Getting back to the event: COVID-19, attendance and perceived importance of protective measures

Abstract

Current COVID-19 realities impose additional challenges to sporting event organisers who now have to consider and include new protective measures for the safety and security of both active and passive participants. This study focuses on event consumers and issues related to their intention to attend future sporting events and their perception of how important they find some of the safety-related protective measures when attending sporting events following the COVID-19 crisis. Based on the empirical study of residents from one Middle East and two European countries, the results suggest that, once all restrictions on movement and sporting event attendance is allowed to resume, most of the respondents will attend events in their home country within few weeks. In addition, the respondents from a country that experienced more severe consequences of the pandemic perceive all protective measures as more important than respondents from countries that were less affected.

Spectators' Worries and Attitudes during the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Case of a Women's Volleyball Match in Japan

“…, examining data from early 2020 in the Belarusian football league, state that fans are likely to return as soon as the European football leagues restart. Perić et al (2021), who conducted a study in Croatia, Slovenia, and Iran, report a similar conclusion. The results of this study empirically support their findings.…”

“…However, the values for "Touching the seat" and "Infection prevention and control in the arena" were low, indicating that the spectators were not overly worried about the infection prevention performed by the team and arena. Perić et al (2021) report that sanitizing seats, performing infection prevention, and controlling facilities were highly important safety measures for spectators when attending sport events. The arena and the volleyball club researched in this study had taken proper measures to manage these issues, and the spectators' related low values of worry may have led them to watch the match in the arena.…”

“…They also report Advance Publication by J-STAGE Published online October 14, 2021 differences in each item by age group. Moreover, if all restrictions on attending sport events were removed, approximately 50% of those who related to sport (spectators, competitors, or students) indicated their intentions to attend a sport event within one week, and many of them planned to attend with two or more people (Perić et al, 2021). As described previously, although there has been an accumulation of some research on opinions regarding attending sport games, little research has been conducted on the worries and attitudes of spectators who actually attended sport games.…”

The Mediating Role of Major Sport Events in Visitors’ Satisfaction, Dissatisfaction, and Intention to Revisit a Destination

“…Although the majority of safety issues relate to crime risk, the COVID-19 pandemic is found to have a significant impact on sporting events' safety and security policies [70]. Although it has been found that the respondents' perception of the importance of safety-related protective measures at sporting events differ in the observed countries (Croatia, Slovenia, and Iran) [71], it is expected that future research on safety satisfaction will include measures pertaining to decreasing the risk of COVID-19 spread.…”

Tourism Getting Back to Life after COVID-19: Can Artificial Intelligence Help?

“…Consequently, tourism-, travel-, and event-related industries were particularly hit by the COVID-19 [5,[27][28][29][30][31]. According to UNWTO [32], in 2020, international tourism recorded a 73% decline in tourists, from USD 910 billion to USD 1.2 trillion in export revenues, with more than 100 million jobs at risk due to COVID-19.…”