Competitiveness, economic legacy and tourism impacts: World Cup

Abstract

Tourism legacy impacts are considered one of the most important reasons for countries host a mega event. They generate short, medium and, long-term legacies in the destination image, as well as, at economic and sociocultural level. The paper objective is to show the short-term evolution of economic legacies indicators of sports mega-events, two years before and two years after each event. It was verified through an exploratory analysis of tourism employment level, total investment, and Tourism GDP of the countries that hosted the last three FIFA World Cups. Also, it analyzes the country’s competitive strengths at the year that the mega-event happened based on the Tourism & Travel Competitiveness Index pillars (TTCI). Thus, it performed an explanatory and descriptive analysis of secondary data. Literature review points out the infrastructure as the central pillar to receive a sports mega-event. However, the results did not indicate this focus in the last countries chosen. Also, the economic legacies had increased after the sports mega-event, but not in all hosts analyzed. Therefore, the assumption of positive effects generated by sports mega-events is not consolidated. Further research is recommended to establish indicators and approaches the impact on the host country by a mega-event from the legacy perspective.