Sport Management Review 15 (2012) 125139

Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect

Sport Management Review

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/smr

Considering legacy as a multi-dimensional construct:

The legacy of the Olympic Games
Nola Agha a, Sheranne Fairley b,*, Heather Gibson c
a
University of San Francisco, United States
b
McCormack Department of Sport Management, Isenberg School of Management, University of Massachusetts, United States
c
University of Florida, United States

A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T

Article history: The International Olympic Committee (IOC) requires cities that bid for the Olympic Games
Received 7 December 2010 to formulate a legacy strategy. This case follows a sport professional tasked with
Received in revised form 29 July 2011 developing an Olympic bid for their city. Specically, the case considers various legacy
Accepted 3 August 2011 outcomes including: destination image, tourism, cost, venues, housing, and social legacies.
The case is written with anonymity of the actual city so that the instructor can adapt the
Keywords: case to a specic city. The case is particularly useful for courses covering sport tourism,
Olympic Games stakeholder management, event management, or sport economics and nance.
Legacy
2011 Sport Management Association of Australia and New Zealand. Published by
Sport tourism
Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Sport nance
Events
Event bid

Teaching note

Legacy has played an important role in the evolution of the Olympic Games as they have exploded in size, scope, and
cost over the past thirty years. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) specic focus on the concept of legacy as seen in
the IOC Charter, Rule 2, Article 14 states that the role of the IOC is to promote a positive legacy from the Olympic Games to
the host cities and host countries (International Olympic Committee, 2007, p. 15). Thus cities that bid for and subsequently
host the Olympic Games need to consider the legacy or long-term strategy before even submitting their bid document.
This case highlights the learning process of Emilie Baccus, a sport professional tasked with heading up a consortium of
public, private, and volunteer stakeholders during the period in which her city is developing a bid to become an Olympic
Applicant city, the rst stage in the bid process to host the Olympic Games. She begins by searching for a denition of legacy
and then is faced with the task of outlining the legacy plan for her given city while balancing the varied demands of the event
stakeholders. The case is written with anonymity of the actual city that Emilie is based in so that the instructor can have
some exibility in adapting the case to a specic city, whether that be the city where the class is based, or one on which the
class content focuses.
This case is designed to be used in courses covering sport tourism, stakeholder management, event management, or sport
economics and nance. It allows students to complete a variety of analyses including, but not limited to:

* Corresponding author.
E-mail address: sfairley@sportmgt.umass.edu (S. Fairley).

1441-3523/$ see front matter 2011 Sport Management Association of Australia and New Zealand. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.smr.2011.08.004
126 N. Agha et al. / Sport Management Review 15 (2012) 125139

1. conceptualizing appropriate legacy goals for a community with specic stakeholders and stakeholder objectives,
2. analyzing the ability of the Olympics to meet the stated legacies for image, tourism, venues, social change, and economic
gains,
3. determining whether bidding for and staging the Olympics is the right decision for a local community, and
4. developing action plans for generating promised legacies or what is called legacy momentum.

1. Legacy

There is no simple denition of legacy. Cashman (2003) categorized legacies as: Economic; Built and physical
environment; Information and education; Public life, politics, and culture; Sport; Symbols, memory, and history. Similarly,
Preuss (2007) conceptualized legacy as a three-dimensional concept. He suggests that legacies can be planned or unplanned,
positive or negative, and tangible or intangible although most pre-event studies focus only on the planned, positive, and
tangible dimensions. To further complicate the understanding of legacy, it is of an undetermined duration which makes it
nearly impossible to quantify (Preuss, 2007). Finally, as Preuss points out, the same legacy may be positive for one industry
(e.g., tourism), and negative for another (e.g., the environment). The same legacy maybe viewed positively or negatively,
depending on who is making the assessment.
Despite legacys inclusion as a vital part of an Olympic bid, there is little incentive for the Organizing Committee of the
Olympic Games (OCOG) to focus on generating legacy when their responsibility is to deliver the Games and the world press is
busy critiquing the minutiae of their organizational strategies. Although legacy is required as an important part of an
Olympic bid, it is the local community that gains or loses from an Olympic legacy, not the event organizersespecially as the
OCOG disbands within two years of the completion of the event. This lack of vested interest on the part of the organizing
committee often plays out as a series of broad legacy claims with no accountability leading to a slew of broken promises
which serve as fodder for Olympic critics (see London Assembly, 2007). In part, this may be due to the multiple organizations
and stakeholders involved in hosting an Olympic Games each with their own mandate and tasks. The London 2012 Olympic
Games has had a focus on legacy since the bid process and in the build-up to the Games there was much discussion about the
various forms of legacy that would accrue in the years after the event. The term legacy momentum was coined to describe the
ability of a host city and region to continue positive economic growth in the post games period due to the regeneration and
building of infrastructure, increased knowledge base and community spirit enacted before and during the Games (London
Assembly, 2007).
The recent Olympic Games Global Impact (OGGI) project is the rst step in creating some accountability for the promises
made at bid time (International Olympic Committee, 2009). Although there are no repercussions for failed legacies, there is
at least a twelve-year evaluation of consistent economic, social, and environmental variables that can help future event
organizers be more realistic in their Olympic legacy expectations.
Possible discussion points for a class on the concept of legacy include:

1. Dene legacy in a sport event context.

2. Who is responsible for ensuring that legacies come to fruition after the event?
3. How is accountability for event legacies enacted?

2. Stakeholder analysis

Planning and organizing an international sporting event requires careful management of private, public, and
government stakeholders, all with different goals. Often, the most successful events are those that create effective
synergies between stakeholders so that they can assist each other in achieving their objectives. Stakeholder theory draws
attention to identifying and considering the position of individuals and groups who affect, or are affected by, a particular
event or decisionpast, present or future (Clarkson, 1995; Covell, 2004). It has been suggested that when conducting a
stakeholder analysis, the power, legitimacy, and urgency of each stakeholders claims should be assessed (Mitchell, Agle,
& Wood, 1997), and one way of doing so includes developing a stakeholder map (cf. Hede, 2008). Questions for the class
are:

1. Produce a stakeholder map that includes all major stakeholders that Emilie should consider in putting forth an Olympic
bid for her city. It may be useful to peruse the DCMS (2007, 2008, 2009) and London Assembly (2007, 2009) documents to
complete this task.
2. What should Emilie do to assist stakeholders reach their objectives? What should be done when there are conicting
objectives or motives between different stakeholders?

3. Sport tourism

To stage the Olympic Games, a variety of stakeholders invest in a variety of projects: governments build roads, airports,
and trains, OCOGs funded by sponsorship monies and broadcasting rights fulll a range of tasks such as coordinating the
nancing and building for sports venues, locating private developers to renovate or build new hotel facilities, and tourism
 N. Agha et al. / Sport Management Review 15 (2012) 125139 127

groups work with television networks to generate spectacular images of the host city and nation. These tangible and
intangible aspects of the Olympics create a framework that may inspire future tourism. Yet, the OCOG has no direct interest
in, or responsibility to leverage the event to actualize new tourism.
There is an incredible amount of conicting information on tourism associated with the Olympics. In some
cases tourism increases after the Olympics, like in Seoul or Barcelona, but in others, like Sydney or Atlanta, the
opposite effect occurs. In every case tourism gures are distorted due to crowding out, time switching, and event-
related effects. To further complicate the analysis, the Olympics are often staged in areas that are already common
tourist destinations.
Research by Janson (2007) of every Summer Games between 1992 and 2004 (except Seoul) is useful to illustrate all of
these problems. Janson concludes that Olympic hosts had average tourism growth rates that were 2.3% higher than the global
rate in the four years before the Games and 2.2% higher in the years after the Games; a fairly benign result. The data
presented by Janson could also be interpreted more ominously. For example, one could conclude that host nations were
popular tourist destinations long before the Olympics, suffered tourism decreases during the Games, and then never fully
recovered their prime tourism status after the Games.
Moreover, since 2001, various world events such as the 9/11 attacks, the Bali bombing in 2002, SARS and more recently
swine u and the economic downturn since 2008 have affected global tourism ows. Thus, it is hard to distinguish the
inuence of hosting the Olympics compared to the effects of these other factors on the tourism legacies of Sydney (2000),
Athens (2004) and Beijing (2008).
Regardless of the inability to determine an actual tourism effect, pre-Olympic analysis assumes tourism will increase. For
example, the British government expects that half to three-quarters of the London 2012 Olympics economic legacy will
derive from increased tourism and its associated revenues (Janson, 2007). Yet, the European Tour Operators Association has
continuously warned that the 2012 Olympics will have no positive effect on tourism for the UK (Brown, 2006). This
interconnected web of relationships between Olympic investments and their legacy effects illustrate how difcult it is to
assign a gain in any one sector to the Olympics.
Questions for the class include:

