Abstract
Tourism legacy impacts are considered one of the most important reasons for countries host a mega event. They generate short, medium and, long-term legacies in the destination image, as well as, at economic and sociocultural level. The paper objective is to show the short-term evolution of economic legacies indicators of sports mega-events, two years before and two years after each event. It was verified through an exploratory analysis of tourism employment level, total investment, and Tourism GDP of the countries that hosted the last three FIFA World Cups. Also, it analyzes the country’s competitive strengths at the year that the mega-event happened based on the Tourism & Travel Competitiveness Index pillars (TTCI). Thus, it performed an explanatory and descriptive analysis of secondary data. Literature review points out the infrastructure as the central pillar to receive a sports mega-event. However, the results did not indicate this focus in the last countries chosen. Also, the economic legacies had increased after the sports mega-event, but not in all hosts analyzed. Therefore, the assumption of positive effects generated by sports mega-events is not consolidated. Further research is recommended to establish indicators and approaches the impact on the host country by a mega-event from the legacy perspective.
Highlights
Sports events and mega-events have been reported as a promising segment of the tourism industry (Deery, Jago and Fredline, 2004)
This study focuses on ex-ante and ex-post tourism impacts, it considers two years
Germany is in 3rd position in the Tourism & Travel Competitiveness Index (TTCI) ranking, Brazil occupies the 28th place, and South Africa are in the 48th position (WEF, 2015)
Summary
Sports events and mega-events have been reported as a promising segment of the tourism industry (Deery, Jago and Fredline, 2004). Mega-events take place on a large scale, regarding audience, target market, level of financial involvement of the public sector, political effects, media, television coverage and construction of facilities and infrastructure. They have economic and social impacts on the host society (Hall, 2006). According to Roche (2000) “mega-events are better understood as cultural events (including commercial and sports events) of large scale, which have a dramatic character, mass popular appeal, and international significance.” These events are considered moderns because they traditionally integrate industrial and corporate interests with governmental issues related to urban development and the national image (Schimmel, 2006). The current rankings of TTCI pillars to the two host countries for the editions of the event (Russia and Qatar) were observed to establish a parallel with the previous hosts
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