What does Germany expect to gain from hosting the 2006 Football World Cup? Macroeconomic and regional economic effects
Dr Gerd Ahlert
Institute of Economic Structures Research, Osnabrueck, Germany.
The paper will present some estimates of the potential macro- and regional economic effects on the German economy from hosting the football World Cup in 2006. The analysis was prepared using data from 2000 and 2001 with the sport economic simulation model ‘SPORT’. This model has a special focus on sport-economic activities and was constructed within the framework of a research project financed by the German Ministry of the Interior. The simulation results are based on a scenario which takes into account the necessary investments for upgrading stadium facilities at the event’s venues as well as the tourism expenditure of incoming World Cup visitors during 2006. The results will illustrate the importance of modelling sport economic activities in deep sectoral and inter-temporal detail. Besides the macroeconomic effects the paper explains how these can be transmitted to the regional level of the German federal states by the econometric model system ‘LANDER’. This system is founded upon the national accounts for Lander and specifies the economic development of the 16 federal states in the context of the expected macroeconomic development calculated within the SPORT model at the national level. The results will show that it is possible to estimate the potential macroeconomic effects of the 2006 football World Cup at the national and the regional level.
Towards A Sporting Singapore: Identity and Expediency
Dr. Nick Aplin and Mr. Michael Craw
National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.
As an independent nation since 1965, Singapore has followed a course in sport that has attempted to enhance its internal and external image. Sporting policy has been driven by the overriding need to enhance the broader practical aims of nation building such as the creation of a healthy and vibrant population, the promotion of a strong identity linked to excellence, and the contribution of all sporting activities to the security, harmony and productivity of a multi-cultural people. Singapore has been content to host regional multi-sport events and single sport international events, but has yet to move beyond merely considering the possibility of events on a mega scale.The prioritization of different objectives during the past forty years has produced the impression that the sporting culture has found it difficult to pin down an identity that is all-inclusive, forward looking, and can accommodate the notion of investing considerable time and money on large-scale events. Happily the fine-tuning of initiatives has brought Singapore to the stage where it no longer views sport as a marginal activity, and yet part of the desired external image – that of a small nation capable of achieving success, as a host of a major event - has yet to be etched decisively in the minds of local decision makers.The steps to general sporting success have been taken decisively, but often in the past they have stopped short of envisaging achievement outside the region. Different visions of success were created in the 1980s, 1990s, and most recently in 2001. The main themes have prioritized lifelong involvement in sport as a health related and a recreational pursuit; preparing young people for ‘Total Defence’ of the nation, and building the national profile through the successes of its international champions. Times are now changing. The current model has enlisted as many stakeholders as possible to create the concept of ‘Team Singapore’. A recent report identified the drive to excellence internationally and the establishment of a sporting ‘hub’ as key objectives for the immediate future. The double attraction of business and entertainment revolving around sporting activity suggest that hosting major international games will need to be placed on the agenda very soon.
The evaluation of the efficiency and effectiveness of sport promotional initiatives
Dr. Kathy Van den Bergh
Department of Sports Policy and Management Vrije Universiteit, Brussels
Results from several studies have indicated that in those European countries where a Sport-for-All policy was initiated more citizens became physically active. It is a general belief that sport promotion has a positive impact on the sport participation level of people. Although the effects of a sport promotion policy are difficult to measure as a variety of factors might influence the sport participation level, it remains important to evaluate the efforts that are made. To date, sport promotional initiatives have rarely been evaluated in a systematic way. Evaluations are often only quantitative in nature, with no attention to customers’ satisfaction or impact on their sporting behaviour. Literature has indicated that one of the key issues in quality care is the determination of the customers’ needs on a regular basis. Besides this, quality control implies that an organisation regularly evaluates its efficiency and effectiveness. Through a study, which was conducted by order of the sport governmental body of Flanders (Bloso), an instrument was developed to evaluate the efficiency of sports promotional campaigns and sports events and to determine their impact on specific target groups. This instrument consists of four semi-structured questionnaires (organisers, co-organisers, others such as sponsors and participants). The instrument was tested through 74 test cases and can be regarded as a support for sport policy makers and local organisers in determining the efficiency of their sport promotional initiatives and the participants’ satisfaction. However, it is very difficult to measure the effects of an initiative, particularly when the initiative aims at a changed behaviour (e.g., an increased sport participation level). The instrument within this study was oriented towards the developing process and as such focuses on the efficiency in the way an initiative is organised. However, this does not imply that effect evaluation is less important.
