ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on media coverage as a mediated reality between those directly involved in an event and its wider stakeholders. Media coverage has been responsible for revitalising certain events and even re-engineering how events are organised and delivered. Media coverage not only increases sponsorship exposure among a much wider audience but significantly shapes international perceptions of events, resulting in important new challenges to their planning, management, delivery and legacies. In some cases, media coverage can overshadow the main event objectives, and even ‘hijack’ the impact of their planned outcomes. However, many of the challenges that event planners face in obtaining media coverage, whatever the size of the event, can be overcome, and an attempt to understand how the media operates might well contribute to a more successful event.
