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Faster, Higher, Stronger?
The Political Effects of Sports Mega-Events
Patrick Theiner∗
February 13, 2017
Paper presented at ISA Annual Conference 2017, February 22-25, Baltimore
Abstract
What are the effects of international sports mega-events (SMEs) in their host
countries? There is a significant body of research exploring the economic fall-
out of hosting a mega-event such as the Olympic Games or the FIFA World
Cup, and the motivating factors behind states’ decisions to take on hosting
duties in the first place. Yet international relations scholarship has rarely
investigated if there is a systematic relationship between the hosting of an
SME and subsequent changes in political variables. Anecdotal evidence from
past tournaments has shown SMEs to both be a political boon (resulting in
reputational gains, media exposure, or increased national pride) and a bur-
den (producing in mismanagement, social unrest, or international scrutiny).
Based on an original dataset of the host nations of nine different, recurring
mega-events in the last 100 years, the paper quantitatively investigates the
relationship between hosting an event and changes in key political variables.
Do nations benefit or suffer from their hosting duties, or do sporting events
have no effect at all?
Keywords: international sporting events; mega-events; Olympic Games; World Cup;
domestic politics; prestige; quantitative analysis
∗Department of Political Science, University of G¨ottingen, Germany. I thank Natalie Novick for her
comments. Contact: patrick.theiner@uni-goettingen.de
Patrick Theiner Effects of Sports Mega-Events
1 Introduction
When it comes to sports, international relations (IR) scholarship has, for the better
part of a century, remained strangely un-inquisitive (Pigman and Simon Rofe 2014; Bea-
com 2000; Levermore and Budd 2004). Granted, international sports at first glance hardly
qualifies as an area of high politics: the results of the All-Africa Games are not discussed
in the Security Council, hosting the Commonwealth Games has few implications for state
sovereignty, and winning a World Cup was rarely in danger of upsetting the international
system’s balance of power. Yet sport is both an intrinsically international endeavor, with
competition between nations as its highest level, and also a highly internationalized one,
with global institutions, global rules, and a global audience. This internationalization
is most evident in sports mega-events (SME) such as the Olympic Games or the FIFA
World Cup, which constitute some of the few truly global shared experiences of modern
times – captivating rich and poor alike, and creating a sense of unity and identity both
in those watching, and in those participating.
But sports mega-events should not only matter to IR because of their power to con-
stitute shared identities. They also matter in a material sense by directing resources from
the international level to the national (through tourism, advertising deals, or foreign di-
rect investments), and re-routing domestic resources. There is a large literature that
debates the short-term and long-term economic impact of SME such as the Olympics.
An overwhelming majority of authors find that hosting a mega-event is an economic gam-
ble at best, and at worst can have ruinous financial implications (c.f. Ahlert and Preuss
2010; Billings and Holladay 2012; Kasimati 2003; Zimbalist 2015). This has led to states’
reluctance to actually host sports mega-events as far back as the 1960s. But despite an
ongoing discussion of the economic effects of SME in the public and political sphere, the
possibility that mega-events can have political implications has garnered little attention
(Bowersox 2016).
This is not only surprising as a research gap, but also because at least part of the
argument in favor of hosting SME has been political. The prestige generated by acquir-
ing and hosting a sports mega-event can increase a government’s domestic support, or
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Patrick Theiner Effects of Sports Mega-Events
provide it with positive international publicity (Allison and Monnington 2002). Both
must be considered prime motivating factors in state applications for such events. On
the other hand, the most recent Olympic host nation Brazil saw significant domestic
societal unrest as a direct consequence of its preparation for, and hosting of, the Games
(Boykoff 2016; Watts 2016). Similarly, FIFA’s awarding of the 2022 World Cup to Qatar
has led to international protests and continued scrutiny of the host nation’s human rights
record (Amnesty International 2016; Montague 2013; Morin 2013). When Beijing hosted
the 2008 Olympics, China considered the Games a chance to broadcast its culture and
economic prowess to the world, while outside observers anticipated increased openness
and transparency due to international attention and engagement (Preuss and Alfs 2009;
Xu 2006).
Social science has rarely investigated the positive or negative political effects of hosting
SME, despite a wealth of anecdotal evidence that reaches back several decades. We
simply do not know whether hosting the Olympics improves citizen’s rights, the World
Cup leads to societal unrest, or the Commonwealth Games lead to electoral gains for host
governments. The paper addresses this gap by asking if there are systematic patterns
of changes in key political variables after a nation has hosted an international sports
mega-event.
This paper proceeds as follows: section 2 outlines the history of sports mega-events
from their emergence at the turn of the century. The applicable literature is evaluated
(section 3), and some theoretical expectations and hypotheses concerning political ef-
fects are formulated (section 4). Following this, I briefly describe the paper’s empirical
methodology and the dataset on which its analysis is based (section 5). The paper then
presents the results of several multilevel regression models (section 6), and concludes by
summarizing key findings and their implications for our understanding of international
sports mega-events, and international relations in general (section 7).
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2 An Overview of International Sports Mega-Events
Organized sports is almost as old as human civilization itself. As far back as the
Neolithic, there is evidence for competitive sporting events in disciplines such as running
and wrestling. While most sports were played locally, or between members of the same
tribe, the origins of today’s inter-national sports events can already be seen in the use of
the Mesoamerican ballgame as a substitute for warfare (Fox 2012), and the Panhellenic
Games, which began in the 7th century BC. While these games were not played between
parties that can be classified as modern-style nation states, sports were – even at this
early stage – already an endeavor that crossed borders. An ‘Olympic Truce’ was put
in place specifically to allow athletes from different parts of the world to travel to the
games (International Olympic Committee 2017). In every century since then, competitive
sporting events have been an integral part of culture around the globe.