The Economic Impact of Major Sports Events
Professor Chris Gratton, SIRC, Sheffield Hallam University, U.K.
In recent years there has been increasing interest in the role of special events (or mega-events) in attracting tourists to cities and regions. Event-led tourism strategies have been based on either cultural festivals or major sporting events, and occasionally on both. This paper concentrates on economic impact studies of major sports events carried out by the Sport Industry Research Centre (SIRC) over the last six years. The studies are of major sports events in various cities including the Euro 96 football championships. Overall 20 major sports events have been studied of which 10 were World or European Championships. The results reported in the paper indicate the wide variability in the economic benefits generated even by high profile events as well as the difficulty sometimes encountered in predicting what these benefits will be prior to the staging of the event. An attempt is made to develop a typology of major sports events in terms of their potential to generate significant economic impacts. The paper goes on to look at the broader benefits of hosting major sports events including media coverage and place marketing.
Hosting mega-sports events and its impact upon city development in Japan
Professor Munehiko Harada, Osaka University of Health and Sport Sciences.
It was not until very recently that sports became a subject of discussion in
Japan as a means of the revitalization and development of cities. Traditionally,
discussion on sports has been restricted to such fields as physical
education in schools, professional sports for entertainment, and training of
Olympic athletes to enhance national prestige. With the recent advancement
of commercialized sports, people are beginning to realize the unlimited
potential of sports and beginning to view sport as a means of urban
revitalization. Osaka decided to become a candidate for the host city of
the 2008 Olympic Games but failed. Reinvigorating the city’s economy by sports
is a postmodern strategy of city management in line with world trends. As
the proverb says, "Rome was not built in a day." Likewise, a sports city
cannot be built in a short period of time. Osaka has to take a long-term view in aiming toward the future goal of developing itself as a sports city.
Underestimated costs and overestimated benefits? Sports mega-events in North American cities from Montreal (1976) to Vancouver (2010)
Dr John Horne, University of Edinburgh and Professor David Whitson, University of Alberta
Since the late 1970s (and the Montreal Olympics especially) a major concern in considerations of sports mega-events has been the gap between the forecast and actual impacts on economy, society, and culture, etc. That there is likely to be such a gap is now fairly predictable. Pro-hosting advocates tend to gather and project optimistic estimates, anti-hosting groups articulate concerns about public debt, and about the ‘opportunity costs’ of spending public money on state-of-the-art sports venues. In addition to economic costs and benefits we also have to consider the strains to the social fabric that follow when Olympic facilities are central to ‘re-development’ agendas that typically displace low income residents. This paper will begin by posing some questions about the discrepancies between predicted and actual outcomes, and the research on which optimistic predictions are based. It will also raise questions about the tourism industries that hosting advocates often claim will develop after the Games are gone. These and other issues surrounding the hosting of sports mega-events will be exemplified with reference to the experience of certain North American cities (mainly but not exclusively in Canada – Montreal, Calgary, Atlanta and Vancouver).
