Winning gold for Stakeholders–Defining goals in sports event projects to meet stakeholder expectations–

Promises are often made to potential stakeholders in exchange for supporting the initiative to host an event. This creates high expectations, which often fail to materialise. A unique characteristic of event projects is that time is a more critical constraint than in most other types of projects, as it is crucial that the event can be held on the planned date. Previous studies suggest the need for more actively planning the expected outcomes from an event and not just focusing on the event itself. In this article, we investigate the goal definition process in sports event projects to gain more insight into how organisers of events can meet stakeholder expectations. A single case study was performed on the World Cup Ski Tour 2020, where we conducted 50 h of observations and fifteen interviews. We contribute with lessons learned and recommendations for how future event organisers can define goals to meet stakeholder expectations. Furthermore, we introduce a stakeholder expectations matrix for event-type projects.