RETHINKING MEGA-EVENT LEGACY
Legacy isn’t what’s left behind—it’s what’s built from the beginning. Let’s rethink mega-events through vision, structure, consequence, and stakeholder justice.
Dr Holger Preuss (Johannes Gutenberg-University in Mainz, Germany).
Dr Mike Duignan (University of Paris 1: Pantheon-Sorbonne, France).
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Legacy must be planned, not presumed: Positive legacies don’t just happen — they require early vision, long-term commitment, and alignment with host city priorities.
Inequality is embedded into the current model: Benefits often flow to the already privileged, while harms — from displacement to surveillance — are disproportionately borne by marginal communities.
Legacy measurement is evolving — but still lacks teeth: Despite progress in frameworks and KPIs, legacy remains hard to define, harder to measure, and dangerously easy to manipulate.
Reform is possible — and urgent: From Paris’ social programmes to decentralised hosting proposals, new models are emerging, but need scaling, consistency, and enforcement.
A new playbook for action: Event owners, city leaders, and community advocates must co-create legacy strategies that are inclusive, accountable, and tailored to context — or risk losing public trust altogether.
What if we’ve been measuring the value of the Olympic Games all wrong?
For decades, critics and champions of mega-events have sparred over their economic and social impact. Are they a catalyst for sustainable change—or just a two-week spectacle with ballooning costs? But maybe we’re asking the wrong question. What if the issue isn’t whether these events generate legacy—but how we define, design, and evaluate that legacy in the first place?
INTRODUCTION
Dr Holger Preuss and Dr Mike Duignan are academics who travelled around the world studying the legacy of mega events, with Holger leading Paris 2024 Supervision Committee on legacy.
They argue that legacy isn’t what’s left behind—it’s what’s strategically built from the beginning.
THE PROBLEM AND/OR OPPORTUNITY
Despite billions invested and grand promises made, many host cities still struggle to demonstrate clear, lasting benefits from mega-events. Public trust is eroded when new stadiums sit empty (Alm, Solberg, Storm, & Jakobsen, 2016), promised social improvements don’t materialise, or vulnerable communities are displaced. The term “legacy” is routinely cited in bids and policy documents, but what it actually means—and how it should be planned, delivered, and measured—remains dangerously vague.
The problem is threefold: first, cities often retrofit legacy plans after the event has been awarded, instead of embedding legacy as a strategic objective from the outset. Second, legacies pop up out of the nothing targeting to please sponsors, politicians or International Olympic Committees (IOC) interests. Third, even when legacies are intended, they are rarely supported by robust frameworks or tools to track long-term consequences. This leads to superficial, symbolic or politically coloured achievements at best—and broken promises at worst.
But there is an opportunity here. With rising pressure on mega-events to justify their existence, and mounting scrutiny from citizens, funders, and watchdogs, a more rigorous, ethical, and evidence-based approach to legacy is not just possible—it’s urgently needed. And as we argue, it starts by redefining legacy not as leftovers, but as deliberate, measurable outcomes designed into the DNA of an event.
“The term ‘legacy’ is routinely cited in bids and policy documents, but what it actually means remains dangerously vague.”
WHY DOES THIS MATTER NOW?
Mega-events are at a tipping point. The IOC, FIFA, and other global sports federations are struggling to find willing hosts. Recent years have seen a wave of politicians and places refusing (Oslo, Stockholm) to bid or public referendums rejecting bids—from Sapporo and Hamburg to Graubünden and Krakow—due to mounting public concern over displacement, overspending, and unfulfilled promises (Koenecke, De Nooij, 2017; Duignan, 2021; Preuss et al. 2020). If organisers cannot show clear, long-term public value, these events risk becoming unsustainable and unwelcome.
At the same time, global expectations around social responsibility, environmental sustainability, and human rights have shifted.
Cities are under pressure to not just deliver spectacle but also to contribute meaningfully to pressing urban challenges—from inequality and housing shortages to climate action and civic inclusion. Legacy is no longer a “nice-to-have”; it’s a litmus test for whether these events should exist at all.
New initiatives like IOC Agenda 2020+5 and ISO 20121, OECD event toolkid and United nations SDGs show growing institutional will to change. But rhetoric still outpaces results. This is the moment to bring clarity, rigour, and ethics to the concept of legacy—before the opportunity to re-legitimise mega-events slips away.
This article pushes the debate further in three ways:
It calls for a more ethical and holistic approach to legacy, rooted in the idea of structural change and stakeholder equity.