From the Commonwealth Games to F1 Grand Prix: Exploring Malaysia’s initiatives in the hosting of international sports events
Dr. M. Mustafa Ishak, University Utara, Malaysia
Today, bidding to host international sports events is no longer a privilege of certain developed countries. Hosting international sports events has attracted many developing countries, as they have begun to realize the multiple benefits that it can offer. Sports as a form of popular culture that cut across class, caste and ethnicity has a lot to offer to many developing countries that are still grappling with many crucial national agendas, provided its benefits and potential effects are creatively exploited. The successful hosting of a high-profile international sports event would not only trigger and promote national pride and a sense of patriotism, but quite often, its socio-economic outcome may outweigh the political effects. Whilst the political focus of sports is usually related to aspects such as national pride, improving the image of a nation as well as national unity, the economic dimension of sports has always been linked to economic growth, tourism and creating new frontiers for the economy. Over the past decade Malaysia has seen growing interest and intensive government investment in sports. The success of the Kuala Lumpur 1998 Commonwealth Games and the Sepang Formula 1 Grand Prix has gained the country outstanding international reputation in the hosting of world sports events, despite its average achievements in sports. This paper attempts to examine the underlying factors that prompted Malaysia to actively become involved in promoting itself as a host country for several world sports events that it has never before partaken in nor had achieved international reputations in. In addition it will also look into the country’s sports policy as well as the roles of government and sports bodies in making sports an important dimension to strengthen the country’s domestic and international agendas. The paper argues that for many developing countries, the role of government is still far more crucial than any other factors in the development of sports. Sports have far-reaching implications in the development of a country and should not be viewed merely as a form of popular culture. Therefore, many more ‘focus studies’ should be carried out to further apprehend the contribution that sports could make in developing countries.
Sport Events and Infrastructure Planning in Newly Industrialised Economies
Professor Sombat Karnjanakit, Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok, Thailand
Due to the increasing importance of sport in today’s society, the sport world has experienced a tremendous evolution over the past decades. Sport events and infrastructure planning have in consequence undergone significant growth and development and it is important to understand the new structure and functioning of today’s sport world, as well as the implications of its past and future evolution. Recognizing the increased expectations of spectators, media, sponsors and television, today’s key tasks that organizers of sport events need successfully plan, communicate and operate, are enormous. This presentation is designed to investigate how sport events and infrastructure planning in newly industrialized economies like Thailand have impacted on its people. Presentations and illustrations of relevant issues are provided with respect to (1) the impact on sport and tourism, (2) the development of international sport events which Thailand hosts and/or participates in, (3) infrastructure planning in Thailand in order to be the host country. The presentation will also discuss Thailand’s road map for international sport events and its preparation from 2004 to 2016. Sport plays an important role in improving individual development, physically, mentally, socially, and spiritually. Sports events have an economic impact, such as sport related expenditure associated with spectators, and expenditure on accommodation, food and beverage, souvenirs, transportation. Sport events, national or international, have a high impact on sport tourism. Sport tourism touching the local and regional economy is equated with the visitors’ expenditure on participation in sport or recreation. The host of international sports events also has the chance to provide a forum for the celebration of athletic, artistic and cultural excellence and has the opportunity to contribute to the expression of their national identity. Thailand has been involved in the international sport event business since 1959 and the first regional South East Asian Peninsula Games (SEAP) with participants from six nations, Burma, Cambodia, Laos, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand. In 1977 the name changed to the South East Asian Games (SEA) with four more members, Indonesia, the Philippines, Brunei and Vietnam. Thailand is active in the organization of international events and is unique in having hosted the Asian Games in Bangkok four times (1966, 1970, 1978 and 1998). The presentation will consider Thailand as a host country and participant at international sport events, as well as infrastructure planning between 2004 and 2016. It will discuss participation at the Athens Summer Olympic Games and hosting the World Women U-19 Championships in 2004, hosting the 2005 Asian Indoor Games, participation at the Asian Games in Doha and hosting the World Weight Lifting Championships in 2006. In 2007 Thailand will host the World University Games, the Universiade, and is preparing an Olympic Game bidding candidature for 2016.
