A case study investigating the impact of the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games on participation in two non-traditional English sports,Judo and Fencing

The hosting of the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games (LOPG) brought with it detailed legacy plans aiming to ‘Inspire a Generation’. The idea that hosting a sports mega-event will encourage the host population to engage in more physical activity is commonly used by governments to justify the large investments they make. The aim of this research paper was to investigate the impact that hosting the 2012 Games had on grass-root sports participation within the host nation. This paper focuses on two non-traditional English sports, Fencing and Judo and investigated the changes in mass sports participation. The membership rate analysis of our sample highlighted an overall increase in participation between 2007 and 2013, in both Judo and Fencing. The data gathered from the interviews with the head office staff at the National Governing Bodies (NGBs) and local club coaches suggested that the grass-root participation programmes were the most effective way of increasing participation, rather than the reliance, solely on the inspiration effect from hosting the LOPG itself. The study highlighted the importance of strengthening communication between local voluntary clubs and the NGB, to ensure sports could promote themselves and capitalise on this global sporting phenomenon, which provided unprecedented media coverage and opportunities for these non-traditional sports. This case study provides initial results relating to the effect that a major international multi-sport event can have in the development of non-traditional sports in the host population, in terms of membership variations, participation programmes and organisational dynamics.     

The role of voluntary sport organisations in leveraging the London 2012 sport participation legacy

ABSTRACT

This study aimed to understand the perceptions of national Voluntary Sport Organisations (VSOs) managers towards a mega sports event and identify the components they felt enhanced or inhibited their organisations capacity to implement a sport participation legacy. London 2012 was the first Olympic Games to explicitly attempt to deliver this type of legacy, and an exploratory, online mixed-method survey examined the perceptions of 105 senior managers from 37 VSOs, post-event. Principal Component Analysis identified four distinct factors: ‘objectives, standards & resources’, ‘event capitalisation & opportunities’, ‘monitoring & evaluation’ and ‘club engagement & implementation’, explaining 51.5% of the variance. Also, relevant organisational characteristics such as sport type, funding and sport size were examined to investigate the influence this had on their capacity. From these findings, the main recommendations are that future mega sport event hosts should: 1) Engage and consult with multiple stakeholders to engender sustained sport participation. 2) Set clear and monitorable objectives. 3) Establish funding and support mechanisms relevant to each sport. 4) Engage non-competing sports in the leveraging process. 5) Finally, event organisers should try to ensure personnel consistency.     

The London 2012 cultural programme: A consideration of Olympic impacts and legacies for small creative organisations in east London

This study investigates the impacts of the London 2012 Olympic Games and their related cultural programme on local small creative organisations in East London. It contributes to unpacking the elusive concept of legacy thorough an in-depth analysis of creative organisations' stories and experiences, combined with an analysis of policy documents and interviews with key informants, over a four-year period (2010–2014). A range of potential impacts of mega-events for creative organisations are identified and systematically discussed. The results highlight a gap between Olympic rhetoric and local reality. Problems include inadequate local consultation, barriers to accessing opportunities and inability to leverage effectively. The study also explores the role of cultural tourism in delivering an Olympic legacy for the local creative industry. It finds that opportunities to showcase deprived – but creative – areas in East London, and foster the development of creative forms of tourism, were missed.     

The lived experience of London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games volunteers: a serious leisure perspective

Along with other sporting mega-events, the Olympic Games, in all its versions, makes extensive use of volunteers. The 70,000 London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic volunteers, for example, played a vital role in the delivery of the event. Stebbins’ theoretical perspective of serious leisure includes consideration of volunteering and there are calls for its further empirical evaluation. This study, therefore, uses a qualitative study of the lived experience of London 2012 volunteers to test the relevance of the serious leisure framework to Olympic volunteering. The data are drawn from the reflective diaries of 20 participants who volunteered in a variety of roles during London 2012. It is concluded that all of the qualities of serious leisure are identifiable to various extents within the experiences of the London 2012 volunteers. This finding will help Olympic and other sporting mega-event managers to understand and improve the experiences of their volunteers. Recommendations are also made, in the light of the findings, for the further refinement of the serious leisure perspective. Particular attention is paid to highlighting how the findings might contribute to recent debates around whether sporting mega-event volunteering is best explained by the serious leisure quality of career volunteering, or by the serious leisure associated concept of project-based leisure, or alternatively by the competing term of episodic volunteering.     

The ‘summer of discontent’: Exclusion and communal resistance at the London 2012 Olympics

London 2012 promised local small businesses access to lucrative Olympic event-tourism and visitor trading opportunities. However, as urban spaces were transformed to stage live Games, many local stakeholders found themselves locked out. We focus on one ‘host’ community, Central Greenwich, who emerged negatively impacted by such conditions. 43 in-depth interviews and secondary evidence reveal that this was a community determined to resist. Few papers have extended the concept of resistance to the context of mega-events so we examine why communities resisted, and how physical tactics and creative resistance were deployed. Although efforts afforded some access for local businesses - they proved too little, too late. We develop and present a ‘tactics for resistance’ approach, a series of ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ tactics businesses could use to encourage proactive, as opposed to reactive, communal resistance required to protect local interests and afford access to opportunities generated by temporary mega-event visitor economies.     

Visitor (im)mobility,leisure consumption and mega-event impact: the territorialisation of Greenwich and small business exclusion at the London 2012 Olympics

Focusing on the London 2012 Olympics, we investigate the impact of mega-sport events’ spatial transformations on visitor mobility, local leisure consumption and resulting small business trade. Our case study draws on 43 in-depth interviews with local authorities, governmental and non-governmental project actors, and small-local leisure and visitor economy businesses (retail and hospitality) located at the heart of a ‘Host Event Zone’ in Greenwich, London. We supplement subjective accounts with a documentary analysis of policy reports, media, and archival material as the basis for our empirical analysis. Our findings reveal a major dichotomy between the ‘rhetoric’ of inclusion and local ‘realities’ of exclusion as security planning and spatial controls served to close off public spaces and local attractions: diverting visitor flows and leisure consumption towards official event sites, away from local businesses. We illustrate how such urban processes effectively render a vibrant business community invisible and visitors immobile to explore local community spaces during the live staging periods. We close with implications for event organisers, managers and policymakers focused on re-configuring the socio-spatial elements of Olympic organisation and re-direct and mobilise visitor economy flows towards more open civic and leisure spaces in the hope of better (re)distributing consumption into host communities.     

Indigenous masculinity in sport: the power and pitfalls of rugby league for Australia’s Pacific Island diaspora

Pasifika men are significantly over-represented in Australia’s National Rugby League and their dramatic influx into the sport over the past 10–15 years has often been attributed to their ‘natural’ athleticism and other corporeal reasons invoking hyper-masculinity. Coupled with this discourse is the commonly accepted idea that these sporting opportunities are a good thing for Pasifika peoples. This paper considers both the damaging effects of the ‘hyper-masculine body’ and ‘sport-as-inherently good’ discourses, and addresses the positive potential rugby league has in transgressing various forms of oppression. Rather than arguing that sport is a positive force in society or outright challenging that assertion, I demonstrate how rugby league in Australia plays a paradoxical role in both reinforcing and challenging social values around race and masculinity. It can be a rare space for positive visibility and upward mobility for Pasifika and other Indigenous men, and a space of exploitation, degradation and racism; it can even save lives and destroy them. I argue that these complexities should be better understood before any moral claim is made about the positives or negatives of sport for marginalised peoples.