Sports events: typologies, people and place

Abstract

Outside the high-profile mega types, the ubiquity and breadth of sports events can paradoxically make them less obvious choices for research. In addition, the overwhelming studies in sports events tend to involve economic impact analyses and consequently miss the many issues and additional impacts that such events engender. In reviewing the literature related to the study of sport events it become apparent that there has been a notable lack of critical commentary exploring the problems associated with applying traditional event categories to sport events. Moreover there is a deficiency of information concerning particular event types such as those associated with smaller events, along with those connected to parades and festivals. Therefore the aims of this chapter are twofold: first to introduce and evaluate current sport event typologies, and second to present an argument for sports events to be treated separately because of their complexity and nature. It will be contended that are two elements of distinction – a taxonomical distinction related to the specific criteria adopted for sport events, as well as an innate distinctiveness that aims to illustrate the special nature of sport events. For the sake of simplicity and clarity these two themes will be explored separately though it is acknowledged there will be some obvious overlaps.