The Middle Ages saw a number of combat sports emerge, such as jousting, fencing,
or the Italian combat ballgame of calcio. In medieval knightly tournaments, it was not
unusual to see competitors from all over Europe compete in a multitude of disciplines. For
the time, these were unquestionably ‘mega-events’: the 1179 tournament in Lagny-sur-
Marne in northern France attracted over 3000 knights from Germany, England, Spain,
and other nations, and was attended by multiple kings, hundreds of nobles, and tens
of thousands of spectators (Crouch 2005). But sports also took the shape of peaceful
competition in the form of tennis or horse racing. The fascination of organized rivalries has
not let up since. Most modern sports – and their rules – were developed and formalized
during the industrial revolution, from rugby and soccer, to cricket and baseball, to fencing
and athletics. Alongside this institutionalization of sports came an increase in peoples’
leisure time and disposable income, which led to the rise of spectator sports, and a much
wider participation in all but the most exclusive of disciplines (Hargreaves 1986).
In light of these developments, the creation of the modern Olympic Games as the first
truly multinational sports mega-event was an idea whose time had come. Championed
by Baron Pierre de Coubertin, the first Games were held in 1896 in Athens, but it would
take another decade for the event to catch on with competitors and spectators. But
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Patrick Theiner Effects of Sports Mega-Events
as early as 1920, the Games in Antwerp already drew thousands of participants, and
the number of competing athletes and the countries they represented would steadily rise
over the coming decades. Sponsorship was introduced as early as 1928, when Coca-Cola
supported the Games in Amsterdam. After the 1936 Games in Berlin – set in scene with
monumental effort by Nazi Germany as a testament to its power – two Olympics were
canceled due to the outbreak of the Second World War (Zimbalist 2015). Since then, the
Olympic Games in their summer and winter versions have traveled all continents with
the exception of Africa.1They were the target of terrorists (Munich 1972), boycotts (the
Soviet Union and its allies at the 1984 Games in Los Angeles), and wild budget overruns
(the 1992 Games in Barcelona). Each of them was one of the most-watched televised
events in history at the time – the International Olympic Committee (IOC) estimated
that half the world’s population (3.6 billion people) watched the most recent Games in
Brazil (Reuters 2016).
The Olympic Games are not the only international SMEs, even if they are the largest.
Second in terms of viewers, the FIFA World Cup started as a reaction to what was
considered soccer’s second-class treatment in the Olympic movement.2The first World
Cup held in 1930 in Uruguay had only thirteen participating nations, but its planning
and execution were entirely in FIFA’s hands, and have remained there ever since. In the
past 70 years, the tournament has expanded to 32 teams, which work their way through
multi-year group systems to qualify. In its 20 editions, the Cup has been hosted on all
continents, including Asia (2002) and Africa (2010). Until the recent selection of Russia
and Qatar as hosts of the 2018 and 2022 World Cups, the selection of host nations was
relatively uncontroversial, if regularly accompanied by accusations of corruption against
individual FIFA members (Zimbalist 2015). Due to soccer’s global popularity, the World
Cup’s viewership numbers are almost on par with the Olympics: an estimated 3.2 billion
people watched at least part of the 2014 tournament in Brazil, with the final between
1This includes the Paralympic Games for athletes with disabilities. These are generally held in the
regular Olympic host nation.
2Soccer was left out of the 1932 Games in Los Angeles because the IOC contended it was not popular
enough in the United States, and the Olympic insistence on amateurism prevented professional players
from participating.
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Patrick Theiner Effects of Sports Mega-Events
eventual winners Germany and Argentina attracting almost one billion viewers alone
(FIFA 2015). The World Cup is thus unquestionably the most watched single-sport
event in history.
Yet the Olympics and the World Cup are only the two most well-known SMEs. There
is, in fact, an almost bewildering number of other international competitive events that
have emerged during the 20th century. Seven of these international multi-sport events
are part of this study: Commonwealth Games, All-Africa Games, Asian Games, Pan-
American Games, Mediterranean Games, Universiade, and World Games. As their names
imply, the first five events correspond to specific world regions and only allow athletes
from those areas to participate. The Commonwealth Games are the oldest event among
the group, with the inaugural tournament having been held in 1930. The idea of an or-
ganized competition for citizens of current or former members of the British Empire was
first articulated at the end of the 19th century and is thus as old as the Olympic Move-
ment itself. The Games have since been hosted by most former British colonies, including
Australia (four times), Canada (four times), and India (once); the United Kingdom itself
is a seven-time host. 70 nations and territories participate in the Commonwealth Games,
sending 5000 athletes. The Asian Games,Mediterranean Games, and Pan-American
Games were all first held in 1951, which coincides with the post-Second World War trend
towards greater regional cooperation also seen in other issue areas. The All-Africa Games
were the latecomer among regional games, but even its first edition in 1965 had more
than 2,500 participants from 30 African nations.3Moving away from regional competi-
tions, the Universiade and World Games each have specific target audiences irrespective
of geography. The Universiade is a biennial event exclusively for university athletes. It
underwent various changes in name and structure since its inception in the 1920s, but
today draws competitors from 170 countries, making it the most geographically diverse
sports event outside the Olympics. Italy has been the most frequent host nation, and
together with states in Southern and Southeastern Europe has hosted 12 of the 28 events
since 1959. Perhaps as a mark of its political importance, the Universiade has tradition-
3The latest Games in Brazzaville assembled a record number of 15,000 competitors from more than
50 states.
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Patrick Theiner Effects of Sports Mega-Events
ally been opened by the host nation’s head of state or chief executive - including Leonid
Brezhnev, Helmut Kohl, Bill Clinton, Emperor Akihito, and Vladimir Putin. Lastly, the
World Games are modeled closely on the Olympics, but exclusively cover sports not in-
cluded in the latter: disciplines such as dancing, field archery, orienteering, parachuting,
or sumo wrestling.4Despite its somewhat exotic program, the World Games regularly
attract over 4,000 athletes from 100 states. Its 2017 edition to be held in Wroclaw was
even called “the biggest sporting event in Polish history after the Euro 2012” by local
officials (International World Games Association 2017).