1. Can the Olympic Games be used to effectively increase tourism for the host city or nation?
2. What types of sport tourism are associated with the Olympics? Do levels of sport tourism change after the Olympics? Do
levels of general tourism change after the Olympics?
3. What are the problems with measuring tourism around an Olympic Games, i.e. before, during and after the event?
4. If increasing tourism is a stated legacy objective of an OCOG in the bid document then how should the OCOG and the local
or national tourism agency work together to promote tourism around the Games?

4. Event management

From an event management standpoint, this case provides an important lesson on why we need to prioritize post-event
planning in the pre-event stage. For any Olympic legacy, strategies need to be implemented appropriately during the event
planning stage. Students are asked to develop ideas and action plans on how post-event planning can be incorporated before
the event. Questions for the class include:

1. How can post-event legacy planning be included in pre-event management and planning? Develop specic action plans
and strategies.
2. How can event venues be effectively utilized after the event to create a venue legacy? What steps should be made in the
pre-event period to enable these legacies? Who should be responsible for developing and implementing these plans?
3. How can the Olympic Village be used to generate a housing legacy? Who are the stakeholders that should be involved in
developing and implementing these plans?
4. What steps can be taken to ensure a continuation of legacy effects once the organizing committee has been disbanded?

5. Finance or economics

From a nancial perspective, the Olympic Games are an expensive event that consistently cost more than planned. Money
that would have been spent on local services is often diverted and communities and nations spend decades repaying debt
incurred to stage the event. The most well-known example of a city accruing major debt following the Olympic Games is
Montreal which took 30 years to pay back. More recently, the BBC (2004) reported that Greece was holding the highest public
debt following the 2004 Games and many speculate that hosting the Games contributed to their overall debt crisis. Indeed,
the Olympics are often criticized by economists as over-priced and misguided attempts to spur economic activity. Baade and
Matheson (2002) show that event-sponsored economic impact studies conducted before the event are dramatically
overestimated.
Although there is potential for the Olympics to increase some economic indicators, Martin (2008) points out, It is difcult
to disentangle changes in economic growth, employment, ination, tourism, and other possible effects caused by the mega-
event from changes caused by other factors (currency appreciation, scal and monetary policy changes, etc.). This, coupled
128 N. Agha et al. / Sport Management Review 15 (2012) 125139

with the failure to include any opportunity costs or the economic costs of displacing people and business, creates a situation
where the nal gain or loss is all but impossible to determine.
Two recent studies effectively illustrate this inability to capture the exact economic effect of the Olympics. A study by the
Bank of China found that for nine of the last 12 Olympic hosts the annual GDP growth was 0.42.5% lower in the eight years
after the Olympics than in the eight years before the event (Jie, 2008). In the years leading up to the event, especially if the
host country invests in major infrastructural upgrades, there may actually be a positive GDP effect from the Games. This is
often referred to the boom and bust cycle of hosting the Olympics (Madden, 2002). Nonetheless, Rose and Spiegel (2009) did
nd a 30% increase in national exports for Olympic hosts and a similarly large effect even for failed applicant cities.
Thus, the bottom line is that it is hard to discern or quantify any economic legacy effects in the long-term. In the short-
term effects may be misleading because of the time-switching effect of expenditures and activity before the event and the
associated slump after (London Assembly, 2007).
This case provides students with the opportunity to work through a range of evidence, with often conicting numbers, to
answer the following questions:

1. Conduct a costbenet analysis of the Olympic Games. A costbenet analysis for a sporting event analyzes the expenses
associated with the event in relation to the benets provided (Brown, Rascher, Nagel, & McEvoy, 2010). The students
should pay particular attention to the pecuniary costs and benets, specically visitor spending around the Games
(benet) compared with facility and infrastructure upgrades, displacement of local spending, and the crowding out of
tourists who would have come anyway (costs). Based on your analysis, would you recommend to Emilie that her city
continue with its bid?
2. What nancial tactics could be implemented to ensure a positive legacy outcome? What nancial recommendations can
you provide so that the event is not a nancial burden?
3. In the broadest sense, do the Olympic Games make money? Which organizations tend to prot? Which organizations tend
to incur the largest expense? Do those incurring the largest expense also reap the highest reward?

6. Social legacies

The economic concept of psychic income has been used to describe the feelings of excitement, pride, and euphoria
generated among the host city and country residents from hosting sporting events such as the Olympic Games (Burgan &
Mules, 1992). One of the hopes from hosting the Olympics is for this psychic income to translate into longer-time feelings of
community or what is commonly referred to as social capital. Miesner and Mason (2006) discuss the potential of sports
events for generating social capital among host communities. As awareness of the potential social benets of hosting mega
events grows, the idea of social leveraging (Chalip, 2006) is gaining more prominence. Social leveraging refers to maximizing
the sense of celebration that is generated from hosting the event with the goal of sustaining the feelings of community long
after the event, the ultimate goal being improving the quality of life for residents of the host community and country.
Suggestions for social leveraging include maximizing the opportunities for resident involvement in public gatherings during
the Olympics or other sporting events in such pursuits as arts and music, live sites, and other social gatherings. Certainly, Kim
and Morrison (2005) found that during the FIFA World Cup in South Korea the street celebrations hosted by many cities
generated feelings of national pride and enthusiasm. Indeed, in subsequent mega events, the organizing committees have set
up live sites or fan zones for Olympic and FIFA World Cup spectators. These consist of a large TV screen and a dedicated space
usually in the city center where spectators can gather to watch the event.

1. What strategies can Emilie propose to leverage the psychic income associated with the prospects of hosting the Olympic
Games?
2. If awarded the Olympic Games, what strategies should Emilie propose to sustain these feelings of excitement, pride and
willingness to volunteer throughout the buildup and execution of the Games?
3. In the post-Games period, how can Emilie leverage the psychic income generated during the Games for longer-term social
legacy?

