The role of voluntary sport organisations in leveraging the London 2012 sport participation legacy

ABSTRACT

This study aimed to understand the perceptions of national Voluntary Sport Organisations (VSOs) managers towards a mega sports event and identify the components they felt enhanced or inhibited their organisations capacity to implement a sport participation legacy. London 2012 was the first Olympic Games to explicitly attempt to deliver this type of legacy, and an exploratory, online mixed-method survey examined the perceptions of 105 senior managers from 37 VSOs, post-event. Principal Component Analysis identified four distinct factors: ‘objectives, standards & resources’, ‘event capitalisation & opportunities’, ‘monitoring & evaluation’ and ‘club engagement & implementation’, explaining 51.5% of the variance. Also, relevant organisational characteristics such as sport type, funding and sport size were examined to investigate the influence this had on their capacity. From these findings, the main recommendations are that future mega sport event hosts should: 1) Engage and consult with multiple stakeholders to engender sustained sport participation. 2) Set clear and monitorable objectives. 3) Establish funding and support mechanisms relevant to each sport. 4) Engage non-competing sports in the leveraging process. 5) Finally, event organisers should try to ensure personnel consistency.

KEYWORDS:

• Mega sport event
• leveraging
• policy implementation
• sports participation
• legacy
• stakeholder attitudes

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. National Governing Bodies/Sport Federations in the context of London 2012.

2. The third category, in which funding ‘stayed the same’ was removed due to a small sample n = 4.

3. Three categories were formed, to segment the NGBs relating to annual participant size: small [under 49,999 participants], medium [50,000–299,999 participants] or large [300,000+ participants], through the participation rates documented on APS8 (Oct 2013 – Oct 2014).

4. This participant was the CEO of a VSO for 25 years and despite having recently retired during data collection, their views were included due to the valuable insights gained and limited knowledge of the interim CEO.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Emily Jane Hayday

Emily Jane Hayday is a lecturer in Sport Business, at Loughborough University London. Her research interests relate to Mega Sports Events, legacy and leveraging, as well as investigating policy implementation within national sport federations and local voluntary clubs. Additionally, she is currently researching CSR and social impact within the esport industry, to investigate how esport could be used as a social development tool.

Athanasios (Sakis) Pappous

Athanasios (Sakis) Pappous is a multilingual academic employed currently as a Reader in the School of Sport and Exercise Science at the University of Kent. His research interests focus on the social and psychological aspects of physical activity and health, with a special interest on using sport as an integrative tool to promote inclusion of disadvantaged groups. Dr. Pappous, an former elite fencer athlete, has a strong European academic background which has been enriched by studies and professional experience in five European countries.  During the 2016 Paralympic Games in Rio, he worked as a scientific advisor of the Brazilian Paralympic Committee, coordinating a Newton Fund project aiming to use the Rio 2016 Olympic and Paralympic Games to promote inclusion. Sakis is also  a Fellow of the Kent–Paris Research Institute located in the historic heart of Montparnasse in Paris, leading a research project related to Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games.

Niki Koutrou

Niki Koutrou is a Lecturer in Sport and Exercise Management at the University of Kent. She is currently the Course Director for the BA Sport Management. Her principal research interests include sport policy analysis, evaluation and sustainability of community sport programs, as well as on volunteer management in both sport clubs and sport event settings. Niki’s research interests also focus on Olympic Studies and evaluation of both sport volunteering and participation legacies. Dr. Niki Koutrou has applied experience within the sports and leisure industry, which includes roles as a Scheduler at the Fleet Transport Department of the London 2012 Olympic & Paralympic Games.