Leveraging sport events for tourism gain in host cities: a regime perspective

Abstract

ABSTRACTProponents often claim that bidding for and hosting sport events have an overall capacity to generate a variety of benefits for cities and regions. Despite limited empirical evidence to support these assertions, cities continue to vie for hosting rights. In an effort to maximise the benefits of hosting, host cities have adopted a strategic approach to event planning and management referred to as event leveraging. A critical concern raised in the leveraging literature is how event-related strategies fit with the broader tourism development agenda of cities and regions, and how they are implemented. This paper uses Urban Regime Theory (URT) to understand how and why cities seek to host events, and how the process of leveraging is undertaken to maximise the benefits of hosting. Viewing events and strategies in the context of regimes, highlights why some cities and regions have been successful in leveraging sport events for tourism gain over time and, importantly, why some have not. This paper synthesises the existing body of work on tourism-based sport event leveraging, identifies three ways academic research has explored leveraging, and uses regime theory as a lens to further our understanding of the leverage process in host cities.