Whitson, D.; Horne, J. (2006), Underestimated costs and overestimated benefits? Comparing the outcomes of sports mega-events in Canada and Japan, Sociological Review 2006 Vol. 54 No. Suppl. 2 pp. 71-89

This paper raises questions about the discrepancies between predicted and actual outcomes of sports mega-events, and about why hosting is so often the project of political and business elites. It also raises questions about the economic impacts of tourism, in the years after the event. The paper highlights a number of parallel developments in the pursuit of hosting major international sports events in Canada and Japan. In both countries, Olympic hosting has been the project of political and corporate elites, and in both countries large claims were made for the economic and social benefits that would follow from hosting Olympics and other mega-events (in Japan, such as the Soccer World Cup). The outcomes, however, have been that public and private investments in the 'infrastructure of play' have created expensive sporting infrastructure and other consumer spaces, but with few social benefits for the unable (or dis-inclined) to present themselves as consumers. Hosting sports mega-events was also intended to signal the emergence of once 'peripheral' cities as major players in the national and global economies, and to attract international tourism. Once again, however, the historical experience suggests that these efforts at 'place promotion' have impacts that are fleeting, at best, and as the years pass it becomes difficult to isolate the impacts of the mega-event on the fortunes and stature of a city from those of other economic triggers or from larger cycles of growth and recession.