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Overtourism and support for sports mega events

Martin schnitzer.

a Department of Sport Science, University of Innsbruck, Fuerstenweg 185, A-6020 Innsbruck, Austria

Hannes Winner

b Department of Social Sciences and Economics, University of Salzburg, Residenzplatz 9, A-5010 Salzburg, Austria

Gottfried Tappeiner

c Department of Economic Theory, Policy and History, University of Innsbruck, Universitaetsstrasse 15, A-6020 Innsbruck, Austria

Introduction

In recent years, ambitions for Olympic bids have almost always been rejected in public referenda. There has been extensive research on this issue, ranging from studies on the determinants of residents' opposition to Olympic bids (e.g., Coates & Wicker, 2015 ; Wicker & Frick, 2020 ) to contributions analyzing the personal motives behind residents' event support (e.g., Gursoy & Kendall, 2006 ). While the latter strand of research has primarily applied questionnaires to gain data, the former has relied on aggregate data at the community level to explain voters' behavior in potential host areas.

One of the factors affecting support for the Olympic Games is a region's exposure to tourism. For example, Coates and Wicker (2015) have shown that regions with higher tourism capacities tended to reject the Munich bid for the 2022 Olympic Winter Games (OWG), while Wicker and Frick (2020) provided evidence in the opposite direction for the Innsbruck bid for the 2026 OWG. This article contributes to this previous research, but elaborates in more detail on the role of tourism intensity in the support for sports mega events. In particular, we ask whether a population's event acceptance gets lost when a certain level of tourism exposure is exceeded. We refer to this effect as overtourism and illustrate its existence reconsidering the Innsbruck bid for the 2026 OWG.

Conceptional framework, context and data

The World Tourism Organization describes overtourism as “ the impact of tourism on a destination […] that excessively influences perceived quality of life of citizens and/or quality of visitor experiences in a negative way ” ( UNWTO, 2018 , p. 4). Accordingly, excessive tourism intensity is blamed for a range of economic, environmental and social problems, including air and noise pollution, crowded traffic routes, steeping housing prices and the related displacement of residents or anti-social behavior. Numerous studies have shown that these developments have led to growing resistance against tourism among the local population (e.g., Colomb & Novy, 2017 ). Sports mega events such as the Olympic Games can reinforce this effect when they are to be held in regions with an already strong tourism demand ( Fourie & Santana-Gallego, 2011 ).

Innsbruck has already hosted the Olympics twice (in 1964 and 1976), and Tyrol may be considered one of the most touristic regions in the Alps, especially in the winter season. Hence, it seems like a natural candidate for studying the role of (over-)tourism in the support for sports mega events—in our case, the bid for the 2026 OWG. As tourism is very important for the region's economy (accounting for around 15% to 20% of the local gross domestic product), we might generally expect the population to have a positive attitude towards the event. However, if the region suffered from overtourism we would predict diminishing acceptance. Altogether, and in contrast to previous research, these expectations translate into a non-linear relationship between tourism intensity and event support.

Examining the special case of Tyrol, we measured tourism intensity along five dimensions ( Fig. 1 ): tourism density (measured by tourism capacity, overnight stays and arrivals per capita in the winter season), traffic load (number of daily commuters per capita), growth of the tourism sector over the last 20 years, resources for ski tourism (number of ski lifts) and dependence on the winter season (share of winter stays in total stays).

Dimensions of tourism intensity.

To detect the effects of overtourism on event support, we looked at the referendum on the Innsbruck bid for the 2026 OWG, which took place on October 15, 2017. We used data on the referendum turnout and results for the 279 Tyrolean municipalities and combined them with detailed information on demographic and socio-economic characteristics at the community level. The corresponding data from 2017 and are available from the Department for Statistics of the State of Tyrol ( Amt der Tiroler Landesregierung, 2017 ).

