ABSTRACT
Event leveraging has become a popular strategic planning process that seeks to create benefits for the host community derived from hosting publicly funded sport events. Throughout this process, leverageable resources are aligned with newly developed initiatives, which are integrated into a public policy strategy. This strategy uses the sport event as a hook to achieve greater interest and better outcomes (Smith, 2014). Leveraging sport events to create public health benefits appears to be a natural fit, because there is a general assumption – with the 2012 Olympic Games as an example – that hosting and watching sport events stimulates an inherent inspiration to be physically active among host residents (Weed, 2013). Purposefully connecting the hosting of sport events to the creation of public health benefits is a positive trend, because public health is currently and urgently threatened by the increased prevalence of chronic diseases. Heart disease, cancer
and diabetes are among the leading causes of death in many developed countries and share a common and major risk factor: a lack of physical activity (Bouchard, Blair, & Haskell, 2012; Kohl & Murray, 2012). Physical activity includes ‘any bodily movement produced by skeletal muscles that results in an increase in metabolic rate over resting energy expenditure’ (Bouchard et al., 2012, p. 12), and it covers leisure and occupational activities, household chores and active transportation. It is widely accepted that the most important health benefits of physical activity participation are the prevention and treatment of chronic diseases (Warburton, Nicol, & Bredin, 2006). Based on the available research, however, it is clear that hosting an Olympic Games or any other sport megaevent is no automatic guarantee of increased physical activity participation among the nation as a whole (Mahtani, Protheroe, & Slight, 2013; McCartney, Thomas, & Thomson, 2010; Mitchell et al., 2012). A sustained increase in physical activity is more likely to be achieved via direct, local investment (Coalter, 2004), which takes into consideration the host’s available resources and social needs (Weed, Coren, & Fiore, 2009), and is perhaps more easily achieved through smaller events.
