Mega-events are not just celebrations or spectacles. They are sophisticated instruments for engineering structural transformation. Often framed as catalysts for regeneration, tourism growth, or civic renewal, these events actively reshape organisational fields through complex, coordinated interventions.

Take Tokyo 2020, for example. Even before the Games were staged—delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic—the Japanese government had invested years in overhauling its tourism infrastructure. National agencies launched campaigns to rebrand Japan as a culturally distinctive, post-Fukushima destination. These weren’t spontaneous promotional efforts. They were part of a calculated field development strategy, using the Olympics as a mechanism to reposition Japan within the global tourism industry.

Such transformations are rarely incidental. They are structured through what Duignan (2021) refers to as the field mandate—a powerful narrative that legitimises extraordinary action. Events activate symbolic systems (vision, narrative, branding) and relational systems (infrastructure, investment, governance) that work in tandem to reconfigure power relations, revalue capital, and shift norms within and across fields.

Put simply, mega-events don’t merely reflect existing dynamics—they produce new realities. Recognising them as strategic interventions allows us to better understand why certain outcomes emerge, and whose interests are advanced or marginalised in the process.

The legitimacy to plan and stage a mega-event rarely exists a priori. Instead, it must be actively constructed. This construction happens through the production of field mandates—claims of urgency, opportunity, and benefit that justify exceptional investment and governance powers.

Consider London 2012. The city’s Olympic bid strategically juxtaposed dystopian images of East London—social deprivation, urban neglect—with utopian visions of transformation: new transport hubs, jobs, housing, and global visibility. These narrative devices framed the Games as a once-in-a-generation opportunity to correct historical inequalities. But they also functioned as symbolic tools to secure resources, override planning constraints, and attract cross-sectoral buy-in. In doing so, they built what Duignan terms a strong field mandate—a legitimising mechanism that aligned public, political, and private support behind the event.

Crucially, this legitimacy is always political and contested. Field mandates are strengthened by mandate directors—elite actors such as international sports federations, national governments, or multinational sponsors who lend credibility and resources to the project. Yet their presence also introduces asymmetries: those with power to authorise change are rarely those most affected by it.

Understanding field mandates as constructed artefacts, rather than neutral inheritances, is essential for critiquing whose interests are centred—and whose are systematically excluded.

Mega-events bring together a vast constellation of actors—governments, sponsors, planners, residents, and businesses. But not all stakeholders enter the field on equal terms. Duignan (2021) draws a sharp distinction between voluntary and involuntary field members, underscoring a central tension in event-led development.

Voluntary field members—typically policymakers, organisers, and sponsors—actively seek to participate in the event. They shape the vision, control resources, and stand to gain reputational, economic, or political capital. For example, during Rio 2016, institutional entrepreneurs from municipal and national government orchestrated a global campaign to rebrand the city as a rising tourism and investment hub, leveraging the Olympics as their platform.

By contrast, involuntary field members—often small businesses, local residents, and marginalised communities—are pulled into the event’s orbit without consent. In Rio’s favelas, thousands faced forced evictions and social cleansing to make way for Olympic infrastructure (Steinbrink, 2013). Despite being deeply affected by the event, these stakeholders had limited influence over planning decisions and few avenues for redress.

Recognising this asymmetry reveals the distributional politics of mega-events. Field development is never neutral—it privileges some while displacing others. A relational mapping of stakeholder positions, as proposed in the CRM-FCE framework, helps uncover these imbalances and invites more equitable forms of governance.

Mega-events unfold over extended temporal arcs. From early bidding campaigns and planning phases, through live staging and into long-term legacy periods, their impacts are cumulative, dynamic, and often nonlinear. Yet most evaluations remain locked in a narrow temporal window—focused on short-term outputs or post-Games economic impact reports.

The CRM-FCE framework challenges this short-sightedness by foregrounding temporal frames as a critical analytical dimension. It outlines five distinct phases: planning, lead-up, live staging, embryonic legacy, and established legacy. Each phase offers unique opportunities for field reconfiguration—and carries specific risks of disruption, exclusion, or mission drift.

For instance, Tokyo 2020 exemplifies how mega-events can catalyse change well before the opening ceremony. Years ahead of the Games, Japan restructured its national tourism strategy, rolled out global branding campaigns, and invested heavily in infrastructure—all under the symbolic umbrella of Olympic readiness. These changes, while tied to the event, were not confined to it.

Yet without longitudinal evaluation that tracks how promises evolve, who benefits over time, and what realities emerge, we risk mistaking rhetoric for results. Integrating time into our analysis of field development allows for more honest appraisals—and more adaptive, accountable governance.

Mega-events are not just infrastructural projects—they are ideological projects. They generate and disseminate powerful symbolic systems: visions, slogans, narratives, and aesthetic cues that shape public perception and institutional behaviour. These systems are not decorative—they are instrumental in mobilising support, managing dissent, and legitimising field development.

Consider the recurring Olympic imagery of peace, unity, and progress. Such narratives frame the Games as universally beneficial, concealing the contradictions and conflicts inherent in their execution. London 2012’s branding as a “Games for everyone” masked sharp inequalities in who gained from regeneration and who was displaced. These narratives constructed what Bourdieu (1990) would call a doxic field—a taken-for-granted reality that naturalises dominant interests and obscures dissent.

Symbolic systems are closely tied to relational systems—the tangible resources (funding, infrastructure, political capital) required to enact change. As Duignan argues, these systems have a symbiotic relationship: stronger narratives attract greater resources, and vice versa. Without interrogating the ideologies embedded in event discourse, we risk mistaking aspiration for achievement.

Field development, then, is as much a battle over meaning as it is over material change. Evaluating mega-events demands not just metrics—but critical discourse analysis of how visions are constructed, circulated, and contested.