The Economic Legacy of Mega Sporting Events. The Impact of Hosting European Olympic Games on GDP Growth Through Infrastructure Development

Abstract Introduction. The positive legacy of the Olympics is often cited by the International Olympic Committee and national organizers. Some scholars, however, question an uncritical approach to an exclusively positive economic legacy. The aim of this study is to evaluate the impact of hosting the Olympics on infrastructure development, with a potential impact on economic growth in the form of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in three phases of seven Olympic Games organised in Europe in recent years. Material and methods. The effect of a particular Olympic period on the GDP was analysed using a difference-in-difference technique in which the difference between each of the analysed seven host countries’ GDPs and those of a reference set of countries was obtained. Each time, as part of the observation, an event time period was distinguished covering all three phases of the event: the preparatory phase, the event phase and the post-event phase. Results. For the Winter Olympic Games, no statistically significant positive results are observed in the long term, which may indicate a very limited importance of the economic legacy of these events for potential host countries. In the case of Summer Olympic Games, the positive impact of the organization of these events in the post-event phase is noticeable Conclusions. The obtained results confirm the ambiguous impact of Olympic Games on the hosts’ economies and are in line with the attitude of many scholars to an uncritical approach to the only positive legacy of these events.