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Abstract
This paper aims to contribute to a burgeoning dialogue on evaluating the sustainability of sport mega-events by introducing three strategies for implementing the International Olympic Committee’s (IOC’s) Olympic Games Impact (OGI) study. The three techniques are bundling/leveraging, before–after control and sustainability scorecards. This paper begins by offering a twofold definition of OGI, one based on the OGI Technical Manual and one based on the author’s experience undertaking this initiative. Second, it presents and discusses the OGI critiques that exist in the sport mega-event impact literature. Although only recently implemented, critical analyses of the OGI methodology have already produced a handful of critiques. Third, the experience of applying OGI in an examination of the 2010 Games is the grounds for suggesting two new critiques. Fourth, the paper describes, using empirical data from 2010, how the OGI researchers have addressed the methodological critiques by: (1) connecting indicator data to public policy objectives; (2) positing a provisional means to create a sustainability standard; and (3) comparing changes in the indicator data in the host to non-host jurisdictions. This article would be of interest to future prospective Olympic host cities, researchers of mega-events and their impacts and practitioners who evaluate urban sustainability.
Notes
1. The original name selected for the project was OGGI – Olympic Games Global Impact. In 2006, the project was renamed OGI – Olympic Games Impact (OGI Technical Manual, 2007).
2. AISTS was founded in 2000 by the IOC and various Swiss universities and graduate schools as a centre of education and research in sport.
3. These spheres may overlap and their boundaries may be blurred at times due to their constant interaction with each other, but their distinction is a methodologically necessary step of the process of developing and implementing the OGI study (van Griethuysen and Hug Citation2001).
4. It is important to emphasize that the OGI framework is standardized and, therefore, transferable. It is predicated on the willingness of the OCOGs to gather at least some, if not enormous amounts of, primary data. For example, the Games-time report contains numerous ‘event’ indicators, which are unique to the event and demand extensive data collection by the host. Different hosts will raise validity and reliability questions. This underscores the importance of an arms-length and objective research partner.
5. The Fraser Basin Council is a non-governmental organization whose mandate is to ensure that the social, economic and environmental sustainability of the Fraser Basin area in British Columbia will be protected into the future. Vancouver/Whistler, which hosted the 2010 Olympic Games, is part of the Fraser Basin area.
6. This is, of course, related to a lack of understanding about sport mega-events’ constitutive elements. There is a critical need for these properties to receive elucidation.
7. In 2002, Canada won a mixed-pairs skating competition, hence the half medal.
8. Note that this situation is not the same as registering change that we conclusively show had nothing to do with the Olympic Games (i.e. finding change that the Olympic Games had nothing to do with – or were highly unlikely to have anything to do with). In contrast, in the case described above, we simply lacked enough information to allow us to conclude decisively one way or the other (i.e. impact attribution was impossible).
9. Although a reliability weight of zero (data that are completely unreliable) is theoretically possible, these data would, in practice, not be analysed.
10. In practical terms, this means that either further data or re-specification of the indicator could be used to resolve the problem, but at the current stage, assessing OGI for that indicator is impossible.