The legacy costs of delivering the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games through regulatory capitalism

Abstract

The governance structure of the 2012 Olympic Games illustrates characteristics of ‘regulatory capitalism’ in which government awards an initial contract to deliver a project to a private-sector umbrella organisation. To deliver the 2012 Games, the London Organising Committee for the Olympic and Paralympic Games (LOCOG) is estimated to have awarded over 75,000 (sub)contracts to private companies. The government’s ability to make political interventions after an initial contract is awarded is sacrificed to maximise the likelihood of the project being delivered on time. This paper shows how, as a consequence of this structure, the separation of the delivery of the Games from its volunteer legacy responsibilities prevented the adoption of a strategy for generating more community volunteers from the Games. It prevented synergy being maximised between LOCOG’s Games Maker programme and Sport England’s Sport Maker programme, which aimed to generate 40,000 new sport volunteers. Further, legal protection of the sponsor’s interests prevented Olympic events such as the torch relay, and even certain words, being employed by local government to promote sports participation. A further consequence of LOCOG’s status as a private company has been the restrictions imposed by the ‘non-disclosure agreement’ its employees and contractors were required to sign, which has limited a knowledge transfer legacy – a liberty cost of regulatory capitalism. Delivery by regulatory capitalism is shown to have had significant hidden costs in relation to legacy aspirations with implications for future mega-sports events such as the 2014 Commonwealth Games.