Sport and physical activity participation legacy of mega sporting events
Inspiring a generation to get involved in sport ?
We are interested in finding out whether the hosting of mega sporting events can lead to the generation of long-term inspirational impact on sport and physical activity participation.
This project is funded by British Academy.
Myths 1
Hosting mega-events such as the Olympics is great for the public, because it creates a sport participation legacy, said Lord Seb Coe.
But....
No strong reserach evidence to support this claim (Weed et al., 2015).
Myths 2
In response to a recent victory made by Emma Raducanu at the US Open, Andy Murry commented that '[this presents] a "huge opportunity" for British tennis to attract more people to the sport'.
But...
Although there has been a spike in the national participation trend leading up to and during the London 2012 Games, the subsequent data showed a tailing off.
Evidence 1
Role Model effects - meaning that people are inspired by elite sport, or sports events to participate themselves - are more likely to occur amongst those who have regularly participated in sport and physical activity (Chen& Henry, 2015).
Evidence 2
Event staging without embedding strategic leveraging plans is unlikely to generate meaningful sport participation legacies (Hayday et al, 2016).
The right to host a sporting-mega-event usually comes with a high price tag. Politicians tend to justify such hefty costs with the argument that mega sporting events promote widespread sport and physical activity participation. More specifically, we have seen the slogan of ‘inspire a generation’ in the case of the London 2012 Olympics (London 2012 Olympic Games Bid Committee, 2005). The goal of ‘motivating a population of 300 million in China to take up in winter sports’ was also put forward explicitly in the bid for hosting the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics (Beijing 2022 Olympic Winter Games Bid Committee, 2014).
However, popularly touted as this theory may be, there is a dire lack of robust evidence to support the claim that hosting sporting-mega-events can increase sport and PA participation among members of the general public, according to two systematic reviews (McCartney, et al., 2010; Weed, et al., 2015).
Although Chen & Henry's (2015) work with assessing London 2012’s impact on sport participation has shown that an increase in sport and physical activity participation was linked (albeit weakly) with the inspirational effects of the London 2012 Games, the long-term impact of the Games remains unknown.
Our research project aims to reveal the long-term inspirational effect of the London 2012 Olympics and the Beijing 2008 Olympics on changing the two host-city-residents’ sport and PA participation behavior.
Interested in the project?
Please contact Dr Chen on s.chen.5@bham.ac.uk and follow me on Twitter@Shushu_Chen