Bouncing Back and Jumping Forward: Scoping the Resilience Landscape of International Sports Events And Implications for Events and Festivals

Abstract

The purpose of this conceptual article is to critically scope the resilience landscape to help better understand how future studies on international sports events and venues could be informed by existing work in disaster management and resilience studies. The article suggests that within the differing benchmarks currently used to define and classify major international sports events, at present crises and disaster management considerations are largely ignored or underestimated. The article reviews previous research in crisis and disaster management, highlighting the potential for closer synergies between both sport and events studies and crisis and disaster management fields. It contributes new knowledge through the introduction of an international sports events (ISEs) resilience continuum to assist with better understanding resilience. The broader implications for events and festivals are highlighted. Although the interdisciplinary study of crisis, disasters, and emergency management has become increasingly sophisticated, the identification of synergies and useful concepts in relation to both sport and events studies to inform these areas is still at an early stage of development. This article adds to the limited body of knowledge on sports events resilience, and in doing so highlights potential avenues for future research in both sport and events, in terms of both theory and practice.

Exploring the Covid-19 Pandemic As a Catalyst for Stimulating Future Research Agendas for Managing Crises and Disasters at International Sport Events

“…Although some may argue that international sports events can be incorporated into notions of "organizational resilience" (Bhamra, 2016;Burnard & Bhamra, 2011), the premise of this article is to suggest there is a need to consider the concept of "Sport Event and Venue Resilience" given their criticality as CIs for sport event-based activity. This article follows the assertion of Shipway and Miles (2020) that future studies on ISEs and festivals more generally could be informed by existing work in disaster management and resilience studies. As such, this article will now further scope the resilience landscape in terms of future research agendas that may help us to further understand how both sport and event management studies more broadly, via specific reference to ISEs, could be informed by disaster management and resilience studies.…”

“…An initial review of literature on crisis and emergency management in sport (Shipway & Miles, 2020) indicated a relative paucity of studies. In the sport event management space, even where previous studies exist, they are often restricted to very limited development of conceptual frameworks that make almost passing analysis in relation to ISEs (see Shipway, 2018;Shipway & Miles, 2019).…”

“…Additionally, in the wider field of both sport and event management studies, crisis and emergency dimensions are not mentioned with any significant depth or with reference to the existing crisis and disaster management literature (see Hall, 2016). Studies of resilience in sport to date are primarily associated with either community sports clubs' 540 MILES AND SHIPWAY become more robust at handling crises and disasters (Shipway & Miles, 2020). The COVID-19 pandemic is a pertinent example of the vital need for better understanding resilience within the context of ISEs.…”

“…From this perspective, ISVs are very much the CIs of sporting events. This assessment is likely before the complex characteristics of the size/scale, reach, and duration that differentiate ISEs are factored into any equation (Horne, 2007;Jago & Shaw, 1998;Müller, 2015;Shipway & Miles, 2020). The severity of the impact of a crisis or disaster at a major sporting tournament, and in turn the impact upon the attractiveness of that host city or destination, is partially contingent on the differing degrees of criticality and vulnerability of particular venues, and the resilience of a major sporting event or tournament to proceed with or without them.…”

“…There is also an ever-growing literature within tourism studies in relation to various forms of resilience (e.g., Filimonau & Coteau, 2020;Mair, Ritchie, & Walters, 2016), although it appears that so far there has been little consensus created around either unifying concepts within the tourism space (Aliperti et al, 2019), or any specific attempts to extend these to specifically ISEs. However, in most instances, and despite their size and visibility, ISEs remain a largely neglected aspect where the practicalities of integrating them into either sport or event management-related frameworks has not been fully recognized or fully linked to resilience (Shipway & Miles, 2020).…”