References

Baade, R. A., & Matheson, V. (2002). Bidding for the Olympics: Fools gold? In C. P. Barros, M. Ibrahimo, & S. Szymanski (Eds.), Transatlantic sport: The comparative
economics of North America and European sports (pp. 127151). London: Edward Elgar.
BBC. (2004). Interview with Hellenic Olympic properties. August 17th, 2004.
Brown, M. T., Rascher, D. A., Nagel, M. S., & McEvoy, C. D. (2010). Financial management in the sport industry. Scottsdale, AZ: Holcomb Hathaway.
Brown, D., (2006). Olympics does not mean tourism victory. eTN: eTurbonews. Retrieved July 7th, 2006 from www.travelwirenews.com
Burgan, B., & Mules, T. (1992). Economic impact of sporting events. Annals of Tourism Research, 19, 700710.
Chalip, L. (2006). Towards social leverage of sport events. Journal of Sport & Tourism, 11(2), 109127.
Clarkson, M. B. E. (1995). A stakeholder framework for analyzing and evaluating corporate social performance. Academy of Management Review, 20(1), 92117.
Covell, D. (2004). Attachment, allegiance and convergent application of stakeholder theory: Assessing the impact of winning on athletic donations in the Ivy
League. Sport Marketing Quarterly, 14(3), 168176.
Hede, A. (2008). Managing special events in the new era of the triple bottom line. Event Management, 11(12), 1322.
International Olympic Committee. (2009). 2018 candidature acceptance procedure. Lusanne: Author.
 N. Agha et al. / Sport Management Review 15 (2012) 125139 129

Janson, K. (2007). Review and analysis of tourism to previous Olympic destinations: Lessons and implications for London 2012. Retrieved from Association for
Conferences and Events website: http://www.aceinternational.org/index.php?option=com_docman&task=doc_download&gid=4&Itemid=30
Jie, L. (2008, April 14). No Worries to Post-Olympic Slowdown. China Daily.
Kim, S., & Morrison, A. (2005). Change of image of South Korea among foreign tourists after the 2002 FIFA World Cup. Tourism Management, 26, 233247.
London Assembly. (2007). A lasting legacy for London? Assessing the legacy of the Olympic Games and Paralympic Games London East Research Unit, University of East
London.
Madden, J. (2002). The economic consequences of the Sydney Olympics: The CREA/Arthur Andersen study. Current Issues in Tourism, 5(1), 721.
Martin, M. F. (2008). Chinas economy and the Beijing Olympics. CRS Report for Congress, Order Code RS22936. Retrieved from http://china.usc.edu/App_Images//
crs-beijing-olympics-2008.pdf
Miesner, L., & Mason, D. (2006). Creating community networks: Can sporting events offer meaningful sources of social capital? Managing Leisure, 11, 3956.
Mitchell, R. K., Agle, B. R., & Wood, D. J. (1997). Toward a theory of stakeholder identication and salience: Dening the principle of who and what really counts.
The Academy of Management Review, 22(4), 853886.
Preuss, H. (2007). The conceptualisation and measurement of mega sport event legacies. Journal of Sport & Tourism, 12(34), 207227.
Rose, A. & Spiegel, M. (2009). The Olympic Effect. CEPR Discussion Paper no. 7248. London, Centre for Economic Policy Research. http://www.cepr.org/pubs/dps/
DP7248.asp.
130 N. Agha et al. / Sport Management Review 15 (2012) 125139

Considering legacy as a multi-dimensional construct: The legacy of the

Olympic Games
Case study

When her city decided to bid for the 2024 Summer Olympic Games, Emilie Baccus, a charismatic and effective leader who
had worked in the sporting industry for over 20 years, was appointed as the head of a taskforce to coordinate her citys bid.
The taskforce consisted of a consortium of stakeholders crossing public, private, and voluntary sectors. Emilie knew that the
competition would be erce. Cities vigorously compete for the privilege of hosting mega and hallmark events such as the
Commonwealth Games, Olympics, and the FIFA World Cup. These events are sought after as they are seen as a means to
increase a citys international prestige, increase tourism, develop new sporting facilities and related infrastructure, build
green technologies, and generate income and employment. The associated post-event benets are often called legacies.
Emilie realized that large sporting events have a broad array of public and private stakeholders including sponsors, local
residents, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and local, state, and national governments who are often nancial
contributors to the project. If Emilie could effectively liaise with each of these groups to create stakeholder synergy then she
believed the bid, and subsequent event, would be highly successful.
It is nearly impossible to know the true cost or benet that stems from a sporting event. Yet, Emilie knew that the nancial
contributors would need to justify their Olympic involvement to their constituents. The triple bottom line is the dominant
approach to measure the efcacy of an investment in a sporting event. This method uses economic, social, and environmental
outcomes to judge the success of these investments. Although it is a lofty goal to achieve gains in each of these three areas
simply by hosting a sporting event, there are often mixed results. Poorly organized events or those with little interaction
among the multitude of planning organizations can lead to embarrassment, cost overruns, a decrease in reputation,
decreased tourism, and environmental destruction. Even well-planned events can displace normal tourism, consumption,
and investments while leading to higher prices for local goods, services, and housing (Heinemann, 2003). While local
governments focus on potential gains in justifying the cost of hosting large events, detractors focus on the potential pitfalls in
their organized opposition.
Emilie realized that the triple bottom line approach was consistent with what the IOC was looking for in their bid
document. In response to the enormous cost and effort involved in organizing an event that lasts less than one month (with
the Olympic and Paralympic Games) and the criticisms of event detractors, the International Olympic Committee (IOC), in
2002, created two groups responsible for ensuring positive legacy outcomes of the Olympic Games. The rst group, the
Olympic Games Commission, researched methods to control the size, cost, and complexity of future events. Part of their
recommendations involved changing the Olympic Charter to include the importance of sustainable development and leaving
positive legacies in the host cities and countries. The second group, the Olympic Games Impact (OGI), was tasked with
developing a uniform method to capture the overall impact of the event. OGI requires host cities to produce four reports over
a twelve-year period that track a consistent pool of over 150 economic, environmental, and social indicators.
One major objective of the Olympic Games Commission was to encourage bid committees to focus on post-event
objectives in addition to the immediate event planning. Since the recommendations of the Olympic Games Commission and
OGI were implemented in 2003 following the discussions and recommendations of a conference on legacy the prior year, the
word legacy has gone from a few passing references to hundreds of mentions in Applicant City bids and host city reports. By
planning for both the long- and short-term, Emilies city would be more likely to generate a sustainable legacy where her city
would benet well beyond the event itself.

1. The bid process

Emile knew that bidding for and winning the rights to host a mega-event is not a simple process. For those cities
interested in hosting the Olympic Games, an application is due to the IOC nine years before the event and the host city is
selected seven years in advance. This extended timeline is designed to allow for construction of multiple sporting venues,
media centers, and the Olympic Village. The venues alone can cost anywhere from $500 million (Atlanta) to $2 billion
(Beijing).
The Applicant City must receive approval from their National Olympic Committee (NOC) and submit an application to the
IOC to be considered a Candidate City. Each city must then complete an application and questionnaire, and be selected to a
short-list of cities to become a Candidate City. Emilies rst task was to read the IOCs technical requirements that detail what
each city must submit as part of its bid. The application requires nine different chapters including concept and legacy,
government support, nance, sports and venues, accommodations, transportation, security, environment and meteorology,
and statistics. Emilie decided that she would look into constructing a draft of the rst chapter on concept and legacy.
The rst chapter requires an Applicant City to provide an overall concept for the event including a description of how this
concept ts into the citys/regions long-term planning and what legacy is intended for the city, region and sport in the host
country after the Games (International Olympic Committee, 2009, p. 49). Immediately Emilie paused. Legacy? she
murmured to herself. How is that different from long-term planning? It was important for Emilie to understand because
 N. Agha et al. / Sport Management Review 15 (2012) 125139 131

the IOC uses legacy to evaluate not just the rst chapter, but also the venues, Olympic Village, environment, and other
essential components of the bid.