All nine sports tournaments in this study have in common that they are some of the
few ‘global’ events that are not themselves inherently political in nature. The only other
similarly global events are the numerous world fairs / universal exhibitions / expos that
have been held since the mid-19th century (M¨uller 2015). They all have a global reach
in terms of participants and hosts, and are able to draw the world’s attention to the host
nation to a significant degree. And in the decades since their inception, all have attracted
strong competition among states to host them.
3 Literature Review
Few studies have systematically investigated the possible political effects of sports
mega-events. What is more, theoretical expectations about the size – if any – and di-
rection such events might have on political variables in the host nation are rare. This
is firstly due to sports generally being a neglected area of international relations, and
secondly due to the scarcity of analogous events. International sports competitions are a
unique class of phenomena: they have a vast global audience unparalleled by all but the
most significant events of the 20th century.5They occur at regular intervals for a rela-
tively short time (weeks rather than months). They are inter-national in the most literal
sense of the word, with individual athletes explicitly competing for their states. Host
4If a discipline is included in the Olympics, it is removed from the World Games – past examples
include beach volleyball, badminton, or teakwondo.
5The closest analogy might be the 1969 moon landing, which was watched by around 14% of the
world’s population.
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Patrick Theiner Effects of Sports Mega-Events
nations feel a strong sense of ownership, but this is temporary by design, and changes
with every iteration. And they drive states to compete for, and spend significant amounts
on acquiring, a currency that cannot be transfered to other political fields: medals.
Taken together, this makes SMEs an oddity of the international landscape, and might
explain the reluctance of IR as a discipline to engage with them. Nevertheless, there
are some studies examining specific political effects of hosting SMEs, and two further
strands of research can potentially provide clues: First, research on the economic effects
of hosting SMEs. Second, research on state efforts to become the host of international
sports tournaments.
Assessing the economic value of hosting SMEs has become somewhat of a cottage
industry, with new studies often being published to coincide with further editions of
the events they are analyzing. This is all the more interesting as there seems to be
little need for further research: practically all available studies show SMEs to be a net
loss for their hosts. The negative outcome is the result of high direct costs and limited
quantifiable returns. In their review of more than 50 years of Olympic host nations,
Flyvbjerg and Stewart (2012) find that the Games overrun their budget with 100 percent
consistency, and incur an average of 179 percent of their anticipated costs in real terms.
The authors conclude that hosting the Olympics is “one of the most financially risky type
of megaproject that exists” (Flyvbjerg and Stewart 2012, p. 11).6By far the largest cost
factor is the necessary building or refurbishing of facilities: hosting this class of event
often requires not only sports venues, but also investments in transport, housing, and
other infrastructure. FIFA requires a World Cup host to provide between 8 and 10 state-
of-the-art stadiums each seating upwards of 40,000 spectators. For the 2002 World Cup in
Japan and South Korea, both nations built 17 completely new stadiums and refurbished
a further three at a combined cost of more than $6 billion (Matheson and Baade 2004).
The London 2012 Olympics cost the city and the UK over $15 billion (Flyvbjerg and
Stewart 2012), and analysts have estimated that the 2008 Beijing Olympics cost China a
staggering $40 billion (Riley 2015). Of course not all SMEs come with such price tags, but
6One oft-cited example of this risk is the city of Montreal, host of the 1976 Winter Olympics, which
only paid off the last debts resulting from the Games in 2006.
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Patrick Theiner Effects of Sports Mega-Events
even comparatively small events like the Universiade can involve construction of railways
and entire stadiums, as was the case in Kazan 2013 (Makarychev and Yatsyk 2014).
Compared to these sums, the return on investment of hosting a SME is paltry. As
Baade and Matheson (2004, p. 345) point out, local boosters often emphasize the sup-
posed economic windfalls from tourism and increases in employment. Some authors find
modest support for this conjecture (Ahlert and Preuss 2010), but such cases are the ex-
ception, not the rule (Brunet 1995), and most studies find no positive long-term effects.
During the 2002 World Cup, the overall total of visitors to South Korea stayed the same
compared to previous years, since the additional tourists were offset by regional and busi-
ness travelers who specifically avoided the country during the tournament (Matheson and
Baade 2004, p. 1090). When South Korea hosted the Universiade in Daegu in 2003, it
welcomed 170,000 spectators – but one year earlier the same region saw 240,000 overseas
visitors during the same period (Baek 2015). While some jobs are indeed created as a
direct result of hosting SMEs – mostly in the retail and hospitality sectors – these effects
are short-lived and do not bolster local or state-wide growth (Feddersen, Gr¨otzinger and
Maennig 2009; Feddersen and Maennig 2013; Horne and Manzenreiter 2004; Porter and
Fletcher 2008). There is also no evidence for a positive relationship between hosting
duties and economic development understood broadly, especially not in developing na-
tions – at best, the effects seem to be neutral (Cornelissen 2009; Peeters, Matheson and
Szymanski 2014; Pillay and Bass 2008). Lastly, Zimbalist (2015, p. 40-43) reviews 19
academic studies of hosting the Olympics and the World Cup, but does not find a single
analysis that shows consistently positive economical positive effects.
The second strand of research related to this paper asks what motivates states to
become hosts of SMEs, given that the economic cost-benefit calculation is so overwhelm-
ingly negative. The answer seems simple: status. Allison and Monnington (2002) iden-
tify the Soviet Union as the main force behind the re-casting of sports tournaments from
‘sources of international goodwill’ into ‘sources of national prestige’ after World War II.
The USSR’s efforts at using their participation in, and hosting of, SMEs to improve
their status and reputation was quickly mirrored by the powers on the other side of the
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Patrick Theiner Effects of Sports Mega-Events
Iron Curtain. Gripsrud, Nes and Olsson (2010) agree with status gains being the most
likely motivating factor, but caution that positive image effects resulting from hosting
SMEs are by no means guaranteed, and in some circumstances might even be negative.
