The Emerging Concept of Sport-Event-Hosting Strategy: Definition and Comparison

Abstract

As bidding for the rights to host sport events has become increasingly competitive, more and more countries, regions and cities have been employing public strategies and policies for promoting attractiveness of their locations to host sport events, which can be termed as ‘sport-event-hosting strategy’ (SEHS). However, from an academic standpoint, minimal effort has been made to conceptualise the notion of SEHS. This paper, thus, attempts to systematically examine such strategy by integrating the main findings of prior theoretical and empirical research. To this end, the paper begins by defining the concept of SEHS and proceeds to examine its constituent elements such as strategic goals, targets, stakeholders, tools, and management process. National variations of SEHS, including the emergence of public hosting policies, are also explored. The conclusion suggests future research directions for SEHS.

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The Emerging Concept of Sport-Event-Hosting
Strategy: Definition and Comparison
Jean-Loup Chappelet & Kwang Hoon Lee
To cite this article: Jean-Loup Chappelet & Kwang Hoon Lee (2016) The Emerging Concept
of Sport-Event-Hosting Strategy: Definition and Comparison, Journal of Global Sport
Management, 1:1-2, 34-48
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The Emerging Concept of Sport-Event-Hosting Strategy:
Definition and Comparison
Jean-Loup Chappelet
a
and Kwang Hoon Lee
b
a
Swiss Graduate School of Public Administration (IDHEAP), University of Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland;
b
Department of Public Administration, Kangwon National University, Chuncheon-si, Gangwon-do, Korea
ARTICLE HISTORY
Received 14 August 2015
Revised 28 December 2016
Accepted 25 March 2016
Published online 2 June 2016
ABSTRACT
As bidding for the rights to host sport events has become
increasingly competitive, more and more countries, regions and
cities have been employing public strategies and policies for
promoting attractiveness of their locations to host sport events,
which can be termed as ‘sport-event-hosting strategy’(SEHS).
However, from an academic standpoint, minimal effort has been
made to conceptualise the notion of SEHS. This paper, thus,
attempts to systematically examine such strategy by integrating the
main findings of prior theoretical and empirical research. To this
end, the paper begins by defining the concept of SEHS and
proceeds to examine its constituent elements such as strategic
goals, targets, stakeholders, tools, and management process.
National variations of SEHS, including the emergence of public
hosting policies, are also explored. The conclusion suggests future
research directions for SEHS.
体育-赛事-主办策略的新兴概念:定义和比较
由于争取体育赛事主办权的竞争越来越激烈,越来越多的国家、
地区和城市一直以来都在运用公共策略和政策来提高当地主办体
育赛事的吸引力,这可以用一个术语‘体育-赛事-主办策略’(SEHS)
来表示。
考虑到像奥运会(例如Chappelet, 2014)的表演形式,宏大的体育
赛事规模和越来越庞大的支出,申办国家或城市建立和使用SEHS就
变得非常重要。没有策略计划来执行赛事的整个过程,包括投标,
主办城市和它们的祖国在赛事之后会面临灾难性的财政赤字。
然而,从学术观点上出发,最小的努力就是使SEHS的意图概念
化。本文想要通过整合过去理论和实证研究来系统地测试这个策
略。为了达到这个目的,本文以定义SEHS概念作为开始,然后测试
构成元素,例如策略目的、目标、利益相关者、工具和管理过
程。还探究了SEHS在不同国家的变化,包括公共主办政策的出
现。结论部分给出了未来研究SEHS的方向。
在私人部门中对分析公司发展出来的策略概念现在被用在公
共/非盈利组织中。特别是在体育机构中的应用(Chappelet &
Bayle, 2005)表明了如何在一个机构,’正式或非正式,演绎或事后比
较’,使用资源和执行经验教训(Byers, Slack, & Parent, 2012, p. 166)
。以与文献相关的策略为基础, SEHS可以被概念化成‘未来主办城
市/地区/国家的一系列决定和活动,通过使用协调与促进相关利益
相关者行为的管理和市场工具,例如,不同级别的政府、体育机
KEYWORDS
Sport-event-hosting strategy;
sport events; bidding; public
sport policy; cross-national
comparison
关键词
体育-赛事-主办策略;体育
赛事;投标;公共体育政策;
国家间的比较
CONTACT Kwang Hoon Lee swiss@kangwon.ac.kr
© 2016 Global Alliance of Marketing & Management Associations (GAMMA)
JOURNAL OF GLOBAL SPORT MANAGEMENT, 2016
VOL. 1, NOS. 12, 3448
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/24704067.2016.1177354