Empirical analysis and results

To analyze the impact of overtourism on the outcome of the referendum in Tyrol, we estimated a linear regression model with a community's share of votes in favor of hosting the OWG as the dependent variable. This share ranged between 32.6% and 85.1% of all votes with a (weighted) mean of 46.8%. To measure the region's exposure to winter tourism, we followed our line of reasoning and used five alternative dimensions, as outlined in Fig. 1 . To capture a possible non-linear effect on the share of votes in favor, we also included the squared term of the corresponding variables. In case of overtourism, we could expect a negative sign on the quadratic term, while the main effect should exert a positive parameter estimate.

In line with previous research ( Wicker & Frick, 2020 ), we included the following control variables: (log of) a community's population, share of females, share of three age cohorts (ages 0–15, 16–26 and > 65 years; i.e., the cohort of 26–65 is the reference group), share of tertiary education and migrants per capita. Further, we used information on whether a community was planned to host at least one competition of the 2026 OWG as well as the voter turnout. Finally, fixed district effects were added to control for district-specific variables affecting the voting outcome (e.g., general opposition to the Olympics within a district).

In a first approach ( Table 1 ), we took winter bed capacity per capita to measure tourism density and reported the estimation results for three different specifications: In Model 1, we applied ordinary least squares (OLS); in Model 2, we used weighted least squares (WLS) estimation with the number of people entitled to vote as weighting scheme; and in Model 3, we considered that the dependent variable is bounded between 0% and 100% and therefore log-odds-transformed this variable ( Wooldridge, 2010 ). Turning to the results, we firstly found an overall fit of the regressions of well above 66%. Second, there were no substantial differences among the three models, suggesting a robust relationship across the different specifications. Third, the control variables turned out as expected and were almost in line with the previous empirical research (i.e., Coates & Wicker, 2015 ; Wicker & Frick, 2020 ). In particular, we found significant age and education effects on the voters' support for the Olympic bid. Interestingly, the host dummy was insignificant, suggesting that support for the Olympic bid was not affected by whether a community was chosen as a venue for the 2026 Olympics.

Estimation results.

Note. Constant and district effects are not reported. Standard errors (SE) are White-robust. ***, **,* indicate significance at 1%, 5% and 10%.

Regarding winter bed capacities, we observed a significantly positive parameter estimate for the main effect, but the quadratic term was significantly negative in all models. Both coefficients suggest that, up to a certain level (lying around 5 beds per capita), tourism density induces a positive outcome in the Olympic referendum, but above these capacities, its impact turns negative.

In a second step ( Table 2 ), we replicated our regressions depicted in Table 1 , but focused on alternative measures of tourism intensity, as described in Fig. 1 . For the sake of brevity, we relied only on Model 1 (OLS results) and reported only the coefficients for the linear and quadratic effects of tourism intensity. We presented standardized beta coefficients to make the results comparable among the different specifications. Again, we observed a significantly positive main effect and a significantly negative squared term for all measures of tourism intensity. The exception is the growth in winter stays, which, by definition, represents a change and was therefore estimated without the quadratic term; here, we found a significantly negative parameter estimate, as expected. However, a strong correlation was found only for winter bed capacity, winter stays and winter arrivals (around 0.9); the correlations for the other variables were below 0.5, again indicating a robust relationship between tourism intensity and event support.

Alternative measures of overtourism from Fig. 1 (standardized beta coefficients).

Note. Each specification is based on Model 1 in Table 1 , control variables and constant are suppressed. N  = 279 in all specifications. Standard errors are White-robust. ***, **,* indicate significance at 1%, 5% and 10%.

Taken together, our evidence shown in Table 1 , Table 2 suggests that tourism intensity has a systematic effect on the support for the Olympic bid of Innsbruck; moreover, the estimated coefficients are clearly in line with the notion of overtourism.

Taking the case of the Innsbruck bid for the 2026 Olympics, we showed that the population's missing support for (sports) mega events can be crucially explained by overtourism. This finding underpins the explanations of Fourie and Santana-Gallego (2011) stating that especially Winter Olympics hosted in already saturated tourism markets with a short season do rather contribute to tourist displacement than lead to an increase in tourism. Overtourism might be another “mega event syndrome” like the overpromising of benefits and underestimation of costs ( Müller, 2015 ), and thus an additional piece in the puzzle of explaining residents' opposition to mega events.