2. Considering stakeholders

Legacy has been conceptualized as a three-stage process by the IOC. First, the IOC develops a framework for legacy.
Second, a vision must be produced by the candidate city. Third, implementation of the legacy process must be secured by the
Organising Committee of the Olympic Games (OCOG) (c.f., Girginov & Hills, 2008).
It is worth noting, the bid committee and the OCOG are two separate organizations and the bid committee per se cannot
guarantee what happens once the Games are awarded and it is disbanded. The Olympic Charter expects OCOGs to promote
positive legacies of the Olympic Games, but in turn, it is the public authorities who fund any major infrastructural upgrades
such as roads and airports and who are ultimately responsible to the citizens of the host country who implement such
legacies. Given the large nancial outlay of public monies to host an Olympic Games, lasting legacies are the way in which
the host city and country can justify such huge expenditures of public funding. The OCOG, responsible for staging the Games,
is a privately funded body by the global sale of broadcasting rights and sponsorship fees (see http://www.olympic.org/ioc-
governance-organising-committees?tab=1).

3. Towards a denition of legacy

Emilie immediately turned to her dictionary which dened legacy as a gift of personal property by will, or more generally,
anything handed down from the past, as from an ancestor or predecessor. Like an antique tea cup or an old pocket watch?
Emilie thought. That certainly did not apply in a sport event context.
Emilie wanted to get the task right so she began searching through related IOC documents. Rule 2 Article 14 of the
Olympic Charter states that the role of the IOC is to promote a positive legacy from the Olympic Games to the host cities and
host countries (International Olympic Committee, 2007, p. 15). But beyond a directive to promote legacy, there was still no
denition or direction of what legacy encompassed.
Her review of previous bid documents for the 2008 Olympics showed that Applicant Cities tended to frame their bids in
terms of urban renewal legacy (Istanbul), improved transportation legacy (Osaka), environmental legacy (Beijing), or
improved sporting facility legacy (Toronto). In every case, the term legacy seemed to be used as a synonym for long-term
planning.
She looked further and discovered the IOC Olympic Studies Center and the Olympic Studies Center at the Autonomous
University of Barcelona held a joint symposium in 2002 called The Legacy of the Olympic Games: 19842000. The
symposium produced hundreds of pages of written reports by a worldwide gathering of academics. Excited, Emilie jumped
straight to the Conclusions and Recommendations section, hoping for a clear denition of legacy. She found the following:

The Symposium has recognised the importance of the concept of legacy in the organization and in the nal evaluation
of the Olympic Games, but when attempting to dene legacy, we have found that there are several meanings of the
concept . . . In general, the Olympic legacy referred to at the Symposium is multidisciplinary and dynamic changing
over time and is affected by a variety of local and global factors. Therefore, whilst being difcult to dene, it is a local
and global concept, existing within cities, regions and nations, as well as internationally. Moreover, it is fundamental
in the understanding of the mission of Olympism in society. (p. 491)
Her frustration mounted, So it is fundamental but not possible to dene? In order to write the best bid possible she
needed to have a rm grasp on what legacy was. She tossed the 500-page tome into her bag and knew she would be reading
all night long.

4. Conceptualizing legacy

The next morning, blurry-eyed and exhausted, Emilie felt she nally had a better grasp of what legacy encompassed. As
she read, she kept a list of what legacies could be (see Table 1 for a summary). She nally realized it was so difcult to dene
legacies because stated legacies ranged from architecture to wider footpaths, could be either positive or negative, and in
some languages there was no literal translation for legacy!
In her readings of the symposium papers, legacies were dened as positive and negative, direct and indirect, tangible and
intangible, or hard (measurable and relating to money) and soft (less measurable). In the table of contents, symposium
research papers were categorized as: Urban and environmental; Sporting; Olympic and tourism; Political; Cultural, social,
and communication; Olympic education and documentation. Further, in an introductory essay, Cashman (2003) categorized
legacies as: Economic; Built and physical environment; Information and education; Public life, politics, and culture; Sport;
Symbols, memory, and history. Some participants at the symposium criticized these categorizations as focusing only on
positive, tangible, and planned legacies. Emilie immediately thought of the Olympic Park bombing in Atlanta in 1996.
Regardless of how prepared the Atlanta Committee for the Olympic Games (ACOG) was with contingency plans, the bombing
was a negative, unplanned event that was out of their control yet one that will forever be associated with the 1996 Olympics.
Perhaps unplanned events which leave lasting memories can be legacies after all, she murmured. On the other hand,
132 N. Agha et al. / Sport Management Review 15 (2012) 125139

Table 1
Examples of legacy.
Culture
Architecture, archives, art, ceremonies, cultural exchanges, museums,
memorabilia, monuments, oral memories, souvenirs, street names,
torch relay
Economic
Debts, economic activity, employment, prots
Environment and sustainable development
Bans on cars in central city, decreased pollution, testing stations to
monitor air quality, increased pedestrian-only areas, new wildlife
preserve, planting new trees and shrubs, waste reduction
Intangibles
Collective effort and memories, disability awareness, experience or
knowhow, external crises, inconvenience for local residents, joy,
community cohesiveness, popular memory
Infrastructure
New airports, parks, ber optic networks, sporting venues, trafc
management systems, hotels, ofce buildings, roads, handicapped
parking spaces, railways, Olympic Villages
Sports
Increase in local recreational or competitive physical activity, new local
committees to organize future events in Olympic facilities that bring athletes
and spectators
Real estate
Short-term boost to rentals and prices, long-term increase in average house prices
Publicity
Confusion and controversy, increased reputation/perceptions of city, negative
publicity associated with international scrutiny before and during Games,
scandals, controversies
Tourism and convention industry
Growth in city marketing, convention delegates, general tourism, quantity and
quality of hotel facilities, convention space
Urban regeneration
Buildings renovated or painted, urban planning, illegal billboards removed, venues
converted to a wide variety of other uses (schools, malls, theaters, convention
centers, government ofces)

although the Vancouver Winter Olympic Games began with a tragic death, by the end of the Games her memories were
mostly positive due in no small part to the excellent management of the local organizing committee. Although she was
skeptical at rst, it was now clear to Emilie that legacies could extend beyond Olympic Stadiums and new subwayslegacies
such as her memories of specic Olympics could be planned or unplanned, positive or negative, and tangible or intangible.
Emilie learned that Applicant Cities often use the Olympics as the motivation to accelerate long-term plans that would
have otherwise taken several years or decades to implement. For example, Athens spent over 4.5 billion Euros on a new
airport and subway extension. If already planned projects happened earlier than expected due to the Olympics, does this
mean the new projects are an Olympic legacy even though they would have eventually happened anyway? she wondered.
Ultimately, legacies seemed highly interconnected. Beautiful images of a city along with new sporting facilities can bring
new visitors to a destination who use new hotel and transportation infrastructure and who spend money in the local
economy. Perhaps the most useful advice in all of her reading was that bid cities should look carefully at themselves and
decide how the Olympic Games might help to achieve local environmental, social, or economic goals that have already been
conceptualized and prioritized.
One major point Emilie realized, especially after reviewing literature about the London 2012 Olympic Games which
stated that the Games will leave a key legacy of national benets in culture, sport, volunteering, business, and tourism
(www.london2012.com), is that Olympic Games legacies do not just occur, they need to be developed.
For example, in 2007 the UK Government derived ve legacy promises for which they published a comprehensive
strategy for achieving. These were to: (1) make the UK a world-leading sporting nation; (2) transform the heart of East
London; (3) inspire a generation of young people to take part in volunteering, cultural and physical activities; (4) make the
Olympic Park a blueprint for sustainable living; (5) demonstrate the UK as a creative, inclusive and welcoming place to live
in, visit and for business (DCMS, 2007, 2008). Further, a sixth legacy promise was added in 2009 to further develop
opportunities for disabled people by changing societys perceptions (DCMS, 2009).
In reading through the DCMS reports, Emilie noted that it was of paramount importance to understand the role of
different stakeholders in constructing and implementing the legacy planning.