Rhamey and Early (2013) empirically investigate what effects hosting and participating
in the Olympics have on states’ international status. Their study shows that countries
outperforming expectations in terms of medal count can gain significant amounts of in-
ternational prestige (participation effect), and the same is true when small nations host
the Olympics (hosting effect). Using China as an case study, Xu (2006, p. 92) points
to sport “as the continuation of politics by other means” – with the ‘ping pong diplo-
macy’ between China and the US in the 1970s as the most famous example. China’s
hosting of the 2008 Summer Olympics and the 2022 Winter Olympics, along with several
other events, is chiefly motivated by a similar desire to present the country favorably
to the international community, and generate soft power. The desire to gain status is
not limited to autocratic states: Defrance and Chamot (2008) show how French politics
has tied national reputation to sporting events as far back as the 1950s, resulting in
France frequently being host to international sports events such as the Winter Olympics
(1962, 1992), World Cup (1998), Rubgy World Cup (1991, 2007), or European Football
Championship (2016). Schausteck de Almeida, Marchi J´unior and Pike (2014) demon-
strate that acquiring international SMEs is a key part of Brazil’s foreign policy strategy
of presenting itself as a rising power both economically and politically. The idea that
global sports events are especially attractive to such ‘semi-peripheral’ polities is also a
central claim advanced by Black and Van Der Westhuizen (2004), Grix and Lee (2013),
and Tolzmann (2014). SMEs are perceived to legitimize and celebrate hosts’ national
identity and political order, and allows them to demonstrate the maturity of their state
and society – if they can exercise some control over how they are portrayed by the media
(Dimeo and Kay 2004).
Finally coming to research specifically examining the political effects of hosting SMEs,
Bowersox (2016) provides the most up-to-date study on the systematic relationship be-
tween hosting duties and their domestic impact. Looking at the Olympics and the World
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Patrick Theiner Effects of Sports Mega-Events
Cup, the author finds that hosting an event positively affects a state’s repression of its
citizens. The increased attention that an international event brings to a country, cou-
pled with its desire to be viewed favorably, leads to fewer reports of physical repression
and curtailing of empowerment rights. Even staunchly autocratic hosts are sensitive to
the dramatically increased chance of being ‘named and shamed’ for their human rights
record (Bowersox 2016, p. 262-263). When other authors examined claims of political
liberalization and democratization as a result of sports tournaments a decade earlier, they
found few traces of a systematic relationship, since anecdotal evidence both supports and
contravenes the hypothesis. The Olympics in Berlin 1936, Mexico City 1968, and Bei-
jing 2008 did not see a reduction in the hosts’ repressive behavior (Black and Van Der
Westhuizen 2004, p. 1210), and neither did the 1955 Mediterranean Games in Francoist
Spain or the 2006 Asian Games in Qatar. On the other hand, there is the case of South
Korea: ruled by a highly repressive military regime until the late 1980s, the awarding
of the 1988 Olympics to Seoul led to widespread societal mobilization and international
media scrutiny, some of which put in jeopardy the country’s ability to hold the Games
at all. “Faced with the specter of such a monumental national failure and loss of face,
the regime effectively conceded to all the opposition’s major demands” (Black and Van
Der Westhuizen 2004, p. 1211); the resulting elections inaugurated the first democrat-
ically elected president only seven months before the Games. In a later paper, Black
(2008) adds two further broad effects of sports tournaments: the fostering of national
unity and pride, and community building through volunteerism and social participation.
Both Whitson (2004) and Tolzmann (2014) echo these assertions, but neither they nor
Black systematically analyze the possible effects of such societal engagement on a state’s
political system across time and regions.
There is little helpful research beyond these studies: some researchers provide further
anecdotal evidence for the political costs and benefits of individual sports competitions
(c.f. Cornelissen and Swart 2006; Deos 2014; Frawley 2015; Manheim 1990), but most
are either concerned with the economic impact on host nations, or the motivating factors
behind hosting.
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Patrick Theiner Effects of Sports Mega-Events
4 Framework, Hypotheses, Operationalizations
As the previous section has shown, there is no coherent theoretical framework that
can be applied to the potential political effects of sports mega-events. This is partly due
to their status as unique international phenomena (see section 2), and partly due to the
lack of systematic comparative research (see section 3). Additionally, potential political
effects must be separated from both motivating factors and economic effects.
Anecdotal and small-n evidence from previous studies nevertheless implies three dis-
tinct levels of dependent variables potentially affected by SMEs: we can distinguish
between international effects, executive effects, and societal effects.
4.1 International Effects
International effects are mostly those desired by the host nation – an increase in
international visibility and prestige, the demonstration of political and societal maturity,
and claims to status as a major power on the international stage. In line with the available
literature (Allison and Monnington 2002; Black and Van Der Westhuizen 2004; Defrance
and Chamot 2008; Dimeo and Kay 2004; Gripsrud, Nes and Olsson 2010; Schausteck de
Almeida, Marchi J´unior and Pike 2014; Rhamey and Early 2013; Xu 2006), I predict
that host nations can realize gains in their international standing immediately following
SMEs.
Hypothesis 1: When a state hosts a sports mega-event, its international
status will increase, ceteris paribus.
The paper is agnostic with regard to the permanence of such gains. By their very
nature, SMEs regularly have new hosts, so the ‘afterglow’ of an event likely does not
last more than a few years. It seems reasonable to assume that most increases in status
happen during and immediately after the event, if at all. The analysis will measure status
gains one year, two years, and five years after an SME – since most events happen at a
four-year interval, two years is the point at which further increases would be unexpected,
due to the next event moving into view. One difficulty is that gains in soft power are
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Patrick Theiner Effects of Sports Mega-Events
notoriously hard to operationalize and measure. Even the very latest Routledge Handbook
of Soft Power (Chitty et al. 2017) does not offer many suggestions beyond aggregate
measures of moderately related economic, political, and social variables. More creative
operationalizations involving media coverage or online reactions cannot be applied to the
many older cases in the dataset.
