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Sports and events play an important role in local identity building and creating a sense of community that encourages participation and increases social capital. Rural communities are specific areas with special needs and can face challenges and restraints when it comes to event organisation. The purpose of this paper is to identify organisational challenges and analyse the potential to achieving long-term sustainable social and economic outcomes linked to small-scale sports events in rural communities. Organisational challenges of rural communities in terms of organising sport events are examined and discussed using the framework of event leveraging developed by O'Brien and Chalip. This methodology is applied and discussed to a case study focusing on small-scale winter sport events in rural Croatia. Semi-structured interviews with local organisers were conducted in order to collect data on the overall event organisation and management, local coordination, role of community stakeholders and challenges facing strategic planning, with the intent to identify objectives for future events. Results were discussed independently and in the context of the leverage framework, with reflection on its applicability to rural communities as the event organisers. Recommendations are provided based on critical insight from the literature and are oriented on how to streamline the process of organising, delivering and managing of events in remote rural communities. Finally, the idea of inter-community organisation is proposed to ensure long-term social and economic benefits and to address the existing issues of overlapping of stakeholder categories, mixed objectives, distrust among stakeholders and inefficiently used local resources.

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Sport-tourism events create a broad spectrum of impacts on and for host communities. However, sustainable sport-tourism events, which emphasize positive impacts, and minimize negative impacts, do not arise by chance—they need careful planning and implementation. This paper aims to review and systematize a wide spectrum of social impacts that outdoor sport-tourism events create from the perspective of key stakeholders and addresses strategic planning elements necessary for achieving event sustainability. To reach its objectives, the authors examined the Web of Science Core Collection (WoSCC) database, searching for relevant scientific papers focusing primarily on the impacts and legacy of sport events, strategic planning elements, and attributes necessary for achieving sustainability through a systematic quantitative review and content analysis. The results indicate that the relevant literature mostly focuses on economic impacts, followed by social and environmental impacts. Most studies focus on Europe and Asia, with the Olympic Games and FIFA World Cups being the most popular type of event studied. To systemize event and destination strategic elements and attributes for achieving sustainability, this study considers eight categories: social, cultural, organizational, logistic, communication, economic, tourism, and environmental. This paper identifies the main research gaps, proposes a new holistic sport-tourism events research agenda and provides recommendations so that organizers can avoid planning, organizing, financing mistakes and better leverage future sporting events.

Cities/regions are increasingly using events to aid social/economic development. The European Capital of Culture promotes urban management and economic production using culture to drive social legacies, job creation and civic re-positioning. This paper aims to understand how Matera and Basilicata's residents perceive destination competitiveness ahead of the 2019 ECoC. This paper adapts the Integrated Model of Destination Competitiveness and suggests a new determinant to understand resident perceptions. This paper contributes a new determinant to consider in competitiveness research: social conditions to improve local wellbeing. 200 respondents identify strengths/weaknesses of each competitiveness determinant. The results presented in this study display sample mean values and standard deviations for each indicator, as well as Wilcoxon test statistic (z). Competitive indicators are those showing means above 4.0. Descriptive and inferential analyses using SPSS 17 show strengths/weaknesses comparing Matera (city) and Basilicata (region)-with similarities and differences outlined to consider both urban and regional perspectives and differences. For the data analysis, Wilcoxon paired signed rank test displays differences in the competitiveness factors between Matera and Basilicata. Wilcoxon (a nonparametric alternative to paired sample t-test) was performed since the data distribution was left-skewed and Kolmogorov-Smirnov statistic indicates violation of normality assumption. Results show the majority of inherited, created and supporting resources are competitive, as well as image and social conditions; however, management and organisation needs improvement. It is essential that ECoC hosts have long-term competitive strategies in place to strengthen urban and regional capacity when delivering diverse cultural programmes, at present, and into the future. This study offers insight before the 2019 European Capital of Culture to inform planners and policy makers ahead of the event and offers consideration and discussion of social impacts and the need to gain such insight in competitiveness research going forward.