构、商业投资者、志愿者团体、当地社区和赛事所有者,在正式
和非正式的制度框架下使用公共资金和其他资源,来调节支持成
功投标和主办体育赛事带来的财政困难。’
根据主办方想要主办的赛事、个人赛事拥有者特别想要的赛事
和主办国家的不同制度规定的赛事类型的不同,存在着大范围的因
国家而变化的SEHS。由于一些国家、地区或当地政府已经让管理
制度正式化,通过策略的管理来协调体育机构、资助人、社群和其
他利益相关者,从而将花费数百万的公共资金作为年度财政预算,
所以在一些国家,SEHS已经发展并被制度化成为一个公共政策
(Chappelet, 2006; Leopkey, Mutter, & Parent, 2010)。以瑞士洛桑市的
案例为基础,最近的一篇文章(Chappelet & Pinson, 2015)和一些其
他体育-赛事-主办政策表明了这些公共政策在刚刚过去的十年里经
历了六次主要的变化:朝着重视执行者的方向,而不单单是政策倡导
者的方向,朝着更强的暗示地区甚至是国家,而不是城市的方向,朝
着赛事的组合而不是单一主办的方向,朝着更加非传统体育和体育
赛事,而不是传统锦标赛的方向,朝着对非经济影响而不是对旅游
业立即产生经济影响的方向,最后是朝着公共管理(关注输出)而不
是公共政策(关注产出)的方向。这些演变验证了使用SEHS的表述
是正确的。换句胡说,一些国家,无论是否将SEHS制度化成为公共
政策,都有自己在国家、地区和本地层面上的策略,通过正式或非
正式的管理制度框架和管理程序将资源配置到投标过程中。
由于过去的对比研究主要关注欧洲和北美国家,接下来的研究
需要将对比研究的范围拓展到来自所有大洲的国家中。为了系统
的解释多层次因素影响SEHS成功的因果路径和内部关系,更多全
面的经验研究和理论通知框架对以后的研究是非常重要的。
1. Introduction
The hosting of sport events has, over the past few decades, become a popular vehicle for
achieving sustainable development such as providing economic, socio-cultural, political
and environmental benefits, as well as tangible and intangible legacies including sport
tourism, urban regeneration, return on investment, and increased awareness of destina-
tion for a host location (Chappelet, 2012; Preuss, 2007). These have all triggered height-
ened interest by cities, regions and countries to bid for such events (Leopkey, Mutter, &
Parent, 2010) and sport-event hosting has become increasingly competitive (Walters,
2011). Chappelet (2006) was one of the first scholars to introduce the concept of sport-
event-hosting policy which we are renaming sport-event-hosing strategy (hereinafter
called SEHS). In order to win the bids, more and more countries, regions and cities have
become interested in employing public strategies for promoting attractiveness of their
locations to host sport events. In a recent study (TSE, 2015, p. 9) of 110 cities around the
world, 85% said they had an ongoing programme to attract events, including sport events,
which was financed in 68% of the cases by the city administration budget.
However, from an academic standpoint, though the extant scholarship on SEHS has
provided a limited number of notable case studies (see, e.g. Chappelet, 2005,2006; Leop-
key et al., 2010; McCloy, 2006,2009), scant contribution has been made to clearly concep-
tualise the emerging notion of SEHS. Therefore, the primary purpose of the paper is to
systematically examine SEHS by integrating the main findings of prior theoretical and
empirical research. Research questions of this paper are two-fold:
How can SEHS be defined? (Theoretical question)
What are the differences between each country’s SEHS? (Empirical question)
JOURNAL OF GLOBAL SPORT MANAGEMENT 35

