differently – positively for some and negatively for others. It considers how to maximise positive legacies and suggests that these can best be controlled by governmental organisations. It notes that legacies gain and lose power over time and that often a legacy will be activated only if environmental changes offer opportunities.

This article presents the development of a new approach for measuring mega sport event legacy and is based on the Olympic Games as a reference. The legacy of mega sport events has gained ever more importance during recent years for both academics and practitioners. While the sport organisations gain large revenues, cities lose. Such costs, mixed with political discussions over host government spending of public money, seem to evermore prove that there is the potential for corruption, and increased scrutiny by a variety of stakeholders has led to concerns over the benefits of the Olympic Games for the host region. Thus, the politicians call for referendums and over the past 6 years all of the referendums had negative results. Therefore, the research aims for this article are to identify the long-term costs and benefits of staging the Olympic Games and at least suggest some possible methodology for the measurement of those costs and benefits. The focus of the article is set investigating the shortcomings regarding legacy literature. A previously built theoretical framework will be expanded to provide a better manageable legacy framework.

The decision where to host major sports events is the result of a political process, involving local and national politicians as well as national and international sport governing bodies. Politicians and local/national sport governing bodies decide whether to apply for an event, while international sports governing bodies select the host cities (nations). Local and national residents play an important role in this process as their opinion will influence whether the political system supports the application and is willing to fund the event. Many event impacts have characteristics of public goods and externalities. This represents a potential welfare economic rationale for the public sector to fund them. Empirical data from 117 polls of urban and national residents that either have hosted or applied for events reveal that three out of four residents supported hosting the event. Statistical analyses show the strongest support to be in low-income nations. This raises doubts whether such events should be regarded as luxury goods, which is a typical characteristic for sports goods. The major reason for this can be that people are aware that the events will influence the production of other goods and services in society. In particular people in nations where the public sector has had a financial deficit in the years before the poll were more sceptical than others. This pattern does not occur in heavily populated nations where event-related costs represent only a “drop in the ocean” on a macroeconomic level. The surveys also indicate that economic growth resulted in people voting more positively in favour of the events.

This paper examines the economic impact of major multi-sport event on affected people. Their spending increases the economic benefit for the city and region staging the event. Therefore a theoretical differentiation of movements of persons affected by the event was done. A model was worked out to detect the regional primary economic impact through these people. This primary impact can be used in any model of economic impact analysis, such as input–output frameworks or multiplier theory. The complexities in considering the right persons and their spending are analysed and described in detail. A special focus is placed on the evaluation of opportunity costs on people that get crowded out as a result of hosting the event. Conclusions highlight the value of the right evaluation of the consumption of anyone affected by the major multi-sport event. Furthermore interesting findings on the consideration of “time switchers” and people avoiding the host city were made. Bidding for major sport events creates high levels of competitions between cities. As a result, event visitors, which are the main source of benefits, gain importance for the decision-making processes in whether to bid or not.

This paper provides an analysis on internet news reports about the Beijing Olympics 2008 and how China signaled throughout the event to external target groups. The analysis shows how the geographical areas China, USA, Europe and the “Rest of the World” perceived the Games. The results were interpreted regarding the principal agent theories' signaling to reduce information asymmetry for business and tourism and costly signaling to generate symbolic capital. Seven hundred and forty news reports were collected between 1 July and 30 September 2008, using Google Alerts with the keywords “Olympic Games Beijing 2008”. The reports were analysed with a quantitative content analysis using a coding frame. The results show that China used the Games to signal primarily to potential business partners/investors. The four geographical areas identified have different communication patterns about the Olympics. China's success to signal positively was weakened by several negative news reports.

This paper focuses on the contribution of mega events onto the development of a green economy at the event host location and discusses how to measure it. The promises of organizers usually are very ambitious but the question remains as to how realistic these claims are. This question will be addressed in three sections by using methods that are primarily analytical and critical rather than an empirical collection of data. The environmental sustainability of mega sport events is discussed and then a framework is developed to capture the green legacy and the basis for building up a green economy in all its dimensions. The main contribution mega events can make to developing a green economy at the host city will be explained. Furthermore, the paper seeks to explain why promises made during the bidding process on the environmental sustainability are often not met when it comes to the preparation for the event. The current obstacles to producing “Green Games” and building up a green economy are presented enlightened, ranging from financial shortcomings to a lack of serious environmental interest on the part of the organizers. In conclusion, it will be shown that mega events encourage the development of a green economy by their signaling power and educational opportunities.