Podcast blurb: Strategic management in the event space is vitally important to the sustainability of not just individual events, but the event sector as a whole. Recently, we’ve seen high profile events either fail spectacularly (e.g. 2017 Fyre Festival), fail to deliver promised benefits (e.g. 2016 Rio Olympics), or not event get to implementation stage (e.g. 2026 Victoria Commonwealth Games). These can all be traced back to failures in strategic management. A strategic management approach to events also includes the process of event leverage - managing strategies to achieve both short- and long-term outcomes from a city or region’s portfolio of events.

Danny’s bio: Dr. Danny O’Brien is an Associate Professor, Sport Management, and Higher Degree Research Director in the Bond Business School, Bond University, Gold Coast, Australia. His primary research interests explore event leverage, strategic management, and sustainable surf tourism. Danny’s work appears in top-tier journals like Journal of Sport Management; Sport Management Review; European Journal of Marketing; Annals of Tourism Research; Journal of Sustainable Tourism and others. He is a Visiting Professor in the Center for Surf Research, San Diego State University, United States; and, the Plymouth Sustainability and Surfing Research Group, University of Plymouth, United Kingdom.

Further reading and resources:

Chalip, L. (2004). Beyond impact: A general model for sport event leverage. In, B. W. Ritchie & D. Adair (Eds.), Sport tourism: Interrelationships, impacts and issues (Vol. 14). Channel View Publications.

Chalip, L. (2014). From legacy to leverage. In, Leveraging legacies from sports mega-events: Concepts and cases (pp. 2-12). Palgrave Macmillan.

Duignan, M.B., Brittain, I., Fyall, A., Hansen, M., Gerard, S., and Page, S. (2023). Leveraging accessible tourism development through mega-events, and the disability-attitude gap. Tourism Management, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tourman.2023.104766 (Open Access).

Duignan, M.B., Carlini, J., and Parent, M. (2023). Host community salience loss across major sport event planning. European Sport Management Quarterly, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/16184742.2023.2237063.

O’Brien, D. (2006). Event business leveraging the Sydney 2000 Olympic games. Annals of Tourism Research, 33(1), 240-261.

O’Brien, D., Parent, M. M., Ferkins, L., & Gowthorp, L. (2019). Strategic management in sport. Routledge.

Taks, M., Green, B. C., Misener, L., & Chalip, L. (2018). Sport participation from sport events: why it doesn’t happen? Marketing Intelligence & Planning, 36(2), 185-198.

Ziakas, V. (2010). Understanding an event portfolio: The uncovering of interrelationships, synergies, and leveraging opportunities. Journal of Policy Research in Tourism, Leisure and Events, 2(2), 144-164. https://doi.org/10.1080/19407963.2010.482274

Ziakas, V., & Getz, D. (2021). Event portfolio management: An emerging transdisciplinary field of theory and praxis. Tourism Management, 83, 104233. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tourman.2020.104233