'MAJOR SPORT EVENTS _ LEARNING FROM EXPERIENCE'

SPRIG Conference, UMIST Manchester, 1st May 2001

Title of Presentation:

‘Mega-Events, Olympic Games and the World Student Games 1991

- Understanding the Impacts and Information Needs of Major Sports Events’

Maurice Roche

Contact information:

Reader in Sociology, Sheffield University, Sociology Department, Sheffield University S1O 2TN
EMAIL:m.roche@sheffield.ac.uk

Abstract:

The Presentation is divided into three main sections.

The first will be concerned with general issues in understanding the nature and impact of sport ‘mega-
events’ like the Olympic Games. This will be based on my recent book ‘Mega-Events and Modernity’
(Routledge, London). Information about the contents of the book and also a the text of the Preface will
available at the conference.

The second section will focus on a case study and an assessment of Sheffield’s World Student Games
1991 event.

The third section discusses some of the main lessons to be learned, particularly from problematic
experiences such as the Sheffield event, about the need for greater democracy and rationality in major
event planning, and in particular the need to generate an ‘information culture’ in the event policy-making
process.

Some notes on this are contained in this file document.

Also the file document contains a Bibliography

 MEGA-EVENT ANALYSIS

(Roche 2000, Mega Events + Modernity, Routledge)

PART ONE PART TWO

MEGA-EVENTS + MEGA-EVENTS +
THE GROWTH OF INTERNATIONAL THE GROWTH OF
CULTURE GLOBAL CULTURE

Ch.2 EXPOS 1 - Nation, Empire + Capital CH.5 MEGA-EVENTS, CITIES + TOURISM

Perspectives (Hobsbawm + Bennett) ‘Expo City’: - Tourism, Theme Parks

Origins (e.g. Crystal Palace 1851) ‘Olympic City’: - Tourism + Image ‘Media
Imperial Expos (e.g. Wembley 1924) City’ + ‘City Bidding Game’

CH.3 EXPOS 2 - Cultural Citizenship CH.6 MEGA-EVENTS, MEDIA + SPORT

Expos, Tourist Culture + Inclusion Media sport 1 - Drama + Ritual

Expos, Social Divisions + Exclusion Media sport 2 - Political Economy
Expos + Olympics Olympics as Media Events

CH.4 OLYMPICS - Super-nationalism CH.7 MEGA-EVENTS + GLOBALISATION

Inter-war International sport Olympic Movement + Global Governance.
‘Alternative’ International sport Global citizenship
Super-national sport: Nazis+The Olympic Movement + Global Citizen.
Olympics
 WHAT ARE MEGA-EVENTS?

Table 1: Public Events: - Types and Dimensions

TARGET TYPE OF MEDIA
TYPE OF EVENT EXAMPLE OF EVENT ATTENDANCE/ INTEREST
MARKET
Expos Global Global TV
Mega-Event Olympics
World Cup (soccer)
Grand Prix (F1) World Regional/National International/
Special Event World Regional sport National TV
(e.g. Pan-Am Games)
National sport event National National TV
Hallmark Event (e.g. Australian Games)
Big city sport/festivals Regional Local TV
Rural town event Regional/local Local TV/Press
Community Event
Local community event Local Local Press

Table 2

‘MEGA-EVENTS’: - Key Dimensions +

Their ‘Extra-Ordinary’ Character

INTER-NATIONAL • Extra-Ordinary = Beyond National Event Calendar

EVENT: • OK Lead nation: - National Elites + Publics
• BUT International NGOs involved (e.g. IOC)
• AND ‘Host’ Role: ‘Welcoming the World’

URBAN EVENT: • International Event is ‘localised’ in a ‘Host’ City

• Extra-Ordinary = Beyond Urban Event Calendar
• Urban Elites + Publics involved

MEDIA EVENT: • Press, then Radio + then TV traditionally involved

• TV Corporations central to Mega-Sport Events
• Extra-Ordinary = Beyond normal programming

SCALE: ‘Size Matters’

TEMPORALITY: ‘Time Matters’

 WHY MEGA-EVENTS? - CAUSES, USES + IMPACTS

ELITES USE MEGA-EVENTS:

1. AS ‘THEATRES OF POWER’ - TO PROMOTE DOMINANT IDEOLOGIES

- Liberal Capitalist; Nationalist; Communist; Fascist etc.

- Class-ism; Sexism; Racism etc.