5. Stakeholders

Emilie realized that she was dependent on the goodwill and close relationships she established with a range of
stakeholders including the mayor, the city council, the local economic development board, local and regional convention and
tourism bureaus, the state government, and the national government.
In conversations with these stakeholders, Emilie knew that there was a large emphasis on becoming a world class city
and reviving what was once a ourishing tourism industry. Others saw the Olympics as an opportunity for sport
development and wanted to see the Olympic venues turned into local recreational sites after the Games. Although not part of
the bid, the mayor, city council, and state governor expected to see large gains in economic impact that would justify the cost
of the Games. Sponsors of the bid, as well as those sponsors of the actual Olympic Games, who would provide a large portion
of the operating revenues if the bid was successful, would benet from a well run event.
At the same time, Emilie had been approached by a variety of lobby groups ranging from NGOs to informal alliances
concerned with the potential effect of the Olympics on the environment, local housing, and the city budget. Although they
had not reached out to her directly, she also knew of several groups actively opposed to the bid because of the high cost of
organizing the Games. These groups specically argued that the public funding would be better spent on health or education.
Finally, Emilie had conducted an opinion survey to determine the priorities of state and local residents. Over half of the
respondents said they wanted the Olympics to provide international visibility, tourism development, newly constructed
 N. Agha et al. / Sport Management Review 15 (2012) 125139 133

infrastructure, new sports facilities, and environmental improvements. She suddenly realized that most of these goals were
what had been dened as legacies. Perhaps the community simply wanted long-term gains from the event.

6. Evidence

Emilie needed more information before she could evaluate her stakeholders expectations. For example, what evidence is
there that the Olympics can actually increase image or tourism? And are the concerns regarding the cost, venue utilization,
and housing founded on any past experiences? To help determine if any of these stakeholder needs were achievable, or if any
of the stakeholder concerns were valid, Emilie conducted research on image, tourism, cost, economic impact, venue usage,
social legacies, sport participation, and housing.

6.1. Image

Emilie learned that even before an Olympic host is selected, Applicant Cities receive increased media exposure. Further,
after a host city is selected, media attention grows for the entire seven-year period before the Games. Certainly all those
news stories have value, thought Emilie. In addition, the local, state, or national tourism bureau can implement tourism
marketing campaigns associated with being the future host of the Olympics to increase awareness of the destination, as well
as utilize the Olympic Games to position the destination image in international markets.
The Olympics receive extremely high worldwide viewership gures for the Games period which exposes the city to the
world. Yet, the attention derived from traditional media sources often ends very abruptly after the event is over. This means
the ability of the Games to increase the host citys saliency and attractiveness as a tourism destination is fairly short-lived
unless well-designed campaigns are implemented that leverage the event. She found several Olympic studies showing the
Games did increase host city attractiveness as a tourism destination. Positive perceptions of Atlanta nearly doubled after the
Olympics in a poll of worldwide corporate decision makers (Matthewman, Kamel, & Bearne, 2009).
Remembering Atlanta again, Emilie realized that the Olympics also have the potential to negatively affect a citys image if
something goes wrong. In the years preceding the 2004 Olympic in Athens she read and watched countless news stories
about billion dollar cost overruns, tramways that were still unnished even a few weeks before the event, and venues
completed in the nick of time. Equally, in the lead up to the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, concerns over air quality and
warnings from the World Health Organization about potential health problems for athletes and visitors were frequently
featured in the media (Streets, Fu, Jang, Hae, & He, 2007). Emilie then wondered whether this increased awareness and
improved tourism infrastructure actually lead to an increased tourism ow.

6.2. Tourism

Tourism demand varies depending on external forces such as economic recessions and nancial booms, world health
issues like SARS or the H1-N1 u, or traumatic events like tsunamis and violent attacks. Tourism also depends on internal
forces such as a destinations attractions, traditions, and history. Finally, tourism is a function of the perceptions that
potential visitors have of a destination, including its image. While host cities have little control over external forces, the
Olympics can assist in developing positive images as well as sporting or tourism related infrastructure that can make a
destination more appealing, such as Athens sparkling new international airport.
In a study by the Australian Tourism Commission (2001), it was shown that visitors from a broad range of nations were
more inclined to visit Australia simply because Sydney was awarded the Games. Specically, when respondents were asked
Because Australia has been chosen to host the Olympic Games, are you more likely to consider going to Australia for a
holiday sometime in the next four years, intention to visit was recorded at the following percentages: Indonesia 56%; India
45%; Thailand, 43%; Malaysia, 41%; China 37%; Singapore, 27%; Taiwan, 26%; Japan and USA 24% each. Thus, it appears that
simply being awarded the Olympics can improve a citys appeal as a tourist destination even before the event is held. Ritchie
and Smith (1991) found in a longitudinal study of the effects of the 1988 Calgary Winter Olympic Games that awareness of
the host city increased signicantly, however, one year after the Games, awareness level decreased somewhat leading
Ritchie (1999) to warn about what he called image decay.
Sport event tourism the specic sport-related tourism surrounding the actual sporting event also plays an important
role. Yet, it is difcult to determine whether the Olympics increase tourism in the long-term because large sporting events
change normal tourism patterns in three ways. First, tourism tends to build in the year preceding the event and peaks during
the event as spectators, athletes and their relatives, coaches, judges, media, and volunteers descend upon a destination.
Second, casual tourists may engage in time switching where they change the timing of a pre-planned trip to the destination
to coincide with the sporting event. Third, and contrary to the increases listed above, a crowding out effect can decrease
tourism before and during a large sporting event. Crowding out refers to other regular tourists who actively avoid a
destination or who cannot nd space in a destination during the event period. Tourists who perceive that the city will be
crowded and unmanageable during an event or those who want to avoid the price increases associated with mega events will
specically avoid a destination. To illustrate the crowding out of normal tourism with sport-related tourism the Sydney Zoo
saw a 300% decrease in attendance during the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games. Similarly, the Los Angeles theme park owners
saw a decrease in revenue in 1984 during the Los Angeles Olympics (Preuss, 2004a).
134 N. Agha et al. / Sport Management Review 15 (2012) 125139

Table 2
International arrivals before and after the Olympic Games.

Year Sydney arriving visitors Athens airport international arrivals

2009 10,093,309
2008 2,600,000 10,639,651
2007 2,700,000 10,583,064
2006 2,631,000 9,611,095
2005 2,620,000 9,111,971
2004 2,523,000 8,553,196
2003 2,311,000 7,887,059
2002 2,432,000 7,685,095
2001 2,580,000
2000 2,710,000
1999 2,470,000
Source: Tourism New South Wales, Athens International Airport.
Note: Bold values indicate Olympic years.

The crowding out effect has the potential to decrease not only general tourism but also the number of meetings,
incentives, conventions, and exhibitions (MICE) for the entire year surrounding an event that lasts only a few weeks. For
example, foreign business travelers who normally attended Chinas trade shows had difculty obtaining visas in 2008 due to
the strict policy enforced on foreigner entry which was designed to reduce political activism during the Olympics (Martin,
2008). Similarly, Atlanta shut down the Georgia World Congress Center, its main convention facility, for over four months
before and during the Games thus dramatically decreasing normal tourism ows (Simmons, 2000). Despite attempts in
Sydney for sponsors to leverage the Olympics to increase MICE tourism around the Olympics, the number of congress
participants decreased by 40% in 2000 (Preuss, 2004a, 2004b).
If events bring more visitors but they also disrupt traditional tourism ows, what is the net effect? Does tourism increase
or decrease because of the Olympics? After some research, Emilie found international arrival information for Sydney and
Athens for periods before and after the Olympic Games (see Table 2).
Emilie knew that an airport expansion, such as the new airport built in Athens in 2001, could increase international
arrivals gures. She also learned that international tourism has been steadily increasing for decades, so she was not entirely
sure how to disentangle the Olympic effect from the general growth in tourism. To avoid these problems she found
information, in Fig. 1, for the growth in demand for hotel rooms in Atlanta before and after the Games. As the United States is
so large, international visitor gures are imperceptibly affected by events like the Olympics. But there was a larger percent
increase in room stays in Atlanta after the Olympics than before.
While many tourists are drawn to the Olympics for their own self-interests, additional tourism can be induced through
the use of destination marketing. Host cities and nations have had both successes and failures in maximizing tourism before,
during, and after the Olympics through the use of active tourism campaigns. The Australian Tourism Commission was the
most successful and has been described as a pioneer in the use of television for tactical destination campaigns (Robinson,
1997). No Olympic host since has generated similar results.
The Australian Tourism Commission, the nations tourism organization developed the campaign Australia 2000: Fun and
Games to leverage the attention from the world on Sydney. This campaign was independent of the efforts of the Sydney
Organizing Committee of the Olympic Games (SOCOG). One major objective of the campaign was to counteract the common
perception that a country is full for much longer than the Games period to avoid some of the time switching that is often
associated with large events. An additional AUS$5 million was spent on a campaign to encourage conventions, exhibitions,
and other high-yield MICE events. Despite a well-organized Olympics with beautiful images broadcast throughout the world,