It interrogates the politics of legacy claims, particularly who defines them and who benefits.
It builds on the work of scholars and practitioners who have developed robust, multi-dimensional frameworks for evaluating legacy, yet argues for deeper moral and epistemological clarity in how we plan and assess long-term impact.
HOW DOES THIS ADD TO WHAT WE ALREADY KNOW?
THE MYTH OF ‘LEGACY AS LEFTOVERS’
Too often, legacy is reduced to whatever happens to remain once the banners come down and stadiums fall silent. We flip this thinking on its head: legacy begins with vision, not with clean-up. Legacy isn’t just what’s left behind — it’s what was intended and strategically planned from the outset (Duignan, 2021). For instance, London 2012’s legacy wasn’t simply the transformed Olympic Park — it was a direct result of a clear, 20-year plan to regenerate East London. Paris 2024 is similarly rooted in early planning, aiming to boost youth physical activity and sustainable development and even involved additional stakeholders to create a more robust outcome (Paris 2024, 2023). The takeaway? Legacy is not a by-product; it is a product of intent.
STRUCTURAL CHANGE BEFORE CONSEQUENCE
We encourages a shift in thinking: legacy must be understood as a consequence of structural change, not the change itself (Preuss, 2015). A new stadium, for example, is not a legacy in and of itself. It becomes one only when it generates measurable long-term outcomes — like community usage, local employment, or increased sport participation. This three-step chain — vision → structural change → consequence — encourages more thoughtful planning and evaluation (Koenigstorfer et al, 2019). In Paris, this means measuring whether daily movement programmes in schools actually lead to improved public health — not just applauding the introduction of new policy. E.g. for London 2012 certain event attributed structural changes and programmes were intended to benefit specific stakeholder groups (i.e. new participants), the consequences were actually more beneficial for others (i.e. existing participants) (e.g. Chen & Henry, 2016).
NOT ALL LEGACIES ARE EQUAL
One our key points that legacy depends on perspective (Koenigstorfer et al., 2019). What may be a “positive” outcome for one group may be harmful or irrelevant for another (Duignan and Pappalepore, 2016; Preuss, 2007). For example, new urban developments might boost investor confidence and local tax revenue, but also result in rising rents and displacement of vulnerable communities. That’s why we call for a stakeholder-sensitive approach to evaluating legacy — one that recognises conflicting values, lived experiences, and different time horizons. Recent work on Paris 2024 and by the OECD (OECD, 2021) encourages this pluralistic and ethical framing.
Cities often look to past Games for guidance, assuming legacies can be replicated. But context matters. We caution against legacy mimicry, highlighting that what works in London may not work in Los Angeles or Brisbane. Local culture, governance, infrastructure, and socio-political conditions shape whether legacy initiatives take root or fail – and even further there is a different need for a particular structural change in each city. For example, the same urban development strategy that worked in Stratford, East London — with a strong mayoral vision, cross-party support, and long-term funding — might not be suitable for Rio or Los Angeles without similar structural conditions. Evaluation, then, must be case-sensitive, longitudinal, and localised.
We can take it a step further and acknowledge that cities are at a different state of development. When London 2012 developed a new standard for ecological sustainable Games only two years later Sochi 2014 was prowed to only develop the first recycling plant in Russia. However each Games initiated structural changes but at their pace and development stage.
THE ILLUSION OF “TRANSFERABLE LEGACY”
THE “THREE LENSES OF LEGACY”
To help policymakers, event organisers, and analysts navigate the complexity of legacy, we propose a model based on three interlinked lenses. Each offers a way to design, deliver, and evaluate more meaningful legacies:
1. The Strategic Fit Lens: Aligning Vision with Context
Legacy starts with intent. This first lens asks: Does the event vision align with the city’s long-term goals? A misalignment — for instance, building elite sports facilities in a city with limited public access to sport — risks waste and disillusionment. The Strategic Fit Lens ensures that event ambitions complement local needs, infrastructure, and development trajectories.
2. The Structural Change Lens: Tracking Causal Mechanisms
This lens focuses on what changes structurally because of the event. These might include new governance structures, policies, transport systems, or housing initiatives. Importantly, these are means, not ends. They are levers that create conditions for legacy to materialise.
Example: London 2012’s Olympic Delivery Authority was not the legacy — it was the structural tool that enabled long-term transformation of East London. Similarly, the Paris 2024 Legacy Committee’s investment in community sport programmes provides structural scaffolding for social change.
