We don’t mention sport often enough on this blog. Sport is part of this Ministry’s definition of culture, and it’s obvious to say that the cultural life of many New Zealanders includes both sports and arts and other cultural activities. I’ve been enjoying a spot of snowboarding this month, as well as getting to music gigs (looking forward to Minuit this weekend).

Attending a session run by Peter Cox from SPARC at the conference Eventing the Future 2007, I was struck by the similarity of at least some of the issues for sport and the arts - having attended a seminar only weeks ago about the value of the arts and how to communicate it.  

SPARC is doing some heavy duty thinking about the value of sport. There are a couple of drivers:

• the need to provide evidence of return on investment for sports events (across events of all sizes but especially for bigger events)
• the events industry won’t move ahead unless it can be accountable and withstand a high level of scrutiny and audit
• significant competition from Asian countries bidding for events, whose governments may be less concerned with evidence for return on investment.

With partners - NZ Major Events (Ministry of Economic Development), NZ Olympic Committee and NZ Association of Events Professionals - SPARC has developed a model for evaluating the benefits of sport. They are focusing, in particular, on the implications for mega events, the social and cultural benefits, and medium and long-term measures. 

This kind of thinking will support our future bids for mega events - pretty important stuff. It comes on the back of work by the state of Victoria on the value of sport, which has shown that major events undoubtedly add economic value and generate social and cultural benefits. 

Peter explained that defining these metrics will:

• empower all levels of events
• increase investment confidence levels
• negate skeptics
• create additional sales opportunities
• assist with event design decisions.

This last point is an interesting one. There was some discussion at the session about the link between hosting major events and participation rates in sports activities. Apparently there’s little evidence of a positive impact. However, if programmes are implemented alongside the events, a positive impact on health is more likely. Once we know where the value lies, we can design events to maximise that value.

So, a heads up on research that SPARC is commissioning. To support work on the value of sport, SPARC will be researching the contribution that sports makes to national identity. Looking forward to reading that!

The seond piece will identify priority research needs for the sports events industry. SPARC has commissioned AUT to define some key themes and two or three topics or resarch projects for each theme. Ultimately, this research will provide practical support for events management organisations working on sports events.

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 9th, 2007 at 1:53 pm and is filed under Events, Research, National identity. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.