ABSTRACT
Introduction There has been a growing academic and policy interest in leveraging of megaevents, which has generated a substantial amount of literature and empirical evidence (Beesley & Chalip, 2011; Chalip, 2004, 2006; Girginov & Peshin, 2015; Grix, 2014; IOC, 2013). The attraction of the leveraging concept emerged largely because of the dissatisfaction with the backward-looking and impact-oriented events legacy studies. This interest, however, has not been matched by an adequate conceptualisation of leveraging and its role in the context of the Olympic Games in particular. Employing a mobility perspective, this chapter addresses the questions ‘how are mega-events and their potential benefits imagined and leveraged by the various stakeholders and how are dominant discourses contested and challenged?’.
