Passing on the flame: do mega sports events promote health behaviours?

Christian Krekel, Georgios Kavetsos and Nicolas Ziebarth ()

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: To justify billion-dollar public expenditures on mega sports events, proponents often suggest lasting improvements in health behaviours among the general public. To estimate the returns to health behaviours from hosting the 2012 London Olympics, we collected panel data on more than 19, 000 respondents across two European capitals, London and Paris, between 2011 and 2013. Using a difference-in-differences design with Paris as counterfactual, we find an increase in physical activity by six percentage points among the inactive, from a baseline of 34%. Activation, however, lasts only for about 100 days. Although we also find suggestive evidence for reduced alcohol and tobacco consumption during the event, a cost-benefit analysis suggests that staging mega sports events is not a cost-effective policy to promote lasting health behaviour change.

Keywords: mega sports events; olympics; health behaviours; physical activity; quasi-experiment; cost-benefit analysis (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D90 I12 I18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 13 pages
Date: 2025-07-31
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Published in Social Science & Medicine, 31, July, 2025, 377. ISSN: 0277-9536

Downloads: (external link)
http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/127473/ Open access version. (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Passing on the flame: Do mega sports events promote health behaviours? (2025)
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:ehl:lserod:127473

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library LSE Library Portugal Street London, WC2A 2HD, U.K.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by LSERO Manager ().