From a practical perspective, it can be recommended that over-crowded tourism destinations should abstain from organizing mega events. That would be too far-reaching in our view. Instead, potential organizers should take the possible resistance of residents resulting from overtourism seriously and should adapt appropriate measures at an early stage (e.g., via information campaigns clarifying the benefits for the population). The current Covid-19 pandemic, which has led to a dramatic downturn in worldwide tourism, may change the attitude against mega events substantially. Of course, such predictions are speculative and remain an agenda for future research.

Declaration of competing interest

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

Biographies

Martin Schnitzer, is a professor of Sport Economics at the Department of Sport Science at the University of Innsbruck. His research interests include the analysis of sports event legacies.

Hannes Winner, is a professor of Economics at the University of Salzburg. His research interests are public and health economics as well as applied econometrics.

Gottfried Tappeiner, is a professor of Economics at the University of Innsbruck. His research interests are quantitative methods of empirical economic research.

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Sport Tourism Events and Local Sustainable Development: An Overview

• First Online: 11 April 2021

Cite this chapter

• Ricardo Melo 5 ,
• Derek Van Rheenen 6 &
• Claude Sobry 7  

Part of the book series: Sports Economics, Management and Policy ((SEMP,volume 18))

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Until recently, sport and tourism were studied as two distinct spheres of activity. However, the intersections between these two social phenomena have been gradually increasing, and the growing demand for travel related to sport has created the need for a new tourism segment, referred to as sports or sport tourism. The relationship between sport and tourism has also drawn considerable attention to the potential and real environmental, economic, and sociocultural impacts of these activities, both positive and negative. This chapter provides a review of scholarship to date, with particular focus on the linkages between small scale sport tourism events and local sustainable development. The chapter begins with a brief overview of the evolution of the sport tourism field, highlighting key conceptualizations and categorizations. It then discusses the predominant descriptions and categories of sport tourism events. Next, the chapter analyzes the meaning and practice of sustainable development at the intersection of sport and tourism, with particular emphasis on small scale sport tourism and local sustainable development. Finally, the chapter calls for a comparative methodology to provide a tool for sport tourism scholars globally.

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While earlier definitions of tourism limited such activities to leisure or vacation, business travel can also include facets of tourism distinct from one’s work.

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Ricardo Melo

Graduate School of Education, University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA

Derek Van Rheenen

Univ. Lille, EA 7369 – URePSSS – Unité de Recherche Pluridisciplinaire Sport Santé Société, F-5900, IRNIST, Lille, France

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Melo, R., Van Rheenen, D., Sobry, C. (2021). Sport Tourism Events and Local Sustainable Development: An Overview. In: Melo, R., Sobry, C., Van Rheenen, D. (eds) Small Scale Sport Tourism Events and Local Sustainable Development. Sports Economics, Management and Policy, vol 18. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-62919-9_2

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What it is : Sports tourism is a type of tourism activity which refers to the travel experience of the tourist who either observes as a spectator or actively participates in a sporting event generally involving commercial and non-commercial activities of a competitive nature.

Why it Matters : Sports tourism is a fundamental axis, generating around 10% of the world’s expenditure on tourism. It has an estimated growth rate of 17.5% between 2023-2030, moving masses intra and intercontinentally. Sports tourism can promote social, economic and environmental action, it accelerates development and can leave a long-lasting positive legacy.

Sports and Tourism are interrelated and complementary. Today, sports tourism is one of the fastest-growing sectors in tourism. More and more tourists are interested in sport activities during their trips whether sports are the main objective of travel or not. Sport events of various kinds and sizes attract tourists as participants or spectators and destinations try to add local flavours to them to distinguish themselves and provide authentic local experiences. Mega sport events such as the Olympics and World Cups can be a catalyst for tourism development if successfully leveraged in terms of destination branding, infrastructure development and other economic and social benefits.

