Rethinking Olympic Legacy

How do Olympic legacies come about? This book offers an alternative approach to the study of Olympic and mega-sport event legacy, challenging how legacy is conceptualised and practised. It shifts the focus from legacy as a retrospective concept concerned with what has been left behind after the Games, to a prospective one interested in actions and interactions stimulated by the Games. The book argues that creating Olympic legacy is a continuing four-stage process involving ‘investing’ (the accumulated common Olympic cultural capital), ‘interpelling’ (forming a trusteeship relationship where one party undertakes to change the capacity of another), ‘developing’ (ensuring participation in interactions and resource development) and ‘codifying’ (documenting, sharing and remembering legacies so they become cultural capital). It presents a developmental approach to the Olympics which involves vision, trustees and trusteeship and is concerned with capacity building at individual, organisational and societal levels. Thinking of Olympic legacy as capacity building allows seeing the goal of legacy as an embodiment of the aspirations of the Olympic Movement and the Games to introduce radical change in society by transforming its structure. Rethinking Olympic Legacy is essential reading for all students and scholars within an interest in the Olympics, as well as for administrators, policymakers and planners involved with mega-sport events.

For more than a century, the Olympics have been the modern world's most significant sporting event. Indeed, they deserve much credit for globalizing sport beyond the boundaries of the Anglo-American universe, where it originated, into broader global realms. By the 1930s, the Olympics had become a global mega-event that occupied the attention of the media, the interest of the public and the energies of nation-states. Since then, projected by television, funded by global capital and fattened by the desires of nations to garner international prestige, the Olympics have grown to gargantuan dimensions. In the course of its epic history, the Olympics have left numerous legacies, from unforgettable feats to monumental stadiums, from shining triumphs to searing tragedies, from the dazzling debuts on the world's stage of new cities and nations to notorious campaigns of national propaganda. The Olympics represent an essential component of modern global history. The Olympic movement itself has, since the 1990s, recognized and sought to shape its numerous legacies with mixed success as this book makes clear. It offers ground-breaking analyses of the power of Olympic legacies, positive and negative, and surveys the subject from Athens in 1896 to Beijing in 2008, and indeed beyond. This book was published as a special issue of the International Journal of the History of Sport.

This book examines claims that the Olympic Games are a vehicle to inspire and increase mass sport participation. It focuses on the mass sport participation legacy of the most recent hosts of the summer Olympics, including Atlanta, Sydney, Athens, Beijing, London, Rio, and Tokyo. It is organised by host city/country and applies an analytical framework to each, addressing the socio-political context that shapes sport policy, the key changes in sport policy, the structure and governance of community sport, the Olympic and Paralympic legacy, and the changes in mass sport participation before, during, and after the Games. The book is important reading for students, researchers, and policymakers working in sport governance, sport development or management, and the sport policy sector.

This handbook offers an important and timely contribution to the interdisciplinary field of Olympic studies. It brings together for the first time in a single volume a complete analysis of current and future economic, commercial, socio-political, cultural and governance challenges facing both the Olympic and Paralympic Games, their athletes and institutions. The book presents new research and broad surveys exploring pressing debates, challenges and possible solutions surrounding the modern Olympic and Paralympic Games, across diverse socioeconomic and political contexts. Featuring chapters written by leading scholars, athletes and administrators from a range of disciplines and backgrounds, the handbook is divided into four main areas: athletes, business, governance and socio-cultural issues within the Olympic and Paralympic Games. Examining key themes, theories and new emerging issues within the field, the book offers expert insights into every major topic related to the Olympic and Paralympic Games, including doping, integrity, athletes’ rights, culture, nationality, sponsorship, branding, governance, sports policy and law, marketing, social media, technology, e-sports, politics, ethics, international relations, legacy and impact. The only up-to-date handbook to reflect the true breadth and depth of this international field of research, the Routledge Handbook of the Olympic and Paralympic Games is a landmark publication for all students and scholars of sport studies, as well as those working in sport business, media, event management and administration, economics, marketing, management, politics, Olympic studies and cultural studies. It is also an important resource for sport management practitioners and sports officials.

This book brings together different perspectives of mega-event bidding, hosting and legacies. Their impact is considered through an international range of mega-events in terms of land use, political and socio-economic change, and the placemaking processes that accompany these area-based regeneration projects. From city-regions that have not been successful or withdrawn from mega-event selection, to contemporary Olympic, Football World Cup and Expo host cities whose legacy is still unfolding, to event sites whose legacy is now established, the global appeal of the mega-event is apparent from this collection. The book interrogates the mega-event phenomenon in ten countries, from North and South America, and Australia, to Western and Eastern Europe. Drawing on their historical evolution and antecedents, and following recurrent themes of urban regeneration and resistance, the book highlights the importance of major events and festivals to the creation and marketing of place through branding and regional growth In considering a range of mega-events critically and in different national and geopolitical contexts, the book will be of interest to policy and decision-makers at local, regional, national and international levels, and will be of particular interest to professionals, scholars and students working in planning, urban studies, sport and leisure studies, and in event and festival management.

Sports governance has developed into a considerable field of research, and has piqued many researchers’ interest worldwide. What’s more, recent scandals that have affected the world of sport can be directly related to misgovernance. Research Handbook on Sport Governance aims to gather the state-of-the art research on sports governance. It offers a vital reference point for advancing research on the matter, while illustrating different approaches and perspectives, such as good governance principles, systemic governance, political governance and network governance.

This book explores the rise, size and shape of the European fitness industry by using harmonised data as well as in-depth analyses of national surveys in fifteen European countries. Following an introduction to the socio-historical and conceptual aspects of fitness, the collection presents the scope of fitness as a business and participatory activity. Furthermore, both policy and governance issues as well as community and supply angles are considered. Drawing on this unique material, the book will appeal to students and scholars of sport business, sport economics, sport management, and social sport sciences, but also to administrators, policymakers and entrepreneurs in the international and national sport and health community.