For this paper, the potential international effects related to hypothesis 1 will be op-
erationalized using two datasets the have been used successfully in other studies. First,
status gains should be visible in the establishment of high-level diplomatic contacts be-
tween the host nation and other states, as suggested by Volgy et al. (2011). Rhamey
et al. (2013) assembled the Diplomatic Contacts Data Base (DIPCON) to collect this
information, arguing that diplomatic contacts have historically been essential “prestige
indicators relevant to international hierarchy” because they serve “as a sufficiently costly
recognition of importance” (Rhamey and Early 2013, p. 250).
The second source of information is the Affinity of Nations data assembled by Gartzke
(2006). The dataset provides scores for the similarity of votes in the UN General Assem-
bly, where similar voting patterns imply more aligned geopolitical preferences (Voeten
2000, 2008; Vreeland 2003, 2011). Gains in international status and reputation should
result in greater similarity between the votes of the hosting state and other UN members.
If soft power indeed acts as a ‘power of attraction’ (Nye 2004), an increase in status
strengthens the gravitational pull that a state exerts on others – which can be expressed
by greater vote similarity between the host and others.7
The general hypothesis about international effects can thus be restated as:
Hypothesis 1a: When a state hosts a sports mega-event, it will experience a subsequent
increase in the number of high-level diplomatic contacts, and a greater similarity between
its UN votes and those of others.
7Similarity could also be a product of the host gravitating towards other states, rather than the
direction hypothesized here. Such a systematic effect would be noteworthy despite its direction.
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Patrick Theiner Effects of Sports Mega-Events
4.2 Executive Effects
Executive effects are the costs and benefits to a host nation’s government or executive.
These effects are only partly intentional: executives bidding for international competi-
tions clearly anticipate some domestic payoff, but this is by no means guaranteed. Much
of the literature agrees that executives hope for SMEs to enhance national unity and
patriotism, bridge social cleavages, and foster national cohesion. Sports events can pro-
vide a ‘rally ’round the flag’ effect (Chapman and Reiter 2004), which should directly
benefit the executive that won the right to host the event (Bowersox 2016; Black 2007,
2008; Cornelissen 2008; Schimmel 2006).8However, the previous sections gave anecdo-
tal evidence of governments having come under fire before, during, and after hosting an
event. SMEs such as the Olympics have repeatedly had negative effects on executive
support and even survival as a result of repressive behavior (Mexico City 1968, Seoul
1988); budget overruns (Barcelona 1992); or perceptions of incompetence, corruption,
and indulgent spending (Rio de Janeiro 2016) (see also Yarchi, Galily and Tamir 2015).
While the paper thus is generally agnostic about the direction of executive effects, for
the sake of a clear hypothesis I predict that host executives can expect rallying effects to
bolster their support immediately following SMEs.
Hypothesis 2: When a state hosts a sports mega-event, domestic support
for its executive will increase, ceteris paribus.
Mirroring potential international benefits from hosting duties, executives are likely to
experience the most significant effects during and immediately after the event in ques-
tion, whether they are positive or negative. To account for both short-term and more
long-term effects, variables related to executives will be measured one, two, and five years
after an event. The paper operationalizes SMEs as a boon or a burden by using two well-
established sources of information: the Polity IV dataset (Marshall, Gurr and Jaggers
2016), which collects ‘patterns of authority’ and regime changes; and the Database of
Political Institutions (DPI) assembled by the Inter-American Development Bank (Beck
8The effect can be so large that it surprises the executive as well as the audience, and even the wider
world. The supposed ‘re-discovery’ of Germany’s national pride and patriotism as a direct result of its
hosting the 2006 World Cup serves as a recent example (Bernstein 2006; Kersting 2008).
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Patrick Theiner Effects of Sports Mega-Events
et al. 2001; Cruz, Keefer and Scartascini 2016). Each dataset has been cited by, and used
in, several thousand studies. For the purposes of this paper, executive effects will be op-
erationalized using three variables covering different aspects of executives’ support. First,
the ‘competitiveness of executive elections’ from Polity IV – if SMEs are indeed a boon
to executives, they should experience less competition in elections after the event. Note
that this does not necessarily mean that the system is less democratic, but rather that the
government was able to secure an overwhelming majority of seats, push smaller factions
out of the legislature, or watch opposition parties fold. Second, ‘change of government’
as measured by the DPI. If SMEs are beneficial for executives, they should expect to
remain in power after the event. If there is a systematic pattern of governments failing
to secure re-election after events, this would indicate that SMEs are in fact an electoral
burden, rather than a boon. Third, ‘executive seat share’, also extracted from the DPI.
This is a more fine-grained measure of public support than the previous two variables. If
the hypothesis is correct, executives who successfully won a bid and conducted an SME
should see rallying effects increase their legislative seat share. I argue that the combi-
nation of these three variables presents the most direct way to measure whether SMEs
are beneficial to executives: can they increase electoral support and broaden their power
base?
The general hypothesis about executive effects can thus be restated as:
Hypothesis 2a: When a state hosts a sports mega-event, its executive will experience
reduced electoral competitiveness, a lower chance of a change in government, and an
increased legislative seat share.