Sports Tourism Events

1 st World Sports Tourism Congress

2 nd World Sports Tourism Congress

UN Tourism International Conference on Tourism and Sports

UN Tourism / South Africa International Summit on Tourism, Sport and Mega-events

UPCOMING SPORTS TOURISM EVENTS

3 rd World Sports Tourism Congress (more information coming soon)

UN TOURISM PUBLICATIONS ON SPORTS TOURISM

Sport & Tourism

Sport and Tourism are two driving forces for the promotion and sustainable economic development of tourism destinations. To better understand the links between tourism and sport and to increase the awareness of the benefits of their joint contributions, UN Tourism and the International Olympic Committee (IOC) jointly organized the First World Conference on Sport and Tourism in Barcelona on 22-23 February 2001. This publication contains the studies prepared for the Conference as well as the speeches delivered there.

Sport Tourism and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

Tourism can contribute to sustainable development and the achievement of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This overview illustrates how sport tourism can contribute to the SDGs and what needs to be considered when developing sport tourism to ensure its contribution to sustainable development. The comparative strength of sport tourism lies in: Engagement in physical activities; Opportunities for interactions; and High development potential almost anywhere. Thanks to these characteristics, sport tourism can play an important role in achieving various SDGs if developed with consideration.

Maximizing the Benefits of Mega Events for Tourism Development

A mega event benefits a host destination in terms of attracting visitors to the event and drawing global attention to the destination. However, in addition to such short-term benefits, it can be a catalyst for longer-term tourism development in various aspects from economic to social. This publication on Maximizing the Benefits of Mega Events for Tourism Development provides practical references on what a host destination can do to fully leverage the event opportunity for tourism development with a variety of illustrative cases. Although the report refers to insights from mega events, the practical references can be applied to any scale of events in any destination.

Walking Tourism – Promoting Regional Development

Walking tourism is now one of the most popular ways to experience a destination. It allows tourists to better engage with local people, nature and culture. It also meets the growing demand of travellers of outdoor activities in general, including when they travel. Walking tourism can be developed anywhere as a sustainable tourism offer with a relatively small investment. It can bring about social and economic benefits to residents and communities if properly developed and managed. This report showcases various successful examples of walking tourism and aims to serve as a practical reference for destinations with a focus on the role of walking tourism in regional development.

Sports Tourism in Latin America

Tourism and sport are key cultural elements of today’s world and have significant impact on modern society and international tourism. With this in mind, the WTO has carried out a new study aimed at providing a more complete analysis of the role that sports tourism and sports in general among the products offered in Latin America by European tour operators and tourism websites.

Sport and Tourism – Introductory Report

Sport and Tourism have a major socio-economic impact, appreciated in most civilian societies and increasingly recognized by governments. This is one of the many conclusions of this report which was prepared for the First World Conference on Sport and Tourism jointly organized by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and WTO.After developing a theoretical framework for the system of Sport and Tourism and analysing the future trends of sport and sports tourism this report looks at the different socio-economic impacts of sport and tourism and how they can be managed best.

Sport Activities during the Outbound Holidays of the Germans, the Dutch & the French

The World Tourism Organization (WTO) and the International Olympic Committee (IOC) prepared this study on the level and characteristics of the sport activities engaged in during holidays abroad. Germany, the Netherlands and France were chosen for this study. These countries ranked among the leaders in terms of international tourism expenditure in 1999. Even though this study does not cover all the major generating markets, we are sure that it gives a clear picture of the importance of sport activities in tourism, and it makes many suggestions. This study also deals with many practical aspects, e.g.: length of stay, expenditure, seasonal demand, booking patterns, accommodation, and consumer profiles such as gender, age, social status, and area of residence.

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Balancing the Positive and Negative Impacts of Sport Events Tourism

Events are important motivators of the tourism industry and are often embedded in the development and marketing plans of destinations. Sport events became an increasingly important subcategory of 'event tourism' in the last decades, therefore the current paper aims to simultaneously analyze the positive and negative impacts of sport event tourism. As the actual political and economical situation shape in high level these events and correspondingly the host community, the participants, the local economy and the environment, these circumstances have to be researched on a regular basis. Given that, the highest impact on can be traced regarding mega-sport event tourism, the current research focuses mainly on these events, but not neglecting the importance of small-scale events on the market. The research methodology used is descriptive, based especially on bibliographic documentation over time: research articles, official impact reports, national and international statistics. Results indicate, that the last decade has brought several changes in the judgement of mega-event organization, more emphasis being on the implementation of sustainability principles, the reduction of negative social and environmental aspects that the events and the spectators can have on the host community, but still, many of these efforts are shown only on paper and less in practice.