To address these inquiries, the paper employs an extensive literature survey method
and investigates existing studies on SEHS in sport event management research as well as
policy studies. It also shows the main evolutions of the concept over the last ten years.
2. Defining sport-event-hosting strategy
The concept of strategy, which was developed during the 1960s for analysing firms in the
private sector, was used during the 1990s in the public/non-profit sectors. Its application
to sport organisations (Chappelet & Bayle, 2005), in particular, indicates how to use
resources and implement courses of action within an organisation ‘formally or informally,
a priori or post hoc’(Byers, Slack, & Parent 2012, p. 166). Since Chandler (1962, p. 13)
suggested that ‘strategy can be defined as the determination of the basic long-term goals
and objectives of an enterprise and the adoption of courses of action and the allocation of
resources necessary for carrying out these goals’, various scholars have defined the notion
from different aspects (see, e.g. Andrews, 1980; Ansoff, 1965; Crozier & Friedberg, 1977;
Kim & Mauborgne, 2005; Porter, 1980; Minzberg, 1987,1994; Porter, 1996).
Based on the scholars mentioned above who defined strategy, SEHS may be concep-
tualised as follows: ‘A series of decisions and activities by prospective host cities/regions/
countries which utilise public funding and other resources under formal and informal
institutional frameworks to regulate their involvement for supporting the successful bid-
ding and hosting for sport events, via employing management and marketing tools that
coordinate and promote actions of related stakeholders, such as governments at different
levels, sport organisations, commercial sponsors, volunteer groups, local communities
and event owners’(inspired by Byers et al., 2012; Chappelet, 2005; Chappelet, 2006; Chap-
pelet & Bayle, 2005; Ferrand, Chappelet, & Seguin, 2012; Knoepfel, Larrue, Varone, & Hill,
2011; Leopkey et al., 2010; McCloy, 2006,2009).
This definition can be explained in more detail according to several elements of a strat-
egy, including strategic goals, targets, stakeholders, tools, and management processes.
2.1. Element 1: strategic goals
SEHS is employed for the successful bidding and hosting of sport events (and also some-
times for the support of recurring events). The success of SEHS can be evaluated differ-
ently according to the defined strategic goals. The main goal for bidding to host a sport
event is obviously to win the bid and obtain the hosting rights from an event owner. As
for medium to long-term goals, the rationales for hosting the events include the expected
benefits as well as other material and immaterial legacies. Various benefits include not
only sporting reasons (promoting sport and using sports facilities) but also economic and
social benefits such as regional economic development and tourism promotion, national
interests for identity building, social cohesion, image making, and international awareness
(Chappelet, 2005; Preuss, 2004, pp. 710). And as a widely used Olympic term, legacy is
‘all planned and unplanned, positive and negative, tangible and intangible structures cre-
ated for and by a sport event that remain longer than the event itself, irrespective of the
time of production and space’(Preuss, 2007, p. 211). Chappelet (2012, p. 77) also defines
it as ‘all that remains and may be considered as consequences of the event in its
environment.’
36 J.-L. CHAPPELET AND K. H. LEE

In terms of SEHS performance evaluation, the former is related to ‘output’or bid wins
(for the case of Switzerland, refer to Chappelet & Favre, 2008) and the latter is connected
to ‘outcome’(Hiller, 2003)or‘impact’(for the case of Canada, refer to McCloy, 2006).
2.2. Element 2: targets
Targets of SEHS include various types of sport events governed by event owners such as
national and international federations, governing bodies and private companies. Several
thousand events for both the sporting elite and mass participants, covering over more
than a hundred disciplines, take place annually around the world (Chappelet, 2005).
Among the different types of sport events shown in Table 1, this paper focuses on non-
recurring major international events in Olympic sports, i.e. multi-sports games and world
championships in the programme of the Olympic summer and winter games, which are
open to all countries of the world.
Table 1. Targets of SEHS: types of sport events.
Classification Types of events Characteristics Examples of events
Frequency of
occurrence
Recurring Occur regularly at the same location
(without bidding between potential hosts)
Athletissima Lausanne, Tour de
France (although stages change
locations each year), Wimbledon
Championships
Non-recurring (One-off) Change sites in each edition by bidding
process
Olympic Games, FIFA World Cup
Level of
competition
International Participation open for all countries at a
world level
Olympic Games, FIFA World Cup,
World Championships
Continental Open only for countries on the same
continent
Asian Games, Pan American Games
National Held within countries State Games of America, national
championships
Scale of events Small or medium scale The amount of related stakeholders
(audience, spectators, attendees, etc.),
media interest/coverage/reach, related
infrastructure, and their impacts
Athletissima Lausanne
Large scale or major World Figure Skating Championships
Mega or giga sport event Olympic Games, FIFA World Cup,
UEFA EURO
Recognition of the
IOC
Olympic sport Official sports contested in the Olympic
Games
FIFA World Cup, World
Championships in Athletics
Non-Olympic sport No inclusion in the Olympic programme World Games, Formula One World
Championship
Seasonal
occurrence
Summer sport Contested in summer FIFA World Cup, World Aquatics
Championships
Winter sport Contested in winter World Figure Skating Championships
Organisational
complexity
(number of
events)
Multi-sport Several sports are organised Olympic Games, FISU Universiades,
Commonwealth Games
Single sport One ‘sport’only is organised FIFA World Cup, World Athletics
Championships, Aquatics
Championships
Owner’s legal status Non-profit Budget is to be balanced Paralympics
For-profit Potential for return on investment is planed Tour de France
Characteristics of
participants
Age, occupation, disabilities,
historical and cultural
heritage (e.g. colonial ties,
language), etc.
Senior/junior/retired athletes, countries in
the Commonwealth of English/French
speaking regions, student/military, etc.
Youth Olympic Games, Paralympics,
Universiades, Commonwealth
Games, Jeux de la Francophonie,
World Masters Games,
Mediterranean Games, Military
World Games
Source: Adapted from Chappelet (2005, pp. 1516).
JOURNAL OF GLOBAL SPORT MANAGEMENT 37