4.3 Societal Effects
Lastly, there is a class of potential effects of SMEs that affect countries more broadly,
rather than just their executives. Interestingly, these effects often receive much attention
from the public and the organizing bodies themselves, but almost none from scholars: the
promotion of peace, inclusivity, non-discrimination, participatory rights, and more gener-
ally a “better world through sport” (Olympic Charter, International Olympic Committee
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Patrick Theiner Effects of Sports Mega-Events
2015). While the idea of sports as a force for good is admittedly vague, the potential of
SMEs as vehicles of liberalization has been cited as a major reason for having less than
democratic countries host such tournaments. The above-mentioned case of South Korea
speaks to the sport’s democratizing power, and the public held similar hopes for the
2008 Beijing Olympics (Cottrell and Nelson 2010; Xu 2006), even though they might not
have materialized (Wan 2014). A sympathetic observer might believe that the apparent
trend of awarding tournaments to autocratic states9is driven by the organizers’ desire
to encourage these societies to greater transparency and respect for human rights (Ganji
2016). As Bowersox (2016) shows, there is some empirical evidence that hosting an SME
does systematically improve a state’s human rights situation by making repression more
costly. We do not have to claim that SMEs can completely change a society in order to
believe that they might have at least some effect on a wider scale. Put differently, the
often reported belief that such events have societal effects (Black and Bezanson 2004;
Black 2008; Beutler 2008; Grix and Lee 2013; Jarvie 2011; Preuss and Alfs 2009) justifies
investigating to which degree these beliefs indeed line up with reality. Note that the
paper still concentrates on society-wide political effects, rather than outcomes across all
possible dimensions (i.e. increased societal ‘happiness’, changes to urban environments,
developmental impacts, etc.). The latter would unduly broaden the scope of the paper.
I thus predict that host nations will see positive societal developments following SMEs.10
Hypothesis 3: When a state hosts a sports mega-event, this will subse-
quently enhance democratic accountability and openness, ceteris paribus.
Again, the paper will investigate any such effects one, two, and five years after a
state has hosted an event. The range of possible operationalizations of societal effects is
very large; additionally, there are no quantitative studies to base the selection on besides
Bowersox (2016). The paper uses three factors that appear to most directly relate to the
above mentioned expectations. The Polity IV dataset (Marshall, Gurr and Jaggers 2016)
9China: 2008 Summer Olympics, 2011 Universiade, 2022 Winter Olympics, 2010 and 2022 Asian
Games; Russia: 2013 Universiade, 2014 Winter Olympics, 2018 World Cup; Qatar: 2006 Asian Games,
2022 World Cup. Chandler (2014) declared 2022 the “Year of the Authoritarian Host Country”.
10 Much like in the case of executive effects, the hypothesis is formulated with clarity of direction in
mind, rather than because of overwhelming evidence for this direction.
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Patrick Theiner Effects of Sports Mega-Events
provides the variable of overall ‘Polity score’. Ranging from -10 (strongly autocratic) to
+10 (strongly democratic), the composite score measures constraints on chief executives,
openness of executive recruitment regulation, and competitiveness of political participa-
tion, among others. The beneficial effect of sports should show host states systematically
becoming less autocratic (a positive effect on the autocracy-democracy scale). Secondly,
the Polity project’s Political Instability Task Force publishes a dataset on instances of
state failure, meaning major adverse shifts in governance such as revolutions, state dis-
solution, or state collapse (Marshall, Gurr and Harff 2016). While international sports
tournaments historically have steered cleared of states in imminent danger of failure for
obvious reasons, the dataset also captures more isolated instances of societal upheaval.
If SMEs truly have a liberating power, this should manifest itself in an (at least modest)
increase in shifts in governance after they are over. The last variable is derived from the
World Bank’s World Governance Indicators (WGI), another central dataset in compar-
ative political science (Kaufmann, Kraay and Mastruzzi 2010). The WGI organizes a
range of indicators into clusters which measure distinct aspects of how political authority
is exercised. One clustered variable is of special interest to this paper, since it maps neatly
on preconceptions about the effects of SMEs. The indicator ‘voice and accountability’
captures “perceptions of the extent to which a country’s citizens are able to participate in
selecting their government, as well as freedom of expression, freedom of association, and a
free media” (Kaufmann, Kraay and Mastruzzi 2010, p. 4). This corresponds to expecta-
tions about how international events encourage citizens to demand greater accountability,
participation, and openness from their states. Should SMEs indeed be benign forces of
societal change, ‘voice and accountability’ should increase after their hosting.
The general hypothesis about societal effects can thus be restated as:
Hypothesis 3a: When a state hosts a sports mega-event, it becomes overall more demo-
cratic, experiences more frequent episodes of major governance shifts, and improves op-
tions for voice and accountability.
Note that some aspects of these three hypotheses might seem contradictory: for ex-
ample, hypothesis 2a expects a lower chance of a change in government due to the ‘rally
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Patrick Theiner Effects of Sports Mega-Events
’round the flag’ after an SME, yet 3a suggests that societal upheaval should be more
common. This is both true and unavoidable. As frequently mentioned throughout the
paper, there is anecdotal – but very little systematic – evidence of both positive and
negative effects of SMEs on their host countries, in almost every dimension. Episodes
of governmental repression before, during, or after an event can be found just as easily
as genuine attempts of host states to improve their international standing and domestic
situation. What is more, governments still clearly believe in the benefits of SMEs, while
academics overwhelmingly conclude that they deliver poor returns on investment. This
disagreement is thus also present in the hypotheses, and can only be resolved through
empirical work.
5 Dataset
To test hypotheses about the political effects of hosting sports mega-events, I as-
sembled a dataset containing the host nations of nine international SMEs starting in
1896. The nine recurring events are the Olympic Games (in their summer and win-
ter incarnations), FIFA World Cup, Commonwealth Games, All-Africa Games, Asian
Games, Pan-American Games, Mediterranean Games, Universiade, and World Games.
These events have in common that they are the world’s largest tournaments in terms of
participants and audiences, have an almost unbroken history of being staged since their
inception, and are hosted after a competitive bidding process. All together, there have
been 193 editions of these tournaments.
For an event in host country X in year Y, the dataset records information about year
Y, the preceding years Y−1and Y−2, and the five following years Y+1 to Y+5. The unit of
analysis thus is the country-year, but only for the seven years surrounding the event in
question.11 This results in 1188 data points.
The main independent variable is the occurrence of a sports mega-event. For each type
11 Including every country-year since the start of the dataset in 1896 is of course possible. However,
this would make SMEs into exceedingly rare events, given that 59 different countries have hosted at least
one event in 120 years – which means country-years with SMEs would only constitute 3% (193 out of
7080) of data points.