2. TO MARK COLLECTIVE CHANGE: - ‘PROGRESS’ into the FUTURE

- Political/Ideological +/or Economic Change

- Mark +/or ‘Perform’ Change (Collective ‘Rite de Passage’)

3. TO CONSTRUCT CONTINUITIES: - ‘COMMUNION’ with the PAST

- Invent ‘Origin’ Myths

- Draw Legitimacy from a previous Event - Via Commemoration

- Draw Legitimacy from Mega-Event Traditions + Calendars

PUBLICS USE MEGA-E VENTS:

1. TO CELEBRATE NEW COLLECTIVE IDENTITIES

2. TO RE-NEW + CELEBRATE OLD COLLECTIVE IDENTITIES

3. TO EXPLORE OTHERS’ IDENTITIES

4. FOR MANY ‘AD HOC’ PURPOSES: - INTER-PERSONAL +/or FAMILIAL

 THE WORLD STUDENT GAMES 1991
Q.WHAT WAS IT?

‘The biggest multi-sport event in the UK

since the 1948 Olympics’

PROJECTIONS 1: - PEOPLE

6,000 competitors + 2,000 officials

5,000 volunteers

2,000 media (!?)

1,000,000 visits (!?)

PROJECTIONS 2: - MONEY

1986/7-1st Finance projection:

Event cost = £25million + deficit = £0

Capital costs + deficit = £20-30million

1987 - 2nd Finance projection:

Event cost = £25m + deficit = £0

Capital costs + deficit = £80million

PROJECTIONS 3: - BENEFITS

* City Image + * Tourism

* Event jobs (5,500 job years) + * Economic catalyst

* Community leisure + * City sport

 WORLD STUDENT GAMES: - CAPITAL COSTS

STADIA & FACILITIES FOR THE EVENT

* DON VALLEY (Athletics Stadium, 25000 seats) £28+ million

* SHEFFIELD ARENA (Indoor Stadium, 12000 seats) £33+ million

* PONDS FORGE (Swimming Centre, 2000 seats) £50+ million

* LYCEUM THEATRE (Refurbishment, 1000 seats) £12 million

* HILLSBOROUGH LEISURE CENTRE £12 million

* Etc.

TOTAL COST c.£140++ million

(excluding 10 yr. Debt Interest etc.)

 THE WORLD STUDENT GAMES 1991
Q.WHAT HAPPENED?

Event Planning + Management process 1986-1992

PRE-BID + BID PHASE: 1986-87

- Project Conceptualisation: (Studies = Cursory or ignored)

- Political Commitment to Bid

- Bid group organized + Bid success

POST-BID + EVENT PREPARATION PHASE: - 1988-91

- Event organization problems: (Event company collapse)

- Building + Finance problems: (Costs grow)

- Publicity + Image problems: (Low TV interest + Hi Press Criticism)

- Economic Impact study 1990: (3 years after Bid!)

THE EVENT:- 1991

- Technically successful

- Fairly popular at time

POST-EVENT PHASE:

- No event research: (No visitor study + no media study)

- Big event deficit: (£10 million)

- Big Capital debts: (20 years, £400 million - later cut)

- Financial Audit Report: (delayed 1 yr + then highly critical)

- No political accountability

- No clear post-event after-use plans for key facilities

 THE WORLD STUDENT GAMES 1991
Q. WHAT WENT WRONG?

Q1 - Did the short-term Event Project

‘hi-jack’ the long-term Strategy?

A. YES

Q2 - Did the local public

feel that it ‘owned’ the Project/Strategy?

A. NO

Q3 - Were all the organisers

‘singing from the same hymn sheet’?

A. NO

SOME LESSONS: - ‘LEARNING FROM EXPERIENCE’

A ‘Commonsense’ Approach to Big Project Planning

LESSON 1:

‘Try to act strategically and realistically’

* Develop ‘an information culture’ in the policy-making process

* An ‘information culture’ = ‘Looking’ ........ NOT ‘Visions’

1.‘look before you leap’

‘act in haste, regret at leisure + be realistic as well as a ‘visionary’

2. ‘look long as well as short’

 3. ‘look around at other city Projects’

Q. what are the connections? + Any synergies?

4. ‘look at alternatives + at opportunity costs’

5. ‘look at costs as well as benefits’

Q. who benefits? + how? Q. who pays? + how?

6. ‘look in detail’

Note: ‘instinct’ - ‘judgement’ - ‘vision’ won’t do

LESSON 2:

‘Involve the Public’

Big Events need to be ‘owned’ by the local ‘host’ public

‘Ownership’ = both symbolic + real

Planners usually finance the event, in part from the Public’s money

Planners need to get the Public to buy tickets

Planners need to get the Public to give volunteer support

SO:
Q. what are Planner’s responsibilities to the public?

Q. What are the public’s rights in the Event as citizens?

ACTIONS:

* consult with the public (at the right time & attempt to persuade the public etc.)

* listen to the public (& respond, adapt the project)

* inform the public throughout

* use the local media to do this (rather than just to do PR for the planners)

LESSON 3:

‘Get your act together & keep it together’

- Big Events are intrinsically complex,

- So coordination + communication are priorities.

