ABSTRACT
There is a small, but growing, literature on so-called sporting ‘mega-events’, such as the Olympic Games, and their impact on the political, economic and cultural landscape of the hosting country and city. Much of this existing literature has examined the economic impact of such events. Rather less has been written, however, about the policy processes associated with hosting mega-events and the impact they have on broader aspects of sport policy and other associated legacies alleged to emerge from hosting them. Roche (2000: 1) defines mega-events as ‘large-scale cultural (including commercial and sporting) events which have a dramatic character, mass popular appeal and international significance. They are typically organised by variable combinations of national governmental and international non-governmental organisations’. The Olympic Games have, arguably, become the biggest global event known to humankind and it is hardly surprising that, given their huge global appeal, politicians are often very keen to host them in their country. In this respect, they ‘have been important points of reference for processes of change’ (Roche, 2000: 7) and recently governments have made significant policy changes and promises having secured the right to host the Olympics. Whilst, for brevity’s sake, we will discuss the London 2012 bid, and the organizations behind it, from the point of view of a ‘single’ bidding party, it is important to note that bidding cities comprise complex networks of interdependent groups that are constituted by some who are advocates of the Games, some who are prepared to go along with the proposals of the bid, others who are against the proposed reforms and others who might be completely against hosting the Games in ‘their’ city. In this chapter we will seek to examine the reasons why cities and governments bid for
mega-events. The optimism that goes, sometimes wildly so, with the apparent benefits of staging such events is of particular interest to us here because it is frequently the apparent, additional benefits of hosting an event such as the Olympics that tend to be among the
major justifications provided by bidding cities and/or governments for doing so. We will then examine the benefits that are often widely extolled for the impact of mega-events by examining the various ‘legacies’ said to have been provided by previous Olympic Games. The chapter will draw on a case study of the successful London bid to host the 2012 Summer Olympics in order to analyze some of the policy issues and processes associated with the bid, in particular the ways and extent to which the bid, and the subsequent build-up to hosting the Games, has come to impact on sport policy in the UK. We reflect upon the IOC’s response to criticisms that the number of events in which athletes compete at the Summer Games, in particular, have meant that the Games have become too large – a process widely referred to as ‘gigantism’ – and that there is a need to restrict the number of sports that are part of the Games. We conclude by examining the fact that at the same time that the IOC is attempting to manage the size of the Games as a sporting contest it is complicit in a process whereby bidding cities, at least in countries with democratically elected politicians, are increasingly constrained to promise more and more long-lasting benefits in order to host the Games, a process which has contributed to what one might refer to as ‘legacy gigantism’. Let us first examine the reasons why so many politicians are keen to pursue the Games.
