Heritage sporting events: theoretical development and configurations

ABSTRACT

Although sports heritage is increasingly recognized as a potential catalyst of tourism, heritage sporting events (HSEs) are still an emerging concept in the academic literature. Notions that associate sports events and heritage remain rare, and are usually analysed through the scope of nostalgia sport tourism. This can be partly explained by an inclination to associate the notion of heritage with conventional ideas about folklore and traditional culture. Through a constructivist approach of heritage, this contribution argues that contemporary sports events, which would generally have competition as their primary focus, might also be perceived as HSEs. A comprehensive framework, built on a multi-disciplinary literature review, is presented to show the process that transforms an initial resource (a sports event) into an accomplished resource (a HSE), which might represent a competitive advantage for the territory. A qualitative–comparative analysis is conducted among 24 sports events in the French-speaking part of Switzerland, to observe the configurations of HSEs and understand which characteristics are necessary for the perceptions of a sports event as a heritage good. Interestingly, this contribution shows that if the event needs to be sustainable in the territory to be perceived as a HSE, it is not sufficient. Indeed, a differentiation strategy should be set up to distinguish the event from other more or less similar events, to be perceived as an authentic feature of the territory by the local population.

KEYWORDS:

• Heritage sporting events
• qualitative–comparative analysis
• event-led strategies
• perceived authenticity

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributor

Joël Pinson is a PhD candidate at the Swiss Graduate School of Public Administration at University of Lausanne, Switzerland. His PhD thesis is focusing on the heritage dimension of some non-major sports events and their integration in territorial development strategies. He also works as a teaching assistant for a blended-learning programme on football management for the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA). His research interests include the performance and the evolutions of sports events hosting strategies.

Notes

1. See for instance: Chhabra, Healy, and Sills (2003); Rinaudo (2005); or McCartney and Osti (2007).

2. This number is based on UNESCO's considerations that it needs at least two generations for an object to be potentially identified as a heritage good. In this study, only one generation was considered to select the cases.

3. All supplementary resources are available from the author.

4. To be coded as sustainable according to A′, the event has to come back every year or every two years to the same location for at least 25 years and be owned by a local organisation.

5. Truth tables for M2 and M3 are presented in the appendix.

6. Uppercase letters represent the value 1 for a given binary condition, whereas lowercase letters represent the value 0 for that binary condition.

7. The parsimonious solution is the result of a computer-based simulation with regard to logical reminders. The assumption behind the algorithm is that the existing logical reminders (five in this study) would lead to different outcomes and that the given solution is the most parsimonious possible.