Fig. 1. Demand for Atlanta area hotel rooms.

 N. Agha et al. / Sport Management Review 15 (2012) 125139 135

Table 3
Projected cost of the Olympics as reported over time.

Date Barcelona 1992 (in millions of pesetas) Date Athens 2004 (in billions of Euros)

April 1985 237,000 September 2000 4.0

March 1991 768,368 June 2001 4.4
July 1993 1,119,510 February 2004 5.8
March 2004 6.6
June 2004 10.7
November 2004 12.0

Percent change 372% 200%

Source: Brunet (1995), Athens News.
Note: Cost includes both OCOG and government expenditures.

external worldwide events like SARS and the September 11 attacks contributed to decreased international tourism numbers
for Australia after year 2000. It was not until 20052006 that the Sydney Convention and Visitors Bureau reported
successfully securing a record $373 million in projected revenue from conventions and events for Sydney and New South
Wales (Kahn, 2006).
Four years later, a different dynamic played out in Greece. The Managing Director of the Greek Association of Tourism
Operators (SETE) criticized the ofcial Athens Olympic Organizing Committee for failing to develop and implement a tourism
marketing strategy to be used in association with the Games. Yet, despite the absence of a tourism marketing plan, the
numbers from Table 3 show that international arrivals increased after 2004 even with strong pre-Olympic criticisms of cost
over-runs, construction delays, planning snafus, and general disorganization.
These two examples made Emilie wonder, If increasing tourism is a stated legacy objective of hosting the Olympics then
is it more appropriate for the OCOG or the local or national tourism agency to be responsible for promoting tourism around
the Games? Or should both parties be working together? Although the OCOG is supposed to be responsible for only the event
management aspect of the Olympics, if increased tourism is a claimed legacy in the bid document then perhaps it should be
the OCOGs responsibility too.

6.3. Cost

Even if Emilie could use the Olympics to create a tourism legacy there was still considerable concerns from her
stakeholders regarding the cost of the Games.
As part of the bid, Emilie was responsible for developing a budget for staging the event. In most cases the Olympics cost
more than the original estimate. The reported cost of the Olympics as it increases over time for Barcelona in 1992 and Athens
in 2004 can be seen in Table 3. Both countries spent over three times what was initially projected.
From her research on the cost of previous Games, Emilie knew that her OCOG budget would be a small portion of the total
cost of staging the event. The IOC explicitly states that the OCOG budget should not include the cost of security, transport
and medical services . . . sports venues, the Olympic Village, the IBC [International Broadcast Center] and MPC [Main Press
Center] or other major infrastructure projects (International Olympic Committee, 2009, p. 58). As so many of the major
expenditures are off-budget, the OCOGs for the Summer Olympic Games usually have a budget surplus, while the local, state,
or national governments are often responsible for large cost overruns. Table 4 displays the total cost of the Olympics
including OCOG expenses as well as all additional public and private expenses for each Olympic Games since 1984.
In spite of the high cost, Emilie wondered if there was any way that the budget of the event could be used to develop a
legacy for her city? She found a post-event study claiming Barcelona realized a strong legacy because only 14.5% of the total

Table 4
Cost of the summer Olympic Games, 19842008 (in millions of 2009 US Dollars).

Year City Total costa OCOG

Revenuesb Expensesb Prot

c
2008 Beijing 43,694 1826 1811 15
2004 Athens 16,534d 2757 2686 71
2000 Sydney 4088 2670 2265 405
1996 Atlanta 2403 2345 1672 673
1992 Barcelona 10,898 2558 2227 330
1988 Seoul 3920 2125 825 1301
1984 Los Angeles 660 1585 660 925

Note: Total cost includes OCOG expenditures as well as other government and private expenditures.
a
Preuss (2002) except as marked.
b
Preuss (2004b).
c
Grose (2008).
d
Associated Press (2004).
136 N. Agha et al. / Sport Management Review 15 (2012) 125139

Table 5
Economic impacts of select Summer Olympic Games.

Study year Olympic host Study author Area of impact Impact (year)

2001 Athens Balfousia-Savva, Athanassiou, Zaragas, and Milonas for the Centre of Greece s8.36 bil (2000)
Planning and Economic Research
1999 Athens G. Papanikos for Greek Hotel Chambers Tourism Research Institute Greece US$15.9 bil (1999)
1999 Sydney Arthur Andersen and Centre for Regional Economic Analysis, Australia AUS$6.5 bil (1999)
University of Tasmania
1997 Sydney Ofce of Financial Management, New South Wales Treasury Australia AUS$6.35 bil (1995)
1993 Sydney KPMG Australia AUS$7.3 bil (1993)

budget was spent on event operations while the remaining 85.5% was spent on tangible goods (infrastructure, venues, or
neighborhood redevelopment) that would benet the community for years to come (Brunet, 1995). This is what many of the
recent bid applications refer to as venue legacy or infrastructure legacy.
Although Emilies responsibility in developing the bid was to create a specic event budget, she knew she would have to
conduct an economic impact study to help her stakeholders justify the cost of the event. She found a multitude of economic
impact studies for previous Olympics but in some cases there was a wide range of estimates provided by different sources for
the same event (Table 5). I wonder which economic impact gures can be trusted if there is such a wide disparity? she
mused.
In thinking through the budget, Emilie knew that a major cost of the Games would be the construction of an Olympic
Stadium meant to leave a sporting legacy. Emilie wondered if the concerns of opposition groups regarding venue utilization
were founded? What strategies could she put in place in the bid document to ensure that the venue received maximum
usage?

