Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to present and use an event leveraging framework (ELF) to examine processes and challenges when seeking to leverage a sport event to build sport participation.Design/methodology/approach: The study used an action research approach for which the researchers served as consultants and facilitators for local sports in the context of the International Children’s Games. Initially three sports were selected, and two sports were guided through the full leveraging process. Prior to the event, actions were planned and refined, while researchers kept field notes. Challenges and barriers to implementation were examined through observation immediately prior to and during the event, and through a workshop with stakeholders six weeks after the event, and interviews a year later.Findings: With the exception of a flyer posted on a few cars during the track and field competition, none of the planned action steps was implemented. Barriers included competition and distrust among local sport clubs, exigencies associated with organizing event competitions, the event organizers’ focus on promoting the city rather than its sports, and each club’s insufficient human and physical resources for the task. These barriers were not addressed by local clubs because they expected the event to inspire participation despite their lack of marketing leverage. The lack of action resulted in no discernible impact of the event on sport participation.Research limitations/implications: Results demonstrate that there are multiple barriers to undertaking the necessary steps to capitalize on an event to build sport participation, even when a well-developed framework is used. Specific steps to overcome the barriers need to be implemented, particularly through partnerships and building capacity for leverage among local sport organizations.Originality/value: This study presents the ELF, and identifies reasons why sport events fail to live up to their promise to build sport participation. Necessary steps are suggested to redress that failing.

This paper revisits our knowledge of sport organization governance design archetypes. To do so, we focus on Canadian national sport organizations (NSOs) and pose three research questions: (1) what ...

The COVID-19 pandemic offers youth sport organizations the opportunity to anticipate consumer behaviour trends and proactively improve their program offerings for more satisfying experiences for consumers post-pandemic. This conceptual paper explores potential impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on changing youth sport and physical activity preferences and trends to inform sport and physical activity providers. Drawing from social ecology theory, assumptions for future trends for youth sport and physical activity are presented. Three trends for youth sport and physical activity as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic are predicted: (1) youths’ preferences from organized to non-organized contexts become amplified; (2) reasons for participating in sport or any physical activity shift for youth as well as parents/guardians; (3) consumers reconceptualize value expectations from youth sport and physical activity organizations. The proposed assumptions need to be tested in future research. It is anticipated that sport organizations can respond to changing trends and preferences by innovating in three areas: (1) programming, (2) marketing, and (3) resource management.

This contribution explores whether the hosting of two non-mega sport events affected the happiness of residents (non-attendees) in the host community, and if these feelings differed according to the type of event. The events under investigation were two multi-sport events held in the same community during the summer of 2014: the Ontario Summer Games and the 55+ Summer Games. Residents were intercepted in public spaces to complete a survey, including levels of happiness, event, and socio-demographic variables. Happiness was measured in a holistic way, including overall happiness, satisfaction, positive and reversed negative affect dimensions of subjective well-being. Hierarchical regression analysis revealed: (1) higher levels of happiness for aware, non-attendee residents when measured with a single item of overall happiness, but not for other measures of happiness in the holistic approach (causality cannot be confirmed); (2) aware, non-attendee residents did not need to have the intention to attend the events to experience these higher levels of happiness; and (3) higher feelings of happiness of aware, non-attendee residents were not different according to the type of event. From a practical perspective, these findings stress the importance of informing residents of these events so they become aware that these events are being hosted in their community. Effective communication should include feelings of pride and belonging, as these are expected to stimulate feelings of happiness of non-attendee residents.

Publicly funded sport events are partially justified based on positive social impacts. Past research generally measured social impact for a generic and global “other” with claims such as “Events create new friendships in the community”. These other-referenced (OR) social impacts are generally higher pre-event than post-event and are inflated for both methodological and theoretical reasons. In the pre-event period of the Tokyo 2020 Olympic and Paralympic Games, we empirically tested OR items compared to self-referenced (SR) items, such as “Because of the event, I create new friends in the community” and allowed projection bias to vary between scales. Results of the experiment between an OR-Social Impact Scale (OR-SIS) and a similar SR-SIS confirmed OR-measures to be significantly higher than SR-measures. While artificially inflated OR scores may be useful for event organizers and politicians to gain support for hosting, estimates based on circumscribed self (SR) are a methodologically appropriate measurement of social impact.

Past research has shown that pre-event measures of social impact are higher when worded in reference to a global other such as ‘the event creates new friendships’ instead of a more precise measurem...