Country Marketing and Planning Implications of the European Soccer Championship EURO 2004

ABSTRACT

Sports championships are major events capable of changing the image of cities and countries. Countries use these mega-events mostly to enhance economic development opportunities, to attract foreign investment, to generate tourism revenues, to regenerate parts of cities, and to increase the population’s self-esteem. However, the major boost seems to come from the marketing strategies. Host countries promote their images as modern, cosmopolitan, and attractive places, ideal to attract footloose capital. The EURO 2004 European Soccer Championship in Portugal was one such mega-event. Portugal constructed new and renovated old stadiums to host the championship. I argue that EURO 2004 was above all a country marketing strategy conducted by the political elite, supposedly with benefits for the country as a whole; nonetheless, the benefits had distinct geographical and societal impacts within a limited timeframe. The key finding is that the EURO 2004 belonged to the same category of events as the EXPO’98 and the Porto 2001, which helped change the image of Portugal, nationally and internationally; however, a constant reliance on mega-events to modernize and make a country more competitive is not sustainable in the long run.

KEYWORDS:

• Mega-event
• country marketing
• sports
• soccer
• infrastructure planning

Acknowledgments

Previous versions of this paper were presented at the 2004 Urban Affairs Association Conference in Washington DC and at the 2006 World Congress of Planning Schools in Mexico City. I thank participants at these conferences for their insightful comments. This paper benefited from additional fieldwork in Portugal during summer 2009 and winter 2013. I would like to also thank Carlos Barros and Kenneth Brooks, and Ray Bromley for written comments on previous drafts of this article.

This work was supported in part by grant SFRH/BD/793/2000 from Fundacao para a Ciencia e a Tecnologia (FCT).

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Note on the Contributor

Carlos Balsas is an assistant professor in the Department of Geography and Planning at the University at Albany, New York.