ABSTRACT
Mega-events occupy important roles within global consumer societies, and so, this article aims to advance the sociological understanding of mega-events by using UEFA Euro 2020 as a case. Traditionally, sport mega-events have been staged in one or two countries. However, for the first time ever, 12 European countries shared the hosting rights for Euro 2020, which was postponed for a year following COVID-19. In global sports, this temporary shift was highly remarkable and the 12-country format's implications raised a host of sociological questions. Drawing upon qualitative interviews, documentary analysis and media sources, this article examines this mega-event's distinctive format and its broader implications. The article explores the socio-political conditions under which Euro 2020's format became a reality and examines stakeholder outlooks on this event format. It is argued that the event's format was considered to limit negative 'legacies' for host cities, yet the format was perceived to generate logistical and financial difficulties for potential mega-event consumers. In an epoch characterized by growing opposition to mega-event hosting, such findings are particularly important. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved)
ABSTRACT
Organising the 2020 European Football Championship was fraught with the uncertainties of the pandemic period. Budapest hosted its four allocated matches during the postponed event without stadium capacity restrictions. Drawing on both social exchange theory (SET) and social representation theory (SRT), the study aimed to investigate how the level of fear of COVID-19 before the start of Euro 2020 influenced the perception of the tournament among residents of Budapest. Data were collected by telephone interview during the five days preceding the event based on a representative sample of Budapest residents (n = 1003, adult population aged 18 years and over), accounting for gender, age and place of residence. Cluster analysis identified three groups of residents based on fear of coronavirus: concerned, neutral and unconcerned. Although our study only investigated the opinions of residents in one host city, the relevance of the research appears compelling in that it highlights the crucial role of COVID-19 in influencing responses to the expected impact of Euro 2020. Examining the views of local residents and understanding the factors that influence their opinions play a key role in more successful and sustainable delivery of sporting events. © 2022 by the authors.
ABSTRACT
Post COVID-19 pandemic, sports events and sports activities have been severely affected. The mega sports events were either postponed or held in the absence of live audience. Through this study we investigate the progressive use of social media by fans and other stakeholders to express their support to favorite sports teams, athletes, coaches, sports organizations, sponsors and more during COVID-19. UEFA Euro 2020 was conducted across 12 countries with an intent to show unity and bring normalcy in sports business during the third wave of COVID-19. Hashtag analysis and mention analysis have been performed to find sports teams, athletes or other stakeholders that were directly being discussed about by the fans. We also focused on tweet context annotations that provide entities as pairs of domain and entity collected from tweets’ text. Our results indicated that hashtags and mentions alone cannot substantially justify the popularity of any entity. Thus, from the point of view of identifying any athlete, team, organization or any sponsor as a brand, tweet context annotations can be valuable from the perspective of E-Branding, E-Marketing and E-Commerce. © 2022, IFIP International Federation for Information Processing.