Related Papers

Joanna Poczta

Ana Chersulich Tomino , Nicholas Wise

Sport-tourism events create a broad spectrum of impacts on and for host communities. However, sustainable sport-tourism events, which emphasize positive impacts, and minimize negative impacts, do not arise by chance-they need careful planning and implementation. This paper aims to review and systematize a wide spectrum of social impacts that outdoor sport-tourism events create from the perspective of key stakeholders and addresses strategic planning elements necessary for achieving event sustainability. To reach its objectives, the authors examined the Web of Science Core Collection (WoSCC) database, searching for relevant scientific papers focusing primarily on the impacts and legacy of sport events, strategic planning elements, and attributes necessary for achieving sustainability through a systematic quantitative review and content analysis. The results indicate that the relevant literature mostly focuses on economic impacts, followed by social and environmental impacts. Most studies focus on Europe and Asia, with the Olympic Games and FIFA World Cups being the most popular type of event studied. To systemize event and destination strategic elements and attributes for achieving sustainability, this study considers eight categories: social, cultural, organizational, logistic, communication, economic, tourism, and environmental. This paper identifies the main research gaps, proposes a new holistic sport-tourism events research agenda and provides recommendations so that organizers can avoid planning, organizing, financing mistakes and better leverage future sporting events.

Polish Journal of Sport and Tourism

Krystian Zawadzki

Introduction. In the world-wide literature, there is no unanimity in the assessment of the impact of mega sporting events on the tourism sector. Therefore, the main purpose of this study was to quantify the impact of mega sporting events on changes in tourist inflow and the amount of expenditure incurred by visitors. Material and methods.In this study, an ex-post analysis of many different categories of mega sporting events was carried out in the context of their impact on selected aspects of the tourism sector in host countries. The study examined events organised in the years 1996-2014 classified into one of four categories: the Summer Olympic Games (SOG), the Winter Olympic Games (WOG), the Football World Cup (FIFA), and the European Football Championship (UEFA). The approach adopted made it possible to analyse the impact of sporting events on the tourism sector over 15 years. Data on both the inflow of tourists and the expenditure generated by them were taken from a single sourc...

Chuck Norris

Nico Schulenkorf

shudhu topu

Physical Culture and Sport. Studies and Research

elena radicchi

Arefeh Jamshidi

Sustainability

The main purpose of this study is to investigate the influence of non-mega sporting events on the perception of negative externalities of host residents. The detailed aim of the study was to examine whether the inhabitants of the city feel the negative effects of organizing sporting events (communication problems or inappropriate behavior of supporters) and do they believe that these events increase the level of crime in the city or, despite these inconveniences, they are satisfied with the organization of sporting events in their place of residence. The case study is the city of Poznan and two, well-known events in this agglomeration. The first one is the Poznan Half Marathon—medium scale mass event, the second one is Cavaliada—elite international equestrian event. The theoretical part of this article presents the meaning of sporting events organization for tourism industry and indicates the positive and negative effects this kind of tourism brings to host cities. The whole refers ...

Culture and Tourism in a Smart, Globalized, and Sustainable World

Dália Liberato

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Balancing the Positive and Negative Impacts of Sport Events Tourism

Events are important motivators of tourism and are often embedded in the development and marketing plans of destinations. Sport events became an increasingly important subcategory of 'event tourism' as a phenomenon in the last decades, therefore the current paper aims is to balance the positive and negative impacts of this type of tourism. As the actual political and economical situation shape in high level these events and correspondingly the host community and the participants, together with the social, economical and environmental impacts, these circumstances has to be researched on a regular basis. Given that, the highest impact on can be traced regarding the mega sport event tourism, the current research mainly focuses on these events, but in the same time does not neglect the importance of the small-scale ones. The research methodology used is descriptive, based especially on bibliographic documentation over time. Results indicate, that the last decade has brought several changes in the judgement of the mega-event organisation, more emphasis being on the implementation of sustainability principles, the reduction of the negative social and environmental aspects that the events and the spectators can have on the host community, and balancing the highly boosted pre-event economic promises.