Main actors:

* The Project group (i.e. Event &/or Stadium design & construct people)

* Other City facilities/stadia organisers (marketing & PR aspects)

* City Council’s Departments:

- Leisure/Recreation dept.,

- Publicity and Public Relations office,

- Tourism office,

- Planning,

- Transport,

- Employment depts. etc.

* City Council’s Corporate & Strategic organisation

* City’s Private + Public Sector Partnership organisation

Corporate working + corporate communications:

- They need to be sustained over years of pre-event work,

- They are essential for all-round success in this sort of project.

 TOWARDS A NEW ‘INFORMATION CULTURE’

IN BIG SPORT EVENT PLANNING

ANALOGY:

Post-Hillsborough/Taylor Report event + venue planning ‘safety culture’

THE ‘INFORMATION CULTURE’

Policy actors in the ‘information culture’ =

- Proactive in the relevant ‘information field’

- Cultivate the info field + Quality control it

- Communicate it (in-house + to the public)

THE ‘INFORMATION FIELD’: e.g.

- feasibility studies + cost-benefit analyses

- economic impact studies +other impact (social, environmental) studies

- market research + attitude surveys,

- media surveys,

- long-term trend projections + forecasts

- etc
 EVENT PROJECT ‘INFORMATION CULTURE’

QUESTIONS

Q. WHAT INFORMATION?

* All Gross Benefits + All Costs + .... Net Benefits

* Alternatives? + Opportunity Costs?

Q. HOW TO USE INFORMATION?

Methodology of Multiple & Competing Studies

Suggestions:

- Commission 2 (+) independent studies of project elements

- Compare, criticise + then decide

- Create central UK archive of all big event studies + documents

- Create independent social scientific standard-setting and review procedures

- Use UK Universities + ESRC to assist this

Q. WHEN?

Quality Information BEFORE decision-making - NOT after it

Q. HOW TO PAY FOR IT?

Suggestion:

Standard 1% (+) of Total Event Cost (Event +Capital Costs)

 MEQA-EVENTS STUDIES +
THE WORLD STUDENT GAMES 1991 CASE STUDY

A BIBLIOGRAPHY

Note: This is a selective list of sources

- For fuller bibliographic information on Sheffield’s World Student Games 1991 case study see Roche
1992b) and 1994.

- For fuller and more up-to-date bibliographic information on Mega-Events research in general see the
bibliography in Roche 2000 and also Roche 1992 a)

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‘MEGA-EVENTS AND MODERNITY’ - Maurice Roche
(Note: This is the preface to this book and was written in early 2000)

PREFACE
I first got interested in ‘mega-events’ in the late 1980s. My home city of Sheffield made a successful bid
for the (ultimately not-so-very-’mega’ and enduringly controversial) ‘World Student Games 1991’ event
in 1986. I made a study of this event, looking at its social context and policy implications and identifying
themes and issues for further research. Ultimately I started work on this book in the mid1990s. Back in
the late 1980s, and for a long time afterwards, my interest in mega-events, - although it resonated with
the interests of various specialist historians and other researchers, as I discuss in the book, - was a
perennial source of puzzlement to many of my sociological and academic colleagues. Thankfully this by
no means applied to all of them (as is indicated in the Acknowledgements section). The colleagues who
were puzzled seemed to regard mega-events as demonstrably trivial, populist cultural ephemera,
irrelevant to ‘the problems of the real world’ and ‘the big issues’ of the day, such as struggles in the
contemporary period against war, class inequality, sexism, racism and xenophobia, and, conversely,
struggles to promote peace, social justice and citizenship and social inclusion. However their puzzlement
was, in turn, a puzzle to me. How could they not see that these events were undeniably, even if only
periodically, ‘problems of the real world’ for many citizens in modern societies, and that, as they always
have done throughout the modern period, they continue to provide periodic focal points and symbolic
expressions, and arenas of debate and struggle in relation to many ‘big issues’?

In recent years the clouds of mutual incomprehension have begun to lift. This is particularly so as the
notion of ‘the Millennium’, and of the apparent imperative need to mark and celebrate it, has crystallised
in the plans of governments and the consciousness of publics around the world. The fact that this book is
published in the year 2000 was not something that had figured in my original plans for this project.
Nonetheless it is a fortunate coincidence. In the year of such ‘official’ events as Britain’s ‘Millennium’
Expo, the World Expo in Hanover, the Olympic Games in Sydney and also numerous ‘alternative’ large
scale events few people, even sociologists, can credibly continue to claim ignorance of, or indifference
to, mega-events.