Winners and Losers in the 2002 Football World Cup
Dr Wolfram Manzenreiter, University of Vienna
The “2002 FIFA World Cup Korea/Japan” was the first football World Cup Finals ever to take place in Asia and be co-hosted by two countries. Drawing on data provided by the national and local organising committees, football’s world governing institution, local and international media accounts and first-hand observations made before, during and after the event, I will demonstrate the gap between forecasts and actual impacts of the 2002 World Cup on its host societies. In particular three aspects are discussed: the specific regional political economy of the 2002 World Cup; the role of sports mega-events in identity construction and promotion; and how such events are both constituted by and constitutive of globalization. The discursive space of these debates delineates the power struggle for determining the meaning of mega-events between different agents.
UEFA Euro 2004TM –A great opportunity for Portugal to be recognized worldwide
Salomé Marivoet, Faculty of Sports Sciences and Physical Education, University of Coimbra, Portugal
In the current course of globalization, big sporting events have increasingly come to act as vehicles par excellence for the display of nations on a global scale, and in this way, they have become events of great symbolic importance in the geo-strategy of the organizing countries. Despite the considerable investments in the organization of those events, European states and sports organizations increasingly tender their applications in the hope that these will meet with a favourable reception, as was the case with the UEFA Euro 2004TM in Portugal. Aside from the millions of Portuguese that came on the streets to participate in the great party of European football, about one million spectators watched the games in the stadiums, half of these were foreign fans, while close to 200 television stations and hundreds of journalists and photographers transmitted news and images from the UEFA Euro 2004TM in Portugal to the four corners of the world, which were received by many millions of spectators and readers during the twenty-three day long tournament. The public investment in the construction of seven new stadiums and the remodelling of another three came to about 75 per cent of the total cost, of which 25 per cent came from the Portugese government. Added to which were also the public treasury and the inherent costs of mounting such an enormous security and safety network, which involved 20.000 national police in addition to international cooperation. If, on the one hand, great football events have come to constitute moments for the reaffirmation of national identities in a global context, allowing fans of different nationalities to socialize in a festive environment, on the other hand, they have also permitted the expression of violent behaviour, hostile intolerance or xenophobia, demanding thus an added effort on the part of the public authorities of the organizing countries.While it may be difficult to evaluate the return on public investments, namely those arising from the tourist promotion of the country – one of the principal expectations in organizing the tournament – the Euro 2004 constituted an unparalleled moment in which strengthened cohesion and national identity were manifested, and which will certainly remain in the collective memory of the Portuguese. The substantial public investments however, stirred up discordant voices in Portuguese society during the preparatory phase, resulting in a redoubled appeal on behalf of the public authorities and of those responsible for the organization of the event, to accept the tournament in light of a national mission.The appeal to all Portuguese, to be involved in contributing to a hospitable reception of the visitors, was of enormous importance in the creation of a festive and sociable atmosphere among the fans of the 16 teams selected for the final phase of the championship. This fact, which was equally evident in the attitude adopted by the security forces, constituted one of the relevant aspects in the prevention of incidents of violence and intolerance that have come to surround big football events. The UEFA EURO 2004TM in Portugal comprised a good example of the enormous potential in big sporting events for the promotion of a country, which revealed itself to the world, demonstrating its capacity for investment, organization and reception in an atmosphere of warm hospitality, making the realization of one more party of European football possible.
Planning Strategies and Olympic Urbanism: the case of post-Olympic Barcelona
Professor Francesc Muñoz, Autonomous University of Barcelona.
