ABSTRACT
The Olympic Games, the Carnival in Rio de Janeiro, the Sapporo Snow Festival: large-scale events like these have long been capturing the world’s attention. Due to their attractiveness and popularity, they have regularly been used to enhance the soft power of various actors. Although the COVID-19 pandemic temporarily halted most of these important events, it did not permanently dampen global enthusiasm for them. This chapter examines large-scale events in terms of soft power. It makes a twofold argument: first, that the events’ soft power is anchored in virtuosity - that is, proficiency or skill (Chitty 2017) - and, second, that the events continue to remain attractive for wielding soft power due to their spectacular nature and appeal to, and function as, entertainment. This attractiveness endures despite the COVID-19 pandemic having changed the dynamics of many large-scale events, shifting them into fully- or partly-digital formats. To substantiate this argument, the chapter uses the 2020 Dubai Expo (held from 2021 to 2022) as its case study. The Expo offers a robust way of understanding the virtuosity at the heart of a large-scale event’s soft power, as well as its appeal as spectacular entertainment, in both non-digital and digital formats. From an analysis of key event communication collateral, the chapter offers a novel framework for understanding the central elements of the virtuosity underpinning the soft power of large-scale events in a pandemic and post-pandemic era.