Mega-events have come to have a high political profile in the contemporary period. In 2000, at the turn
of the 2OthC, they are beginning to assume, once again, the kind of high political and cultural profile
they had in 1900, at the turn of the l9thC. The year of 1900 saw the staging in Paris of the biggest and
arguably most impressive Expo the world had ever seen, the high tide of the ‘belle epoque’, an event
which also contained the second in the series of modern Olympic Games. This was followed in the early
years of the new century by the staging of two great Expos in the USA, at Buffalo (1901) and St.Louis
(1904), the latter event also containing the third Olympic Games. As this book tries to show, this was
more than just a passing flurry of national cultural assertiveness and international cultural diplomacy. The
current high political and cultural profile of mega-events is similarly misunderstood if it is seen in this
way. In the main body of this book I explore the historical developments in the main genres of
international mega-events, the various reasons and forces behind their creation, and their various impacts.
For the moment however it is useful to briefly illustrate the high contemporary political profile of mega-
events both in this Millennium year and beyond, by noting the interest of nations in winning and staging
them. Take the cases of Britain and South Africa for example. In each of these countries a governing
party’s attempt to re-new its nation’s political identity and re-orient its path of development has come to
be closely associated with its ambitions to host and organize global mega-events.

In Britain the New Labour government came into power in 1997 aiming to re-orient British society and
politics after nearly a generation of ‘New Right’ Conservative government. Early on it affirmed its
commitment to the staging of the Millennium Expo in London. The Expo was a controversial project,
initiated by the previous Conservative government, criticised as an unnecessary and costly extravagance
by many New Labour supporters and poorly conceptualised in terms of aims and contents. Nevertheless
its distinctive and monumental architectural centrepiece, the Millennium Dome, echoes the dome at the
centre of the 1951 ‘Festival of Britain’ event. It thus allows New Labour to symbolically reconnect itself
with a well-regarded and memorable image of the ‘old’ Labour Party’s foundational role in the post-war
reconstruction of Britain’s society and state. Also, as the flagship of an armada of minor events
nationwide, the Expo event provides a high profile, readily identifiable and potentially memorable
platform for the celebration of New Labour’s versions of contemporary Britain and its visions of a new
nationalism.

The linking of the visions and fortunes of the New Labour government to mega-events does not stop with
its support for the staging of the Millennium Expo. It has also committed itself actively to the current
bidding processes for at least two international mega-events, namely the 2006 soccer World Cup and the
2008 or 2012 Olympic Games. Wembley Stadium, - which was an inheritance from the 1924 Imperial
Expo, and became a true and legendary ‘theatre of dreams’ and a site of national sport-event pilgrimage
for the British public (albeit mainly the male part of it) throughout the 2OthC, - is to be completely
reconstructed to support the bids for both of these events. In addition it is possible that the Millennium
Dome could have a part to play in the staging of some aspects of any future Olympic Games to be held in
London. Although not quite going as far as creating a Minister and a ‘Ministry for Mega-Events’, in 1999
the ex-Sport Minister Tony Banks was given the role of government representative in the British bid
team for the 2006 World Cup. This is an indication of the seriousness with which major international
event projects are now seen. One of the nations competing with Britain to win the right to host the 2006
World Cup event is South Africa.

One of the first international cultural actions of the newly democratised post-apartheid nation of South
Africa was to host the Rugby Union World Cup in 1995. Its success in doing this, and also in becoming
World Champions, and the positive impact of this on the image of the new South Africa both at home
and abroad seemed to convince President Nelson Mandela of the importance of events such as this.
Mandela has a credible claim to being one of the 2OthC’s most historically important politicians and
statesmen. Since his retirement in 1999 he has, among other things, been prepared to provide support
and, where necessary leadership, in the courts of the international mega-event organisers, for South
Africa’s bids for the 2006 World Cup and the 2008 Olympics. The fact that a politician of this stature
would choose to continue to serve his vision of his nation by being involved in such bids speaks
eloquently for the importance of mega-events for nations in terms of their self-image and place in world
society in the early 2lstC.

These prefatory observations hopefully indicate some of the reasons why I regard the field of megaevents
as being more worthy of study by sociology and generally by the social sciences and contemporary
humanities than it has (with some notable exceptions) typically been regarded as being hitherto. For me
the study of mega-events has opened up windows and perspectives into areas as diverse as social history,
architecture and urban planning, media studies, and the political history of the 2OthC. Mega-events
contain and condense within themselves, and within the processes of their production and consumption,
much of interest and importance, from these and other disciplinary areas. They contain much about the
construction of, and connections between, the cultural, the political and the economic in modern societies
and in the contemporary world order. To understand something about their origins, nature and
development in modernity is to throw light on phenomena and processes within modernity which
continue to influence us even when the lights of any particular event have been switched off and when
‘the show’ appears to be over.