ABSTRACT
The import ance of stake holder rela tion ships within the events industry cannot be over looked. Traditionally, busi ness schol ar ship concen trated on the role of sharehold ers within busi ness models and the connec ted organ isa tional beha viour. Stakeholders, however, is now a more preferable way to describe and account for the multiple parties who have an invest ment and/or interest in a partic u lar busi ness (Newcombe, 2003) or indeed event. The ‘stake holder concept’ (Brown, Bessant and Lamming, 2013, 116) concerns the wider organ isa tions involved in the busi ness supply chain. Freeman (1984) pion eered the stake holder approach within stra tegic manage ment and argues that it is useful for under stand ing the complex it ies and vari ables of busi ness. He argued that the follow ing ‘stakes’ can be classed as stakehold ers: owners, finan cial community, activ ist groups, customer advoc ate groups, unions, employ ees, trade asso ci ations, compet it ors, suppli ers, govern ments and political groups. Success of mega-events is not so much connec ted to the effect ive ness of the organ ising commit tee but their ability to keep each stake holder group satis fied (Parent and Swan-Smith, 2013). That said there is a scarcity of liter at ure surround ing mega-events in connection to one key stake holder, namely the community (Lamberti, Noci, Guo and Zhu 2011). As Bowdin et al. (2011, 79) comment, ‘events do not take place in a vacuum’ and there fore the signi fic ance and impact events have on their surround ing land scapes, communit ies and polit ical spheres can be extens ive and signi fic ant. This chapter will focus on spon sor ship, media rela tion ships and local stake hold ers.