6.4. Venues

While reviewing previous bids Emilie found many examples of Applicant Cities that claimed the Olympic venues would
serve as a sporting legacy for the community. Yet, from her research it appeared as if these legacies were not always positive.
New sporting venues are not only expensive to build but also difcult to maintain after the Olympics. This is in part
because venues that are built at the same time will age together and require large capital expenditures for maintenance at
nearly the same time. The large stadium necessary to host the opening and closing ceremonies has the highest potential to
create a negative legacy through under-utilization and the resulting burden on the local government to pay the maintenance
and debt costs. Other facilities, while not as expensive, are equally likely to require government support for maintenance and
upkeep if they are not effectively utilized.
Emilie knew many Olympic bids claimed the venues would serve as a local sporting legacy whereby event organizers
could use them to host concerts, events, and sporting spectacles while residents would have access to world-class facilities.
Yet in many cases these good intentions were not realized.
The case of Athens serves as a useful example. Hellenic Olympic Properties (HOP) was created in 2002, two years before
Athens hosted the Olympics, to manage the post-Olympic venues. Since other large events that use Olympic-sized venues
also require bid submissions years before an event takes place, HOP was supposed to bid for these events as well as develop
appropriate post-Games plans for the venues. In reality, during the pre-Olympic period all effort was focused on staging a
successful Games with no extra attention paid to putting together bids for future events. This was exacerbated by a new
conservative government coming to power ve months before the Olympics that forced a turnover in staff and leadership.
In February 2005, Greece admitted that it had not even started to plan for post-Games use of its venues until after the
2004 Games were completed (Grohmann, 2005). The previous head of HOP, Olympics general secretary Costas Cartalis,
predicted that it would take at least four years to get the venues up and running, based on his experiences with local
bureaucracy. Athens was strongly criticized for failing to use the Olympic sporting venues to bring more high quality
international events to Greece and it incurred annual maintenance and security costs of nearly 60 million Euros until the
venues were put to use (Hadoulis, 2005). In recent years though, many of the venues have nally been privatized and
converted away from sports to local uses such as theaters, malls, and cafes although a few venues are still used for local
basketball and soccer teams, yet still some remain unused. As taxpayer money was originally used to build what are now
privately owned and operated businesses, some argue that more appropriate uses would be to convert the facilities to public
use. Based on Greeces nancial woes, due in no small part to the excessive spending to host the Olympics, others argue that it
is better to allow a for-prot business to generate tax revenues than to let a venue sit idle (Gibson, Fairley, & Leivadi, 2010).
Greeces post-Games venue utilization failure was well publicized. Yet, other Olympic hosts have had similar problems
although they are not as widely known. For example, Emilie found that Sydney spent over $40 million annually to maintain
venues that were not utilized often enough after the Games (Owen, 2005). Although Sydneys main stadium needed to host
200 events to break even it struggled to host even half as many (Chalip, 2000) in the period immediately following the
Games. Although, eleven years later the Sydney Olympic Park facilities are well utilized hosting a range of amateur and
professional sports including recreational swimming at the natatorium. However, the story for most facilities is exemplied
 N. Agha et al. / Sport Management Review 15 (2012) 125139 137

by the iconic Birds Nest in Beijing. In the year after the Olympics the citys main stadium hosted only a concert, an opera, and
a football match. It is now open for visitor tours that do not cover the high annual cost of maintaining the facility. Fortunately,
many other venues in Beijing have been converted to local use facilities such as a water park, shopping mall, and
entertainment facilities.
In short, it appears as if recent hosts struggle to use the venues for the rst few years after the Olympics, but eventually
develop appropriate local uses which are sometimes in line with pre-Olympics legacy goals but sometimes not.
Another major cost of hosting the Olympic Games is construction of the athletes village. Critics contend that residents
often suffer during Olympic venue construction while, on the other hand, Emilie had heard positive stories of Olympic
Villages being used for new housing. What really happens? she wondered.

6.5. Housing

Emilie discovered that concerns related to housing are primarily centered on how many units are lost and how many
people are displaced. The results depend on how each host city designs their bids and where they plan to build Olympic-
related venues. Looking at two extreme cases, the Center on Housing Rights and Evictions (COHRE) estimated that the
2000 Games in Sydney displaced no residents because the main Olympic Park was built on previously undeveloped
wetlands. At the other end of the spectrum, COHRE estimated the 2008 Games in Beijing displaced over 1.5 million
residents mainly because several existing, primarily low-income neighborhoods were torn down in order to build new
venues and roads. Overall, the COHRE reported that all Olympic Host Cities since 1988, apart from Sydney, witnessed
numbers of displaced people: Seoul, 720,000; Barcelona, 2500; Atlanta, 6000; Sydney, 0; Athens, 2700; Beijing,
1,500,000.
Although no single organization has conducted research on the increase in housing prices, Emilie found evidence from
almost every Olympic City that the growth in rent and housing values further displaced residents who were unable to afford
the increases. So in a city like Sydney where no residents were forcefully removed from their homes, there were still cases of
families who could not afford rent increases and were displaced from the city to cheaper residential areas (Hall & Hodges,
1996).
Emilie found Olympic organizers often work with developers to replace razed housing and in most cases convert the
Olympic Village to local housing stock after the Games are completed. Although this sounded like a great plan, Emilie learned
that in many cases the new housing stock is too expensive for the previous residents and they are forced to relocate
elsewhere. And in some cases, like Melbourne, the Olympic Villages have effectively become ghettos.

6.6. Social legacies

One of the intangible legacies from hosting the Olympic Games is the positive social benets. The excitement, euphoria,
and pride experienced by the residents of the host country and city has been described as psychic income (Burgan & Mules,
1992). Part of an Olympic bid document includes survey results of the residents attitudes towards hosting the event. The IOC
looks closely at the extent to which the citizens are in support of the bid. Most of the opposition to hosting the Games is due
to perceived cost. The Canadians have abandoned several bids as the citizens protested against plans to host the Games in
Toronto (Whitson & MacIntosh, 1993) with slogans such as bread not circuses. Gursoy and Kendall (2006) note that a
successful bid should also involve the local people as the IOC also looks at resident support for the Olympics as part of their
bid evaluation. Indeed, in 1993 as part of the bid for the 2000 Olympics, the Sydney Olympic Bid Ltd. (SOBL) invited the
residents of Sydney to share the spirit. Waitt (2003) explains that the spirit the SOBL was talking about was an imagined
national identity within sporting traditions (p. 198). In a study of residents two years before the Games and in 2000 during
the Games, Waitt found that Sydneysiders did experience an increase in Olympic spirit, a willingness to volunteer, and a
general sense of euphoria as a result of the Games. He also found, that among ethnic minorities there was a greater sense of
belonging to Australia as a result of the Games.
Once a bid has been won and the citizens of the Olympic city have had to live through construction-related disruption and
are beginning to think about the crowds descending on their city and country it is crucial for the organizing committee to
encourage the locals to get involved in the impending event. Gursoy and Kendall (2006) found that community involvement
and support during the lead up to the 2002 Winter Olympics was likely to result in the longevity of positive legacies from
hosting the Games. They recommended that future studies examine the temporal effects of hosting the Games as resident
perceptions may change before, during and after the event. Certainly, Mihalik (2000) found that resident perceptions
changed over time. After the Games he found residents became increasingly concerned about the negative impacts of the
1996 Atlanta Olympics.
During the event residents usually get caught up in the excitement of the sporting competition and hosting the event in
their city. Kim and Petrick (2005) found that community pride and spirit were rated as the biggest benets for South Korea of
hosting the 2002 FIFA World Cup. Likewise Ohmann, Jones, and Wilkes (2006) found that Germans felt the 2006 FIFA World
Cup left them with a greater sense of community and had renewed their national pride. As yet, however, few researchers
have provided any empirical support as to the longevity of this psychic income (Smith, 2009). Thus, for Emilie the challenge
would be how could she engage the support of the locals for the bid and sustain this support through the lead up and more
importantly as a legacy for the community once the Olympics had nished.
138 N. Agha et al. / Sport Management Review 15 (2012) 125139

6.7. Sport participation

The link between hosting an Olympic Games and an increase in sport participation in the host country has also been noted
as a potential Olympic Legacy, brought to prominence by the London 2012 bid where one of the stated goals was increased
youth sport participation (DCMS, 2007). However, whether hosting an Olympic Games alone can help increase and sustain
increased participation levels over the long term is unknown and little empirical evidence exists to support such a legacy
(London Assembly, 2007). In fact, in a more recent study in the UK, Sport England found that participation rates for
individuals over 16 years old had remained the same for the years 20052006 and 20072008 and had decreased in the
vicinity of the 2012 Olympic Park in East London (London Assembly, 2009). Perhaps the participation legacy is more relevant
for elite sport development goals of a host country. For example, Girginov and Hills (2008) point out that winning Olympic
medals assists in sustaining sport development, more so than just hosting and participating in the Games. Further, Girginov
and Hills found that the potential for legacy impacts differ based on the sport and the related sport organizations and/or
programs. Thus, it appears that the legacy of the hosting the Olympics on increasing general sport participation is still open to
debate.