3. The Consequence Lens: Measuring Outcomes and Impact
Finally, legacy must be understood through tangible and intangible consequences (Koenigstorfer et al, 2019). This includes long-term shifts in behaviour, wellbeing, economic participation, environmental quality, or social cohesion. Preuss emphasises the need for both quantitative KPIs and qualitative narratives — and for measuring from multiple stakeholder perspectives (Preuss, 2019, Girginov & Preuss, 2021).
Example: Paris 2024's aim to use sport as a catalyst for youth engagement is matched by a pre-existing policy push for daily physical activity in schools. The event boosts a programme that already fits national priorities.
Example: A change in youth sports policy must be evaluated by whether it improves health or increases lifelong engagement in physical activity — not simply whether the policy exists. Similarly, we must ask: who benefited, who didn’t, and how?
These three lenses are best used together, not in isolation. Strategic Fit ensures relevance, Structural Change identifies enabling mechanisms, and Consequences measure actual value for each stakeholder. When layered together, they provide a powerful evaluative and design framework for event legacy planning.
CONCLUSIONS
It’s time to stop treating legacy as a rhetorical flourish tacked onto the end of a mega-event bid. As we make clear, legacy is not what is left behind — it is what is built with intention, shaped by structure, and sustained through consequence.
Despite decades of debate, we’re still struggling to meaningfully define and measure what makes an event “worth it.” Too often, event organisers confuse outputs (like new buildings) with outcomes (like improved wellbeing), or worse, treat legacy as an afterthought. Without a clear framework, well-intentioned efforts risk becoming ad hoc, short-lived, or invisible to the very people they’re supposed to benefit.
The proposed “Three Lenses of Legacy” — Strategic Fit, Structural Change, and Consequence for each stakeholder — offer a more rigorous and responsible approach. They prompt us to ask not only what events do, but who they serve, how they shape societies over time, and whether they’re truly worth the cost.
Mega-events will not disappear. But unless legacy is transformed from a buzzword into a blueprint, their license to operate will continue to erode. With global scrutiny increasing and public trust declining, we face a critical moment: design with integrity or risk irrelevance.
“Unless legacy is transformed from a buzzword into a blueprint, mega-events risk losing their license to operate”
PRACTICAL ACTIONS
To embed meaningful legacy of an event into the DNA of a city, we need to move beyond empty slogans and adopt more strategic, structured, and sustained approaches. Here are five evidence-informed actions leaders can take:
1. Start with a Fit-for-City Vision
Align event goals with long-term city development plans.
Ask: Does this event accelerate or distort our existing trajectory?
Involve diverse local stakeholders early to pressure-test assumptions and priorities.
Action: Co-create a “Legacy Fit Matrix” mapping planned event investments against city needs, existing infrastructure, and community aspirations.
2. Design for Structural Change, Not Showcase
Prioritise projects that reconfigure systems — transport, education, health — not just skyline aesthetics.
Embed event-related policy changes into national/local strategies, with commitments that outlive the organising committee.
Action: Set up cross-sector “legacy taskforces” that span beyond event delivery and hold authority post-Games.
3. Quantify Consequences Using KPIs That Matter
Use a mix of quantitative and qualitative indicators — measure outcome and not output! i.e. not just how many people came, but what changed because they came.
Differentiate between direct, indirect, and induced impacts.
Action: Adopt legacy performance dashboards that track specific outcomes by stakeholder group (e.g., youth employment, accessible housing, local business procurement).
4. Establish Independent Legacy Governance
Avoid the “organise and vanish” model. Create permanent or semi-permanent bodies that steward legacies for 5–10 years after the event.
Empower these bodies with real funding and accountability mechanisms.
Control the independence of these bodies from particular interest groups
Action: Build legacy into procurement, contracts, and franchise agreements — not just voluntary commitments.
5. Learn Across Events, Not Just Within Them
Cities are reinventing the wheel. We need comparative data where it makes sence to compare and longitudinal data to track what works, what doesn’t, and for whom.
Legacy knowledge should be institutionalised and then culturally sensitive applied to future hosts, not left in grey literature or exit interviews.
Action: Mandate post-event longitudinal studies (5–10 years) with open-access legacy data platforms with backing data about the situational setting of each host, co-developed with universities and communities.