2.3. Element 3: stakeholders
In order to attract international sport events, a large number of public and private actors
or stakeholders such as different levels of governments, sport organisations, commercial
sponsors, volunteer groups, and local communities collaborate with each other in various
networking frameworks (see, Chappelet, 2005) of specific bid committees.
As illustrated in Figure 1, in the case of a major sports event, the breadth and depth of
stakeholders involved in the bidding requires complex structures and relationships. This
complexity increases particularly for the Olympic Games in which more than one thou-
sand organisations establish contractual relations (Emery, 2002,2015; Parent, 2015). For
instance, in Figure 2, during the national selection process of the French candidate-city to
bid for and host the 2018 Winter Olympics, the strategies developed by candidate cities
impacted the other French candidate cities at the local, horizontal or vertical levels within
the structural relationships between the actors (Hautbois, Parent, & Seguin, 2012).
Table 2 also shows the compositional complexity of PyeongChang’s (South Korean
candidate city) bid support committee for the 2014 Winter Olympics, implying the need
for interorganisational coordination to satisfy different expectations of the stakeholders.
M
E
D
I
A
INTERNATIONAL
GOVERNING BODY
NATIONAL
GOVERNING BODY
LOCAL ORGANISING
BODY
Sponsors
Sponsors
Sponsors
Other Support
Services
Agents
Agents
Agents
Admin/
Protocol Transport Accomm Technical Ve n u e Marketing/
Media
VOLUNTEERS
Figure 1. Basic summary of major sports event organisation relationships and structures.
Source: Emery (2002, p. 319).
38 J.-L. CHAPPELET AND K. H. LEE

2.4. Element 4: strategic tools
Each stakeholder involved in SEHS utilises many types of strategic tools by employing
management and marketing methods to coordinate and promote actions of stakeholders.
These tools for attracting a sport event can be divided into three public relation processes
SPORT
MEDIA
POL.
ECO.
LOC.
POP.
Candidate-city X
SPORT
MEDIA
POL.
ECO.
LOC.
POP.
Candidate-city Y
French Olympic Committee
LEVEL 2: HORIZONTAL
LEVEL 1: LOCAL LEVEL 1: LOCAL
LEVEL 3: VERTICAL
Figure 2. Social network and stakeholders of the 2018 Olympics project.
Source: Hautbois et al. (2012, p. 6).
Table 2. Composition of the 2014 Winter Olympics bid support committee.
Support committee Working committee
Composition Chair: Prime Minister
Vice Chair (3): Minister of Finance, Minister of
Education, Minister of Culture
Committee members (19): 18 ex officio
members, 1 appointed member
Chair: Deputy head of the Office of
Government Coordination
Vice Chair: Assistant Minister of Culture
Committee Members (22): 22 ex officio
members
Terms of reference Policy deliberation and coordination of the
Winter Olympics biding
Policy deliberation and coordination of
possible support from the committee
Policy deliberation and coordination of the
matters that the chairperson believes must
be discussed
Preliminary review of the items to be
placed before the Support Committee
Mediating the different opinions among
the related government bodies and
discussing matters of government support
Implement the matters decided by the
Support committee
Three times (26 May, 27 July and 10
November 2005)
Meetings Twice (18 July and 29 December 2005) Three times (26 May, 27 July and 10
November 2005)
Source: Reprinted from Merkel & Kim (2011, p. 2373). Copyright (2011) by Taylor & Francis Group.
JOURNAL OF GLOBAL SPORT MANAGEMENT 39

