Although contexts may differ and there are local variations among hosts it is possible to identify a number of common legacies from sport mega-events. These include tangible and intangible impacts which may be grouped into primary and secondary legacies in terms of the short-, medium- and long-term consequences of events on aspects such as infrastructure, design, image and tourism, and governance structures. Primary legacies relate to the effects on a given city or region which could be directly attributed to its hosting of an event. These generally refer to the development of event-specific infrastructure such as competition venues, stadiums and event tourist lodgings and other facilities to accommodate visitors. Secondary legacies are the indirect and induced effects that stem from wider infrastructural investments made in anticipation of, or contingent on, the event and that provide the substance to subsequent development trajectories in the host location. These could include changes in infrastructure, including transportation networks and nodes; alterations in the design of a city; changes to the built and physical environment; and the establishment of new sporting venues that have the potential for post-event utilisation (see for example Cashman 2006). Stimulation of tourist arrivals after the event could also be classed as secondary legacies. The two kinds of legacies are of course interwoven. By the nature of urban economies, for instance, infrastructural development of any kind has an impact on the wider economy. This is even the case for stadiums or other sporting venues, for they lock into the particular infrastructure matrix that exists in the host city (Bale and Moen 1995). Similarly, transportation is a basic infrastructure, which means that even if transport links are developed for the specific purposes of an event, they will have ramifications for the wider urban or regional setting.
Poynter (2006) provides further breakdown of the secondary legacies of mega-events stemming from investments that are not exclusively event-related. Such investments include infrastructure development (transport, telecommunications, sport facilities), environmental improvement (decontamination, water usage, parklands), housing, parks, and the contribution to what has been termed the ‘urban culture’ (which includes leisure, entertainment and recreation facilities).
Measuring event legacies
If there is general consensus among researchers that hosting a mega-event can leave a range of material, spatial and symbolic legacies, there is less agreement on the factors determining whether such legacies are of a positive or negative nature, or on their duration. In part this is due to the unique character of these events. They are spatially and temporally highly distinct from other forms of sports consumption (such as participant-driven, amateur or more regular sporting competitions) or other types of spectacles (such as exhibitions) from which economic income may be derived. Wright (2007: 346) aptly distinguishes mega-events from sporting contests organised on a more permanent, albeit smaller, scale by declaring that ‘(e)ssentially, they are based specifically on what is happening as opposed to what is available’. First, mega-events are once-off occurrences, and planning for them has to be tailored to a deliberate point of closure. Second, the time limit placed on not only the hosting, but also activities related to infrastructure development or the design of key sites is often used as rationalisation by event authorities for circumventing statutory procedures or evading consultation with affected communities (Horne and Manzenreiter 2006). That events are essentially ‘owned’ by the sports federations in whose name they are staged lessens the influence event authorities have over central aspects of organising, but can also cause those authorities to take hasty and opaque decisions. Far from yielding to long-term developmental visions, the limited time frames involved in the hosting of a mega-event tend to encourage swift and centralised decision-making that may deviate from long-existing growth programmes in a host city or country (Owen 2002). Fitting event planning into established urban or macroeconomic programmes has been a challenging enterprise for many hosts (see for example Hiller 2000).
Finally, mega-events are in spatial terms relatively fixed occurrences. Although elite-level competitions may be held in different sites across one city or country, such sites are spatially well contained, with mobility in and around the venues highly regulated. As spaces of consumption, and sites where economic activity can be stimulated, competition venues generally involve the limited and controlled circulation of capital extra to that generated by the sponsors and corporations aligned with the proprietor sports federation. The spatially concentrated nature of mega-events can also affect the long-term sustainable prospects of a host area, since positive, but also detrimental, effects can remain geographically focused (Frey, Iraldo and Melis 2007).
Three additional challenges in mega-event legacy appraisal relate to the variety of methodologies that are often used to measure impacts; the lack of agreement among researchers about which forms of investments should be considered part of an event’s costs and which as part of its revenues; and the way in which different economic sectors are differently affected and therefore manifest different legacies.
The variation in the sectoral legacies of mega-events is well illustrated in the case of the tourism sector. It is generally assumed that tourism stands to gain most from the hosting of a sport mega-event. This stems from the nature of the tourism sector itself, which is composed of numerous different industries including industries central to tourism activities, such as (air and overland) transport, accommodation and tour operator sectors, and those which are not central to, but support or are affected by tourism activities, most notably construction, retail and other leisure industries. The compound composition of tourism is generally thought to be an important asset of the tourism sector, since it means that the potential for generating income is heightened and that the effects filter through to all core and related industries – the so-termed multiplier effect of tourism (Mathieson and Wall 1982; Smith 2000). However, numerous commentators have noted that negative effects – such as visitor displacement – can also emanate from the hosting of a major event. An oft-cited example is the 2002 FIFA World Cup hosted by Japan and South Korea, where tourist arrivals declined in the year of the tournament (Horne and Manzenreiter 2004). Indeed, Lee and Taylor (2005) suggest that arrivals to South Korea may have fallen short by more than one-third of pre-event predictions. The 2006 FIFA World Cup held in Germany drew a great number of spectators (3 407 000, outranked in this only by the number of visitors to the 1992 FIFA World Cup in the USA where stadiums were of a larger capacity (FIFA 2006)) but there are some indications that major markets within Germany’s overall tourism economy, such as business tourism, saw a decline during the tournament year (Preuss, Kurscheidt and Schütte 2007: 8).
The potential deflation of established tourism markets during a major sports tournament stems in part from a common failure by event planners or their consultants to adequately profile prospective visitors and to sufficiently tailor tourism development plans towards what amounts to a very specific type of tourist market. Instead, the inclination has been to view sports tourist arrivals to major events as incidental or additional consumers. This is problematic