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Pro sports have a gambling problem. How did we get here, and how bad is it?

Ayesha Rascoe

NPR's Ayesha Rascoe talks to sports columnist Jason Gay of the Wall Street Journal about the explosion of sports gambling and all the scandals that come with that growth.

AYESHA RASCOE, HOST:

Pro sports has a gambling problem. The NBA banned backup Jontay Porter for life for gambling on NBA games. Shohei Ohtani, the biggest name in baseball, had to explain how his interpreter stole and gambled $180 million of Ohtani's money. Two huge gambling scandals, and Jason Gay says they likely won't be the last. Gay is a sports columnist for The Wall Street Journal, and he joins us now. Welcome to the program.

JASON GAY: I appreciate that. Thank you.

RASCOE: So you're saying that global embarrassment for Ohtani and a lifetime ban for Porter won't serve as a wake-up call. Why do you say that?

GAY: I mean, it's very hard to watch television these days, especially sports television, and not be inundated with advertisements for legalized apps which make gambling easier than ever from our fingertips, from our living room while we're watching games. And, you know, that behavior that the public is being asked to participate in - well, athletes are no different from that. Most leagues have rules about betting on their own sports. However, in many instances, they are free to bet on others. So the opportunity is there. The technology is there. And just given the odds, you know, it's one bet I'm willing to make.

RASCOE: OK. For people who don't know a lot about the gambling apps, you can make a lot of bets, right?

GAY: That's right. So for example, if you're picking a winner in a specific game, you know, that's one bet. However, there's a whole other world of what's known as proposition bets or prop bets, and these are bets that can be based on individual performances. X player will score this amount, this many rebounds. You can almost think of anything under the sun, and it's an availability.

You know, in the case of Jontay Porter, you mentioned that he got the lifetime ban from the NBA for betting on NBA games. That's true. In addition to that, though, the NBA declared that he had provided inside information about himself to people who were placing bets. So he was actually participating in a scheme in order for somebody else to profit off of his performance in a game or, in his case, lack of performance in the game because he actually took himself out of a game in order to sort of achieve this statistical low amount in order for the person to win or the people to win.

RASCOE: So for decades, pro and college sports kept gambling at arm's length, I mean, at least publicly. What made them change their minds and kind of embrace sports betting in some instances?

GAY: It's always easy to give the one-word answer, money, right? You know, that's the primary driver here. But a lot of things were colliding all at once - the Supreme Court decision striking down the national prohibition on it, allowing states to vote on it for themselves. That certainly paved the way. Leagues have talked about the idea that legalization and putting these bets in public, under sunshine, sort of creates a transparency that would actually tamp down the amount of shenanigans. You know, that is potentially an upside here, but it's not without considerable downside. And you're already seeing the kind of reconsideration, whether it's the NCAA and Adam Silver himself this week in penalizing Porter talked about some reconsideration, perhaps, of the way that these applications apply to NBA action.

RASCOE: Well, I mean, so do you think, though, that we're past the point of no return when it comes to gambling overall? But there may be changes in how it's done, especially because, you know, people want to know these games aren't rigged and that they are real, you know, athletic endeavors and not, you know, somehow being manipulated.

GAY: Well, that's 100% accurate. That integrity is the absolute baseline expectation for all sports. The moment that people feel that what they're seeing is not really accurate or has been somehow manipulated, you're talking about losing an audience permanently, if not for generations. The competing issue, though, is that all sports are looking for alternative streams of revenue.

Legalizing betting, getting into business with gaming - it's a revenue stream that is also a hedge against the volatility that exists around these sports. It's a way to make sure that money is coming in because they know that there's a certain population of people who are always going to be betting that they can realize. And prior to that, they weren't able to realize one penny of it.

RASCOE: That's Jason Gay of The Wall Street Journal. Thank you so much for joining us.

GAY: I appreciate it. Goodbye.

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