(Chappelet, 2005): qualifying for the bid with a good ‘technical file’, international lobby-
ing, and public communication. First, a bid ‘technical file’that satisfies a list of require-
ments (the detailed plans with respect to sites, facilities, calendar, accommodation,
transport, etc.) needs to be attractively laid out to the event owner through effective pre-
sentation techniques. For instance, for the successful bid of the city of PyeongChang, Yu-
Na Kim, the 2010 Winter Olympic gold medalist in figure skating attractively presented
the Korean committee’s bid file in the final phase of the bid process for the 2018 Winter
Olympic Games (Lee & Chappelet, 2012).
Second, lobbying tactics are an ever more essential part of bidding strategies and are
accepted as an acceptable action of persuasion without bribery or corruption. This is
because ‘networking, personal contact, and even conversation or discussion with event
owners can affect them to prefer the lobbying candidates for the host by both giving them
new information or appealing to their moral and ethical attitudes as well as emotions’
(Preuss, 2000, p. 94).
Third, public communication or public affairs exercises, which convince decision-
makers, related stakeholders, public opinion and the international sport community to
provide support for the bid, are carried out with the aim to give the bid a positive and
dynamic image in the media, as well as highlight the benefits which the event will bring to
the city/region to the event owner/governing body. These public marketing strategies
include, for example, surveys and opinion polls, partnerships with the media (national or
local, international press, radio, TV and Internet), and appointing well-known personal-
ities as ambassadors for the event (Chappelet, 2005).
2.5. Element 5: strategic management processes
In terms of the strategic management processes that cover several phases of ‘analysis’,
‘vision’,‘action’, and ‘control’(Chappelet & Bayle, 2005), SEHS has a series of decisions
and activities by bidding organisations (cities/countries) which utilise public funding and
other resources under formal and informal institutional frameworks to regulate their
involvement. The frameworks determine which and how many events the governments
will support during a given fiscal year, how much amount of funding they will offer and
what kinds of involvement/final reporting procedures they will require (Leopkey et al.,
2010). In general, the decision-making and implementation of a bidding procedure fol-
lows a standard schema as shown in Figure 3.
This procedure can be standardised into the following steps (Chappelet, 2005): first, the
governing body or International Federation (IF) that owns the event invites cities or
National Federations to indicate whether they are interested in hosting it; second, the IF
sends its specifications to the cities or NFs that are interested, with a closing date for bid-
ding entry; third, interested candidates receive guidelines for drawing up their bid; fourth,
the IF/event owner examines the bids and, if necessary, visits the candidate sites and pre-
pares more or less detailed evaluation reports; fifth, candidate sites defend their bids in
front of a body of the IF/event owner (general assembly or, more usually, the executive
committee), which then moves to a vote. Finally, following the vote, the winning site signs
a contract with the IF/event owner (e.g. the well-known ‘Host City Contract’between the
IOC, the Olympic city and its NOC) and finds a local organising committee.
40 J.-L. CHAPPELET AND K. H. LEE

3. Cross-national comparison
There exists a wide range of national variations of SEHS, depending on the types of the
events that bidders wish to host, the individual event owners’specific requirements, and
the different institutional rules of bid countries, etc.
Several empirical studies conducted on the variations of European and North Ameri-
can countries explore each country’s SEHS in terms of its goals, strategies, laws and guide-
lines for hosting major sport events. Based on the model of strategic management (vision/
mission, goals, strategy formulation and implementation), Stopper, Gn€
adinger, and
Kempf (2010) compared the existing national strategies for hosting major sports events in
Austria, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, and Scotland, using a
qualitative approach. In order to answer five key questions regarding several criteria
(Which country has an explicitly formulated strategy? Why do they have a strategy
(vision)? What are the strategic objectives? What are the preferred events? How will the
strategy be implemented?), the strategies, laws and guidelines for hosting major sport
events in these countries were surveyed and subsequently verified through interviews with
eight experts in sports ministries and organisations responsible for major sport events in
these countries (Appendix). Stopper et al. (2010) indicate that the objectives of the studied
national strategies include promoting sports and their social benefits, improving the coun-
try’s image as well as sports infrastructure and economic development and tourism. Also,
most of the countries prefer hosting major sport events of international significance on a
continental or global level to reach the mentioned strategic objectives and achieve a
broader impact.
EVAUATION
OF BIDS
CHOICE OF
A BID
TRANSFER OF THE
BIDS
PRESENTATION
OF BIDS
LEARNING
PROCESS
INTERESTED
CITIES
ORGANISATION
COMMITEE
Figure 3. Bid-processing procedure for an event.
Source: Chappelet (2005, p. 20).
JOURNAL OF GLOBAL SPORT MANAGEMENT 41

