Did London 2012 deliver a sports participation legacy?

Themis Kokolakakis, Fernando Lera-López and Girish Ramchandani

Sport Management Review, 2019, vol. 22, issue 2, 276-287

Abstract: •This paper analyses the sports participation legacy of London 2012 Olympic Games.•The study shows a positive trickle-down effect on participation from hosting the Games.•The largest effect is observed in relation to intensive and regular participation.•The sport participation legacy has significant differences between socio-demographic groups.Despite the increasing academic interest in the analysis of the Olympic legacy, there is a relative knowledge gap as far as sports participation legacy is concerned. The authors bridge this gap by analysing the short-term sports participation legacy of the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games on the adult population in England. By using data from the Active People Survey and considering different sports participation variables and the effect of the economic climate, results demonstrate a positive association with participation from hosting the Games. Participation rates were adjusted to take into account seasonality and changes in the gross domestic product (GDP), accounting in this way for the effect of the recent economic recession. The biggest effect was observed in relation to frequent participation (at least three times per week for at least 30 min) in the year immediately after the Games. In 2014, the sports participation rates fell relative to 2013 but remained higher than pre-Olympic levels. The sport participation legacy of the Olympic Games appeared to have significant differences between socio-demographic groups.

Date: 2019
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1016/j.smr.2018.04.004 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:rsmrxx:v:22:y:2019:i:2:p:276-287

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/rsmr20

DOI: 10.1016/j.smr.2018.04.004

Access Statistics for this article

Sport Management Review is currently edited by Sheranne Fairley

More articles in Sport Management Review from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().