IMPLEMENTATION CHALLENGES
While the strategic actions above offer a roadmap for legacy reform, implementation is far from straightforward. Leaders must confront several key challenges:
1. Political Timelines vs. Legacy Timelines
Mega-events are typically delivered within 7–12 year cycles, while legacy outcomes often require generational investment. Political actors may deprioritise legacy initiatives that won’t yield short-term electoral wins.
Challenge: How do we incentivise long-term thinking in short-term governance cycles?
2. Measurement Gaps and Attribution Problems
Legacy indicators — especially around personal, social or cultural impacts — are notoriously difficult to quantify or attribute directly to the event. This undermines both political buy-in and public trust.
Challenge: Without rigorous and standardised methods, legacy remains a story rather than evidence.
3. Fragmented Responsibility and “Many Hands” Problem
When everyone is involved, no one is accountable. Organising committees dissolve quickly, and legacy falls through the cracks between government departments, event owners, and delivery partners.
Challenge: Legacy governance
often lacks continuity, ownership, or enforcement power.
4. Investors are not the winners
The organisation of events and investors in structural changes are often not the stakeholders that gain the profit. When public money is invested in changes that benefit private industries (e.g. tourism industry) then the tax payer does not directly benefit or at least does not feel the benefit t from the Games directly.
Challenge: Develop a value chain that illustrates how the investment dripples back to the society.
5. Commercial Pressures and Competing Stakeholders
Sponsors, broadcasters, and international federations often prioritise visibility, branding, and elite sport over local development goals. Local communities and marginalised groups are rarely the most “salient” stakeholders.
Challenge: Economic imperatives still trump social justice — even when rhetoric says otherwise.
6. Post-Event Apathy and Legacy Fatigue
Once the medals are won and the media spotlight fades, legacy can become an afterthought. Many communities feel disillusioned when promised benefits don’t materialise — and disengage from future events.
Challenge: Maintaining civic engagement and momentum beyond the closing ceremony.
REFERENCES
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Duignan, M.B. (2021). Utilizing Field Theory to Examine Mega-Event Led Development. Event Management, https://doi.org/10.3727/152599520X15894679115583 (Open Access).
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AUTHOR(S)
Professor, Johannes Gutenberg-University in Mainz (Germany).
Holger Preuss is Professor of Sport Economics and Sport Sociology at the Johannes Gutenberg-University in Mainz, Germany. He is also adjunct professor at the University of Ottawa, Canada, visiting professor Beijing Sport University (China) 2025 and international scholar at the State University of New York (Cortland).
He has published 18 books and more than 220 articles in international journals and books. During the past decade he has been invited to hold more than 180 presentations all over the world.
His field of research is directed at economic and socio-economic aspects of sport. He looks into the socio-economic impact analysis of mega-sport events. Holger is IOC commission member for “Legacy and sustainability” and researches since 1995 about the outcome of mega sport events and in particular the Olympic Games
He currently works with the FISU World Games (Universiade) as special advisor for sustainability and conducts 2025 the official sustainability report of the Games. He was Chairman of the evaluation committee for social and economic sustainability of Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games on behalf of Paris 2024, IOC and OECD.
Holger Preuss is member of the IOC commission “legacy and sustainability”, a member of the WFDF (World Flying Disc Federation) “ethics commission” and head of the ethics commission of the IFI (International Federation Icestocksport).
Professeur des universities, University of Paris 1: Pantheon-Sorbonne (France).
Mike is the Founder and CEO of the Centre for Events and Festivals (CEF); Professeur at the University of Paris 1: Pantheon-Sorbonne; and the Editor-in-Chief of Event Management Journal - the leading academic journal for the study and analysis of events and festivals, founded in 1993, and based in New York (USA). He is also the Editor of Routledge’s book series: ‘How Events Transform Society’. Previously, Mike has been Director of Research, Intelligence and Education at Trivandi; Associate Professor at the University of Central Florida (USA) and Head of Department and Reader at the University of Surrey, where he was also the Director of the UK Olympic Studies Centre - the #1 UK, European and USA universities for the study of events and festivals. For the past 15 years, Mike has been researching, analysing, commentating, writing, publishing, and teaching on the economics and social impacts of staging major events, with the view to improve delivery and leave a sustainable legacy for the communities, people and places that play host. All Mike’s work is available at: www.MikeDuignan.com.
Disclaimer
The views and insights expressed in this article are those of the author(s) and reflect their research and professional expertise. They do not represent the views of the Centre for Events & Festivals CIC or its partners.