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Patrick Theiner Effects of Sports Mega-Events
of event – Asian Games, World Games, etc. – country-years in which the state in question
hosted them are given a value of 1. Additionally, a general event variable is assigned a
value of 1 if any SME was hosted in the country-year. As a third operationalization,
a variable counts the cumulative total number of SMEs that a country has hosted up
to the current year. This captures a possible ‘cumulative effect’ of SMEs, in that one
event by itself might not have a large political impact, but continued hosting might. For
each country-year, the dataset assembles values for eight dependent variables related to
potential political effects: diplomatic contacts, UN voting similarity, competitiveness of
executive elections, change of government, executive’s legislative seat share, polity score,
sudden governance shifts, and voice & accountability.
Following Bowersox (2016), the dataset further includes the two standard controls of
gross domestic product (GDP) per capita and population size (see also Poe and Tate
1994; Poe, Tate and Keith 1999). All else being equal, SMEs should have less of an
impact in more economically developed and more populous states, since they make less
of a difference. In other words, hosting the World Cup had less of an impact on the
society of Brazil (208 million citizens) than it will in Qatar (1.4 million); and being host
to the Asian Games was a greater test of China’s public sector in 1990 (GDP per capita
of $311) than in 2010 (GDP per capita $4561).
A series of OLS regression models were specified where the dependent variables are
related to hypotheses outlined above, with the independent variables being binary for
each event, an aggregate variable measuring any event, and the control variables.
6 Analysis: Political Effects of Sports Mega-Events
6.1 Descriptive Statistics
Table 1 provides descriptive statistics of the dependent variable and the independent
and control variables introduced in section 4.
The data shows some interesting descriptive patterns of SME hosting. First, countries
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Patrick Theiner Effects of Sports Mega-Events
Table 1: Summary Statistics
Variable nMean SD Min Max
Independent variables
Occurrence of SME 1188 0.66 0.26 -0.71 0.98
Cumulative number of SMEs 1188 145 39 20 200
Dependent variables
International effects:
Diplomatic contacts 762 36.4 34.4 4 117
UN voting similarity XX XX XX XX XX
Executive effects:
Participatory competitiveness 1188 3.67 1.61 0 5
Change in government 695 0.05 0.22 0 1
Seat share 655 0.35 0.05 0.25 1
Societal effects:
Polity score 1188 4.63 7.16 -10 10
Major governance shifts 1180 0.10 0.15 0 1
Voice and accountability 337 0.14 0.52 -1.66 01.68
Control variables
Population size (log) 1188 7.48 0.60 5.87 9.14
GDP per capita (log) 1176 3.43 0.76 1.68 4.94
Year 1188 1977 26.6 1894 2017
Note: UN voting will only be included in future versions of this paper.
Figure 1: States hosting the largest number of SMEs, 1896-2016
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Patrick Theiner Effects of Sports Mega-Events
vary significantly in how many events they host. Figure 1 shows the most prolific host
nations, with the UK and US leading the field. Because SMEs as we know them were
largely a Western venture in the first half of the 20th century, it is not surprising to see
Europe and the Americas represented frequently. European states have hosted 78 of the
193 events in the dataset, and the Americas have hosted 50. Japan is the most frequent
host in Asia, while only one Middle Eastern state is represented in the top 20, and no
African one. Several countries in the dataset have only ever had one SME, and many
refrain from hosting events for decades at a time (Greece famously celebrated the first
Summer Olympics in 1896, but only hosted its next SME – the Mediterranean Games
– in 1991, 95 years later). While states in Europe are the most likely to let long spans
of time elapse between events, hosts in Asia and the Americas often show ‘bunching’ of
SMEs: South Korea (the quickest to re-host) on average lets only 4.8 years pass between
events, Japan 4.9, and China 5.3. In the Americas, the US on average has an SME every
8.2 years, Canada every 8.5, and Mexico every 9.3.
Figure 2: SMEs hosted by world regions, by decade
Europe might have had a head start when it comes to SMEs, but other regions have
increasingly challenged this primacy. In fact, European states have not hosted more than
50% of the sports events in the dataset since the 1950s, and Asia and the Americas have
made strong efforts to be the world’s ‘hosting continents’ since the 1980s (see figure 2).
21
Patrick Theiner Effects of Sports Mega-Events
Of course this has been at least partly driven by the expansion of SMEs. In the first 30
years of the 20th century, the Olympics and the Commonwealth Games were the only
truly global tournaments. The 1930s saw six events across the entire decade, but by
the 1950s, this number had increased more than threefold to 20 events. From 2010 to
2020, 30 SMEs will be hosted globally. Because the greater number of events has gone
hand in hand with dramatically increased costs, this trend has not necessarily led to a
diversification of hosts, but rather to some hosts – such as China – supplying more events.
6.2 Regression Analysis
As outlined above, OLS regression models were used to determine the effect of hosting
SMEs on a range of dependent variables related to states’ political systems.
To get a first impression of the relationship between both sets of variables, I plotted
four dependent variables against the SME variable, for which 0 designates a country-
year in which no event takes places. As is evident from the graphs in figure 3, there is
practically no visible effect: one year after an event, countries can neither systematically
increase their diplomatic contacts, nor can the executive widen its legislative seat share,
nor do states become more democratic (Polity score), nor does state transparency and
accountability improve markedly. The relationship between SME hosting and the other
dependent variables – participatory competitiveness, change in government, and major
governance shifts – is equally indistinguishable from zero, and this does not change with
different operationalizations of the dependent variable, such as the cumulative total of
events hosted in each country.
Nevertheless, these non-results might be a product of missing control variables. I
therefore specified a series of seven regression models – one for each dependent variable
– with SME hosting as the main independent variable, and the controls of region, year,
population, and GDP per capita. Tables 2 and 3 summarize the results for changes in
political factors in year Y+1. The inclusion of control variables does not improve the
explanatory power of SMEs, which are only statistically significant (p < 0.05) for one
dependent variable, and with an extremely small substantive effect. The full models
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Patrick Theiner Effects of Sports Mega-Events
Figure 3: Diplomatic contacts, seat share, Polity score, voice & accountability, each one year
after hosting an SME. Values on x-axis have been jittered to reduce overplotting.
