Work

Peak event: the rise, crisis and potential decline of the Olympic Games and the World Cup

Year: 2022

Type: article

Abstract: This paper tracks the growth of two of the largest tourist events: the Olympic Games and the Football World Cup, drawing on a dataset containing all events between 1964 and 2018. Overall, the size of the three events has grown about 60-fold over the past 50 years, thirteen times faster than world GDP. We identify an S-shaped growth curve and four different growth periods, with an emergent crisis phase in the late 2010s that may have brought us to ‘peak event’ – the point at which these events have reached their largest size. Outlining three different scenarios, we argue that the Olympics and the World Cup are at a critical bifurcation point, which also requires new bidding and hosting policies.

Source: Tourism Management

DOI: 10.1016/j.tourman.2022.104657

Authors: Martin Müller, David Gogishvili, Sven Daniel Wolfe, Christopher Gaffney, Miriam Hug, Annick Leick

Institutions: University of Lausanne, New York University, University of Bern

Language: English

Topic: Sport and Mega-Event Impacts

Subfield: Sociology and Political Science

Field: Social Sciences

Domain: Social Sciences

Open Access status: hybrid

Estimated APC paid: $3,980

Funders: National Science Foundation, Schweizerischer Nationalfonds zur Förderung der Wissenschaftlichen Forschung