The Olympic Games and raising sport participation: a systematic review of evidence and an interrogation of policy for a demonstration effect

Abstract

Research questions: Can a demonstration effect, whereby people are inspired by elite sport, sports people and events to actively participate themselves, be harnessed from an Olympic Games to influence sport participation? Did London 2012 sport participation legacy policy draw on evidence about a demonstration effect, and was a legacy delivered?

Research methods: A worldwide systematic review of English language evidence returned 1778 sources iteratively reduced by the author panel, on advice from an international review panel to 21 included sources that were quality appraised and synthesised narratively. The evidence was used to examine the influence of a demonstration effect on sport participation engagement and to interrogate sport participation legacy policy for London 2012.

Results and findings: There is no evidence for an inherent demonstration effect, but a potential demonstration effect, properly leveraged, may deliver increases in sport participation frequency and re-engage lapsed participants. Despite setting out to use London 2012 to raise sport participation, successive UK Governments' policy failures to harness the potential influence of a demonstration effect on demand resulted in failure to deliver increased participation.

Implications: If the primary justification for hosting an Olympic Games is the potential impact on sport participation, the Games are a bad investment. However, the Games can have specific impacts on sport participation frequency and re-engagement, and if these are desirable for host societies, are properly leveraged by hosts, and are one among a number of reasons for hosting the Games, then the Games may be a justifiable investment in sport participation terms.

Keywords:

• Olympic and Paralympic Games
• inspiring participation
• sport participation investment
• sport policy
• evidence-based policy

Notes

1. For the purposes of this paper ‘sports people’ is used to mean athletes.

2. This is a deliberately vague operationalisation of the term ‘demonstration effect’ at this stage, as one of the functions of the paper is to provide a more precise conceptualization of what a demonstration effect might comprise.

3. The term ‘franchises’ refers to sport team franchises, such as those existing within, for example, North American Major League Baseball or American Football, but also major European teams with potential influence beyond traditional geographic borders, such as, for example, Manchester United Football Club. Within the search protocol, the terms ‘franchise’ and ‘team’ were used to cover these teams (see Table 1).

4. The local panel comprises the authors, and was drawn from staff employed at the authors' institution at the time of the review. The international advisory panel comprises experts in sport policy, participation and event legacies from around the world to ensure global coverage of English language sources.

5. Active People is a government funded survey that is commissioned by Sport England. It measures sport participation levels in England at various frequencies (e.g., once a month, once a week, three times a week), and was first conducted in 2005–2006 and then continuously since 2007–2008. It now has an annual sample size of circa 175,000, and provides official government statistics.

Additional information

Funding

Part of this work was funded by the UK Department of Health.