(a) Diplomatic contacts (b) Executive seat share
(c) Polity score (d) Voice & accountability
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Patrick Theiner Effects of Sports Mega-Events
Table 2: Regression models 1
Diplomatic contacts Competitiveness Government change
SME 0.14 −0.04∗−0.05
(0.28) (0.02) (0.04)
Region: Americas −0.77 −0.01 −0.02
(0.52) (0.04) (0.08)
Region: Asia −0.24 −0.01 0.00
(0.50) (0.04) (0.08)
Region: Europe −0.65 −0.02 −0.01
(0.52) (0.04) (0.08)
Region: MENA 0.37 −0.06 −0.00
(0.54) (0.04) (0.08)
Year −0.01 0.00 −0.00
(0.01) (0.00) (0.00)
Population 0.27 −0.02 0.01
(0.21) (0.01) (0.03)
GDP per capita 0.63∗−0.00 0.01
(0.25) (0.02) (0.04)
(Intercept) 20.08 −0.43 0.88
(20.87) (0.84) (3.31)
R20.02 0.01 0.00
Adj. R20.01 0.00 -0.01
∗∗∗p < 0.001, ∗∗ p < 0.01, ∗p < 0.05
also explain almost none of the variation in any of the dependent variables – while these
are complex concepts and relatively large amounts of unexplained variation are to be
expected, a maximum R2of 0.05 is still very low.
We must ensure that the analysis does not miss more long-term implications of SMEs
by only examining short-term changes one year after an event. Thus two further rounds
of models were run, attempting to explain changes in political variables two years (Y+2)
and five years (Y+5) after hosting an SME. Additionally, all models were re-run with the
main independent variable being the cumulative total of SMEs. However, the results were
almost identical to Y+1. None of the variables shows consistent statistical significance,
substantive effects are small, and the explained variation is low.
Given that different operationalizations of the dependent variables have not yielded
any explanatory value for wide variety of political factors from different sources, and at
various times after an event, we must conclude: hosting sports mega-events has no
statistically significant political effects.
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Patrick Theiner Effects of Sports Mega-Events
Table 3: Regression models 2
Seat share Polity score Voice & accountability
SME 0.00 −0.14 −0.01
(0.01) (0.11) (0.01)
Region: Americas 0.01 −0.13 −0.00
(0.01) (0.22) (0.02)
Region: Asia 0.00 −0.11 0.00
(0.01) (0.21) (0.02)
Region: Europe 0.01 −0.20 −0.01
(0.01) (0.22) (0.02)
Region: MENA 0.00 −0.19 −0.05∗
(0.02) (0.23) (0.02)
Year 0.00 −0.00 0.00
(0.00) (0.00) (0.00)
Population 0.00 −0.04 0.00
(0.01) (0.08) (0.01)
GDP per capita 0.00 0.02 0.02
(0.01) (0.09) (0.01)
(Intercept) −0.54 0.46 −2.49
(0.62) (4.54) (1.72)
R20.00 0.00 0.05
Num. obs. 576 1061 290
∗∗∗p < 0.001, ∗∗ p < 0.01, ∗p < 0.05
This outcome is obviously disappointing if one hopes for positive results. However,
if we accept that this study was not too poorly designed to generate positive results, or
based on flawed data, the null result tells an important story. What the numbers show
is that the impact of sports events might simply be confined to the economic dimension.
Countries do not systematically improve their international standing in the arena of
‘soft power’; they do not become more open, democratic, and participatory as a result
of their hosting duties; and the executive which stages the event should not count on
gaining public support. Importantly, this contradicts the narrative put forward by the
international custodians of these events that SMEs can be a ‘force for good’; it also calls
into question the practice of awarding tournaments to autocratic states in the hopes that
these will improve their transparency or human rights record. The data lets us expect
no such effects. What the results do support is potential host nations framing SMEs in
mostly economic terms. Convincing citizens of the utility of an event in fact has to rely
on economic arguments, since beneficial outcomes on a societal level are unlikely.
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Patrick Theiner Effects of Sports Mega-Events
7 Conclusion
As Matosin et al. (2014) argue in a widely cited editorial on null results, “science is,
by its nature, a collaborative discipline, and one of the principal reasons why we should
report negative results is so our colleagues do not waste their time and resources repeating
our findings” (p. 172).
While I would not argue that investigating the potential political effects of sports
mega-events is a waste of time, this paper has shown that they seem to have very little – if
any – impact on a broader societal level. All three hypotheses developed in the theoretical
section were not supported by the data. Executives cannot systematically increase their
public support, states do not systematically become more democratic, and so on. This
goes against some of the conventional wisdom of SMEs as tools of openness and inclusion,
or rather implies that this wisdom is in fact a carefully constructed narrative with little
basis in fact. In some cases, SMEs have been shown to have an economic benefit, but
systematically, they do not seem to have a political one. If the international community
is indeed interested in fostering democracy and accountability, SMEs are a poor tool.
This leaves us with the deepening puzzle of why states agree to host sports events in
the first place. If events have little economic and political utility, why spend significant
resources acquiring and conducting them? One possible answer might lie in a point made
by Black and Van Der Westhuizen (2004): rather than being ‘functional’ events with
defined, tangible outcomes, sports mega-events are primarily tools for identity building
and signaling. In other words, the primary motivation behind hosting an event might be
to show that one can host that very event. This certainly seems a plausible hypothesis
in the recent cases of developing countries as hosts, such as Brazil, China, and South
Africa. Unfortunately, more subtle signaling effects are notoriously hard to measure, as
the authors admit.
Of course, there is one last possibility. Sports mega-events might just be that: enter-
tainment – a collectively produced bread and circuses for a global audience.
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Patrick Theiner Effects of Sports Mega-Events
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