The Barcelona planning experience of urban regeneration has been clearly recognised at the international level. The keys for such a success include a long list of strategic issues like architecture; urban revitalisation; emphasis on public life and public spaces; and the creation of a daily-life consensus on the improvement of the cityspace. It is clear that such a process of transformation and change of the city scape would have been hard to imagine without the opportunity that the organisation of the Olympic Games in 1992 gave to the city authorities. During the preparation of the games, some of the trends in local urban planning, afterwards recognised, were tested in the city arena: the capability for innovating on planning and economic aspects; the creation of partnerships; or the development of urban projects in different urban areas specifically linked together to generate new economic opportunities and spatial synergies. Nowadays, more than a decade since the celebration of the Games, the so-called ‘Barcelona model’ still explains the urban strategies currently developed in post-Olympic Barcelona. In this sense, the latest global event already developed, the Forum of Cultures 2004, has been a strategy to generate the ‘milieu’ for putting together a range of different urban projects in the same way the Games accelerated the transformation of the city 12 years ago: the extension of the port and the airport; the High Speed Train; the extension of the waterfront; and the location of a new technological district in a marginalised area, the 22@ program. These are just some of the on-going projects that keep fueling the Barcelona urban experience. It is an urban strategy based on intervention in those urban areas without a clearly defined morphological and economic base, to make them contribute to the improvement of centrality conditions of the city.
When China Meets the Olympics
Dr. Xu Xin, Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University, Japan/John M. Olin Fellow on National Security, Harvard University
China’s path to hosting the Summer Olympics in Beijing in 2008 has been embedded in its recent history of nation building and international integration. Until the PRC’s entry into the United Nations in 1971, China’s membership in the International Olympic Committee (IOC) had been politically contested between Beijing and Taipei. The IOC only finally granted the PRC full membership after the ‘one China’ issue was appropriately solved in 1981. The so-called ‘Olympic model’ regarding the ‘one China’ issue not only opened the door to Chinese athletes to international sports, but also helped to promote China’s wider participation in international affairs. Ever since then, in parallel with China’s reform and open-up policy, China’s participation in the Olympic Games has reflected its determined pursuit of a great power status in international sports corresponding to its increasing openness and integration into the international community. The robust performance by Chinese athletes in various international events has symbolized the rise of China on to the world stage. Now when Beijing has been awarded the right to host the 2008 Olympiad, China has set a new goal for its international policy: turning the Beijing Olympiad into a historical moment of bringing East and West together in the new century. Yet before it can meet international expectations, it has to challenge itself first to decide what unique Olympiad it wants to bring to the world, how it can well handle its contested nation building across the Taiwan Strait, and what image of China it wants to present to the world audience. This paper sets out to address these questions by exploring China’s hosting policy in the broad context of China’s ongoing nation building and international integration.
The Beijing 2008 Olympic Games and its Impact on the Chinese Economy and Social Development
Dr. Yi Jiandong, Sport Social Sciences Department and Director of the Teaching and Research Section for Sport Journalism, Beijing Sport University.
Many Chinese government institutes and governments at provincial and municipal level are making the eleventh ‘five-year plan’ (2006--2010), which will increasingly focus on sports, especially international sport mega-events. This is because China has recognized and accepted the economic and social value of international sporting events. It also reflects the desire of the Chinese government to implement policies to promote sustainable development scientifically. The first ten years of the 21st century are witnessing a climate of application and preparation for international sporting events in China. These include: the 21st Universiade, the 2003 Asian Football Cup, the Fourth World Cup in Women’s Football (changed to another location due to SARS), the Fourth and Fifth Eastern Asian Games which will be held in Macao in 2005 and in Hong Kong in 2009, the Shanghai 2007 Deformity Olympic Games, the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games, the Guangzhou 2010 Asian Games, plus Harbin which is bidding for the World University Games in winter sports. According to these examples, China has shown an unprecedented passion for hosting and participating in international sporting events.
The following list suggests some of the anticipated impacts that sports may have on the Chinese economy and social development: 1. to stimulate the fast development of correlative industries, international sporting events could be a strong proponent for the economic development and improvement of the architecture, travel, finance, insurance, information technology, transportation, and communication industries. 2. To speed up the compliance of various affairs with international standards, the extensive participation of middle society and civil groups in sport will enhance the orderly operation of social structure, civil enterprise and capital. 3. There will be opportunities to join with important businesses. 4. There will be an opening of, and gradual increase internationally, in people’s awareness/consciousness of China, and the advancement of international rules and standards will be more readily understood and accepted.