Focusing on the sport event strategies of the public sector at a national level,
Gn€
adinger, Stopper, and Kempf (2011) extended the scope of analysis to 24 European
countries by using an online survey method (based on a sample containing sports direc-
tors or individuals in charge of sport event issues in government departments and
national Olympic committees). The respondents were asked: ‘Are there any official
national strategies for hosting major sport events in your country?’The results showed
that, in 2011, nine countries developed a formal national strategy for hosting major sport
events, while eight countries are preparing a national strategy or have guidelines/rules.
The other seven countries have yet to come up with a national strategy or guidelines
(Figure 4). Policies for hosting major sport events in most of the countries are linked to
other national policies for the promotion of elite sport, mass sport, the development of
national sports infrastructure and tourism. Concerning the funding for sport events,
countries that have developed a national strategy have a predominantly higher annual
budget to support major sport events than countries with the similar population but no
national strategy. The most important criteria for governments’decisions about funding
major sport events include the importance of the sport, the economic impact of the event,
Figure 4. Varieties of national strategies for hosting major sport events in 24 European countries.
Source: Gn€
adinger et al. (2011, p. 10).
42 J.-L. CHAPPELET AND K. H. LEE

the international media presence, and the budget size of the event. All nine countries that
have developed a national strategy evaluate the impacts of their hosted events, while less
than one-third of the other countries do so.
While all bidding countries have a form of SEHS, not all countries have public hosting
policies. The main difference between strategy and policy is that the former concept
belongs to management (and concentrate on ‘output’) and the latter one to policy analysis
and evaluation (and concentrate on ‘outcomes’). Thus, it is proper to speak of a policy
rather than a strategy, if more than winning an event is at stake. Based on the constituent
elements of a public policy of Knoepfel et al. (2011), Nahrath, Schenk, and Knoepfel
(2006) discussed several prerequisites for a sport-event-hosting policy to be considered a
public policy as presented in Table 3.
A recent article (Chappelet & Pinson, 2015), based on the case of the city of Lausanne,
Switzerland, and several other sport-event-hosting policies, has shown that these public
policies have experienced six major evolutions over the last ten years: towards an empha-
sis on a network of actors rather than a single policy entrepreneur, towards a stronger
implication of regions and even countries rather than just cities, towards a portfolio of
events rather than one-off hosting, towards less traditional sport and sport events rather
than traditional championships, towards the search of non-economic impacts rather than
immediate economic impact on the tourism industry and finally towards public manage-
ment (concentrated on outputs) rather than public policy (concentrated on outcomes).
These evolutions justify the use of the expression ‘SEHS’.
Though public strategy and policy for hosting sport events has been recognised as an
emerging field of national public policies (Chappelet, 2006), to date, scant academic atten-
tion, particularly in the English scholarship, has been paid to on the emergence and nature
of countries’policies for hosting sport events (McCloy, 2009). In several countries, SEHS
has been developed and institutionalised as a public policy, since national, regional, and/
or local governments have formalised administrative procedures to spend millions of
Table 3. Rationales why SEHS can be defined as a public policy.
Constituent elements of a public policy Application to SEHS
A solution to a public problem Need for regional development (economic, social,
environmental), enhancing the image, regional identity,
national building, modernisation of infrastructure, planning,
promotion of sport, public health, urban regeneration, etc.
Existence of target groups at the root of the
identified public problem
Event owners or organisers, IOC, National Olympic
Committees, international/national federations, sports clubs
and associations, local authorities, political-administrative
actors, etc.
Intentional coherence Hosting sport events as a direct result of the measures taken
by SEHS (except strategies developed solely by private
actors and unintended effects of another public policies)
Existence of several decisions, activities and
intervention programmes
Concrete programs of actions of public authorities in
supporting bid organisations
Key role of public actors in decisions and activities The role of public authorities at local, regional, and national
level in hosting sports events
Existence of formalised measures that impose
coercive constraints or employ regulative tools as
well as diversification of means of action and
intervention such as incentive contracts and
publicprivate partnerships
A variety of types of policy instruments
- regulatory modalities: obligations, permissions, (exercise of)
fees for use of public spaces
- incentive tools: subsidies, tax breaks, etc.
- direct provision of goods and services: infrastructure, human
and technical resources (police, expertise), etc.
Source: Addapted from Nahrath et al. (2006, pp. 3339). Copyright (2006) by L’Harmattan.
JOURNAL OF GLOBAL SPORT MANAGEMENT 43