7. Writing the bid

As Emilie digested all of this information she began to wonder if bidding for the Olympics was the right move for her city.
If it was, how could she meet the legacy expectations of her stakeholders, justify the costs of the Games, and still stage a
successful event?
How should she conceptualize the legacy portion of the bid? Could she successfully revive the local tourism industry as a
legacy of the Olympics? It certainly seemed as if some Olympic cities had managed to create positive tourism legacies. Would
the economic legacy for the city be positive or would it cost the city too much? Would the city benet and use the new sports
facilities and other infrastructural upgrades? What concrete steps would she need to include in the bid to make it all happen?
For Emilie, there was so much to think about and she began to wonder, faced with what appeared to be such an
insurmountable task, why cities actually bid to host the Olympic Games. However, just as she was about to give up she
remembered the excitement of attending the opening ceremonies for the 2012 London Olympic Games and was inspired to
bring that sense of anticipation and festival of world-class sport and culture to her city.

References

Australian Tourist Commission. (2001). Olympic games tourism strategy. Retrieved from http://www.tourism2010.com/UserFiles/File/resource/ATC_Strategy.pdf
Associated Press. (2004, November 18). Athens Olympics cost may top $14.6B. USA Today .
Brunet, F. (1995). An economic analysis of the Barcelona92 Olympic Games: Resources, nancing and impact. In M. Moragas & M. Botella (Eds.), The Keys to
Success: The social, sporting, economic and communications impact of Barcelona92 (pp. 203237). Barcelona: Servei de Publicacions de la UAB.
Burgan, B., & Mules, T. (1992). Economic impact of sporting events. Annals of Tourism Research, 19, 700710.
Cashman, R. (2003). What is Olympic Legacy? In M. Moragas, C. Kennett, & N. Puig (Eds.), The Legacy of the Olympic Games 19842000: International Symposium
Lausanne, 14th, 15th and 16th November 2002 (pp. 3142). Lausanne: International Olympic Committee.
Chalip, L. (2000). Leveraging the Sydney Olympics for tourism. Paper presented at the 2000 seminar of the International Chair in Olympism, Centre dEstudis i de
lEsport (UAB), Barcelona.
DCMS. (2009). London 2012: A legacy for disabled people. London: DCMS.
DCMS. (2007). Our promise for 2012: How the UK will benet from the Olympic and Paralympic Games. London: DCMS.
DCMS. (2008). Before, during and after: Making the most of the London 2012 Games. London: DCMS.
Gibson, H., Fairley, S., & Leivada, S. (2010). Athens 2004: A longitudinal study of sports infrastructure and tourism legacies, Paper presented at the European
Association of Sport Management Conference, Prague, September 1518.
Girginov, V., & Hills, L. (2008). The 2012 London Olympic Games and participation in sport: Understanding the link. The International Journal of the History of Sport,
25(14), 20912116.
Grohmann, K. (2005, February 25). From square one on Games venues use. Athens News, No. 13119.
Grose, T.K. (2008, August 22). London admits it cant top lavish Beijing Olympics when it hosts 2012 games. U.S. News & World Report.
Gursoy, D., & Kendall, K. (2006). Hosting mega events: Modelling locals support. Annals of Tourism Research, 33, 603623.
Hadoulis, J. (2005, March 4). A pressing issue of maintenance. Athens News, No. 13120.
Hall, C. M., & Hodges, J. (1996). The partys great but what about the hang-over? The housing and social impacts of mega events with special reference to the 2000
Sydney Olympics. Festival Management and Event Tourism, 4(12), 1320.
Heinemann, K. (2003). The Olympic Games: Short-term economic impact or long-term legacy. In M. Moragas, C. Kennett, & N. Puig (Eds.), The Legacy of the Olympic
Games 19842000: International Symposium Lausanne, 14th, 15th and 16th November 2002 (pp. 181194). Lausanne: International Olympic Committee.
International Olympic Committee. (2007). Olympic charter. Lausanne: Author.
International Olympic Committee. (2009). 2018 candidature acceptance procedure. Lausanne: Author.
Kahn, C. (2006). SCVB wins record $373 for Sydney. Retrieved from: www.travelwirenes.com/cgi-scripts/csArticles/articles/000089/008991-p.htm
Kim, S., & Petrick, J. (2005). Residents perceptions on impacts of the FIFA 2002 World Cup: The case of Seoul as a host city. Tourism Management, 26, 2538.
London Assembly. (2007). A lasting legacy for London? Assessing the legacy of the Olympic Games and Paralympic Games. London East Research Unit, University of East
London.
London Assembly. (2009). Towards a lasting legacy: A 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Update. London East Research Unit, University of East London.
Martin, M. F. (2008). Chinas economy and the Beijing Olympics. CRS Report for Congress, Order Code RS22936. Retrieved from http://china.usc.edu/App_Images//
crs-beijing-olympics-2008.pdf
Matthewman, R., Kamel, K., & Bearne, M. (2009). Economic impacts of Olympic Games. Retrieved from Locate in Kent website: http://www.locateinkent.com/
images/assets/Economic%20Impacts%20of%20Olympic%20Games%20-%2009.07.09.pdf
Mihalik, B. (2000). Host population perception of the 1996 Atlanta Olympics: Support, benets and liabilities. Tourism Analysis, 5, 4953.
Ohmann, S., Jones, I., & Wilkes, K. (2006). The perceived social impacts of the 2006 football World Cup on Munich residents. Journal of Sport & Tourism, 11(2), 129
152.
Owen, J. G. (2005). Estimating the cost and benet of hosting the Olympic Games: What can Beijing expect from its 2008 Games? Industrial Geographer 3(1).
 N. Agha et al. / Sport Management Review 15 (2012) 125139 139

Preuss, H. (2002). Economic dimension of the Olympic Games. University lecture on the Olympics, Centre dEstudis Olmpics (UAB) and International Chair in
Olympism (IOC-UAB), Barcelona.
Preuss, H. (2004). Aspects of Olympic Games tourism. Paper presented at the 3rd SETE Tourism & Development Conference.
Preuss, H. (2004b). The economics of staging the Olympics: A comparison of the Games, 19722008. Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar.
Ritchie, J. B. R. (1999). Lessons learned, lessons learning: Insights from the Calgary and Salt Lake City Olympic Winter Games. Visions in Leisure and Business, 18, 4
13.
Ritchie, J. B. R., & Smith, B. (1991). The impact of a mega-event on host region awareness: A longitudinal study. Journal of Travel Research, 30, 310.
Robinson, R. (1997, February 1). Australian Tourist Commission uses multi-level marketing to encourage visitors Down Under. Direct Marketing .
Simmons, S. (2000). Analysis of the 1996 Summer Games on real estate markets in Atlanta (Masters Thesis). Retrieved from http://dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/handle/
1721.1/32197/48528237.pdf?sequence=1
Smith, A. (2009). Theorising the relationship between major sports events and social sustainability. Journal of Sport & Tourism, 14(23), 109120.
Streets, D., Fu, J., Jang, C., Hae, J., & He, K. (2007). Air quality during the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games. Atmospheric Environment, 41(3), 480492.
Waitt, G. (2003). Social impacts of the Sydney Olympics. Annals of Tourism Research, 30, 194215.
Whitson, D., & MacInstosh, D. (1993). Becoming a world-class city: Hallmark events and sport franchises. Sociology of Sport Journal, 10, 221240.