Towards Social Leverage of Sport Events

TLDR

While policy has focused on economic impact, scholars and stakeholders emphasize that sporting events create liminal, celebratory spaces that foster social value and community networks, especially when arts and commercial elements are integrated. The study proposes that organizers should cultivate sociability, themed ancillary events, and informal interactions to amplify liminality and communitas, and calls for future research into strategic and tactical foundations of social leverage. These narratives and symbols can be leveraged to address social issues, build networks, and empower community action.

Abstract

Despite the predominant policy focus on event economic impact, event organisers and host community residents are calling for attention to be paid to the social value of events. Anthropological work on events demonstrates that their celebratory nature engenders a liminoid space that can foster social value, particularly through a sense of communitas. In order to enable and amplify liminality and communitas, event organisers and host community planners should foster social interaction and prompt a feeling of celebration by enabling sociability among event visitors, creating event-related social events, facilitating informal social opportunities, producing ancillary events, and theming widely. The resulting narratives, symbols, meanings, and affect can then be leveraged to address social issues, build networks, and empower community action. These may be furthered when the arts are used to complement sport, and when commercial elements support social leverage. Future research should explore and examine the strategic and tactical bases for social leverage.