public funding as annual budgets along with strategic management coordinating sport
organisations, sponsors, communities and other stakeholders (Chappelet, 2006; Leopkey
et al., 2010). For example, the Canadian federal government has a lengthy history since
the 1930s of actively supporting large-scale international sport events (McCloy, 2006),
while the Swiss Confederation set up a policy of hosting major sport events only in the
2000s based on the objectives set by the Federal Council for public sport policy (Chappelet
& Favre, 2008).
With regard to each bidding country’s peculiar institutions and rules which impede or
facilitate their strategies, only a handful of empirical research has investigated various
types of national sport-event-hosting policies. These studies covering public policy analy-
sis have stressed the importance of governmental authorities and their policies. Chappelet
(2006) mentions several public authorities who have recognised the need for and realised
the positive effects of SEHS at the local, regional and national levels, and have conse-
quently implemented strategies for hosting major sport events. These include cases such
as Sheffield, Lausanne, Sydney and Vancouver at the local level, Northern Ireland, Savoy,
Valais and Tyrol at the regional level, as well as Canada, Denmark, Great Britain and
Qatar at the national level. Leopkey et al. (2010) compared and contrasted, both vertically
(i.e. within the country) and horizontally (i.e. transnationally), the sport event hosting
policies which are found within the different levels of government in both the Canadian
and Swiss political systems (two federal countries).
In addition, Merkel and Kim (2011) detailed the bidding process of PyeongChang’s
three consecutive bids (for the 2010, 2014, 2018 Winter Olympics) and found that the
official PyeongChang Olympic Bid Committee in charge of the 2018 candidature won
the bid through national government-led (not merely locally driven) support as well as
the centralised, yet inclusive, coordination between the national government and the local
authorities in partnership with several sport organisations, including the Korean Olympic
Committee. Walters (2011) also illustrated that the political support of government policy
at both the national and regional levels plays an important role in determining whether
national governing bodies of sport (NGB) are competitive during the bid process. His
interview analysis showed that the UK government’s support of NGBs with a focus on
government taxation policy as well as the tax environment in the UK had the potential to
undermine the competitiveness of British NGBs when bidding to host sport events.
4. Concluding remarks
Considering the great increase in size and cost of staging mega sport events like the Olym-
pics (see Chappelet, 2012), it has become important for a bid country/city to establish and
implement SEHS. Without strategic planning to cover the entire processes of such events,
including bidding, host cities and their home countries are more likely to face disastrous
financial deficits in the aftermath of the events. Thus, this paper attempted to systemati-
cally examine the notion of SEHS by integrating the main findings of previous theoretical
and empirical research. The paper begins by defining the concept of SEHS and proceeds
to examine its constituent elements such as strategic goals, targets, stakeholders, tools,
and management processes. Cross-country comparisons of SEHS, including the emer-
gence of public hosting policies, were also explored. The findings of the paper may con-
tribute to our understanding of the sport-event-hosting phenomenon. The clear
44 J.-L. CHAPPELET AND K. H. LEE

conceptualisation of SEHS can provide a good start for future research. This study also
implies that countries, regardless of whether they institutionalise SEHS as public policies
or not, have their own strategies at the national, regional and local levels that place resour-
ces into bidding processes within their formal and informal institutional frameworks of
administrative and managerial procedures. However, past comparative studies have
focused mostly on European and North American countries. Hence, further studies will
need to broaden the scope of comparative research to include countries from all
continents.
More importantly from an academic viewpoint, despite the increasing scholarly inter-
est in sport-event-hosting policy areas, unified theoretical frameworks for empirical analy-
sis have hardly been used with no single framework in a disciplinary boundary considered
to be sufficiently persuasive (Houlihan, 2005). The previous empirical studies have suf-
fered a lack of ‘thick’and ‘firm’theoretical foundations for explaining causal links between
a broad range of influence factors and SEHS success since they lack an overarching analyt-
ical framework. Although individual studies have generated valuable insight for practices,
they have rarely succeeded in providing a coherent picture or ‘story’that can embrace the
entire causal relationship of diverse factors between SEHS success and a host. Without a
theoretical lens or methodological rigour, na€
ıve ‘blind searching’is unlikely to guarantee
the discovery of meaningful, scholarly patterns or trends, let alone contribute to theoreti-
cal scholarship. Hence, it is necessary to look at the empirical evidence in light of theory
building, by constructing and applying an analytical framework derived from theoretical
foundations. Therefore, more comprehensive empirical research and theoretically
informed frameworks for systematically explaining the causal pathways and interrelation-
ships between multi-level factors influencing SEHS success will be essential for future
research.
Acknowledgments
This paper is based on part of one of the authors’unpublished Ph.D. dissertation of the Swiss Grad-
uate School of Public Administration, University of Lausanne, Switzerland.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes on contributors
Jean-Loup Chappelet is a professor of public management at the Swiss Graduate School of Public
Administration, University of Lausanne, Switzerland. His research interests include strategic man-
agement, nonprofit management, and global sports governance.
Kwang Hoon Lee is an assistant professor of Public Administration, Kangwon National University,
South Korea. His research interests include organization theory, public management, international
sports administration, and social policies.
JOURNAL OF GLOBAL SPORT MANAGEMENT 45

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Appendix. Eight countries’strategies for major sport events
Country
Vision, mission and
national policy
Strategic
goals
Preferred
events
Strategy
implementation
Denmark Vision:
Denmark to create a
venue for inter-national
major sports events
Mission:
With enthusiasm for sport
events, provide support
for active sports in
Denmark and promote
solidarity, health,
employment,
integration and national
pride
National policy (or
strategy at the national
level): Yes
Promotion of international
sports events in Denmark
Positioning as a leading
international sport event
destination
Increased international
attention and knowledge
about Denmark
Promotion of the tourism
sector
Develop the expertise of
the Danish sports
federations
Major international sports
events
- World and European
Championships
- World Cup
- Sports Congresses
Top-down:
Sport Event Denmark is
implementing the
strategy in
partnership with
associations and
venues
Germany Vision: No
Mission: No
National policy: No
Promotion of sports,
especially of the top sports
Major international sports
events
- World and European
Championships
Bottom-up:
Confederation countries,
regional authorities
and associations
principle of subsidiarity
(continued)
JOURNAL OF GLOBAL SPORT MANAGEMENT 47

Country
Vision, mission and
national policy
Strategic
goals
Preferred
events
Strategy
implementation
France Vision: No
Mission: International
influence of France
strengthen
National policy: No
Enhancing the image of
France
Strengthening sporting
excellence and sportier
sustainability, especially in
the infrastructure
To promote social, cultural
and ecological benefits
(voluntary work,
citizenship, cultural
programs)
Promotion of economic
benefits
Global and continental
championships
- Elite category
- Recognised disciplines
Bottom-up:
Requests by the
associations to the
state. Contributions,
taking into account
the strategic position
of France
Great
Britain
Vision: British sports lead
to global success
Mission: Sports event
program provides that
the UK helps to prepare
for the Olympic games
and Paralympic games
in London 2012
National policy: Yes
Events deliver what our
athletes directly support in
preparation for London
Construction of the
network by qualified and
experienced, volunteers
and officials and staff skills
Public opportunities to see
the stars in action
Major international sports
events
- One-time events
- World and European
level
- The Summer Olympics,
the Paralympics and the
Commonwealth Games
Top-down:
Coordination by UK
Sport (World Class
Events Programme)
Italy Vision: No
Mission: No
National policy: No
Enhancing the image of
Italy on international level
Encourage the active
participation in sports and
the sports culture
Social and economic
development
Sports infrastructure
development (recent
achievements and
performance)
Encourage initiatives for
participation in the
Olympic games
Sports events of
international
importance
At least at the European
level
Bottom-up:
Autonomy of the
associations, funding
requests for events to
the State
Canada Vision: Establish Canada
as a leading sport nation
Mission: Prioritisation,
coordination and
support for the
promotion and
organisation of sports
events
National policy: Yes
Improve performance of
athletes
Further development of
sports programs and
infrastructure
(sustainability)
Increase capacity for high-
performance sports
Strengthen Canada’s role
as a leading sport nation
To promote social, cultural
and community benefits
Promotion of economic
benefits
International, large multi-
sport games and large
and small international
single sport events
Top-down:
Coordination of
applications for major
sports events by the
government
Austria Vision: No
Mission: No
National policy: No
Sports infrastructure
development
Improvement of image
Promotion of the tourism
sector
Increasing our
international presence
Sport events of
international or pan-
Austrian importance
- The Olympic Games
- World and European
Championships
- Austrian Championships
Bottom-up:
Autonomy and
subsidiarity are two
important pillars of
sports policy
Scotland Vision: Establish
Scotland as the perfect
platform for events
Mission: Develop a
portfolio of events,
which provides a benefit
and an international
profile for Scotland
National policy: Yes
Promotion of the
characteristic, global
brand of Scotland
Promotion of Scotland as a
place for investment and
visitors
Encourage people to be
more active
Scotland’s landscape and
natural heritage
protection
- Sports events:
Annual, fixed and
recurring events and
one-off events
- Cultural events
Fixed or recurring events,
a few one-off events
Top-down:
Implementation of the
strategy by Event
Scotland in
collaboration with
partners from the
public and private
sectors
Source: Adapted and translated from Stopper et al. (2010, pp. 1213). Copyright (2010) by EHSM.
48 J.-L. CHAPPELET AND K. H. LEE