Urban Mega Events: The Challenge of Hosting Sustainably

Cities have evidently appreciated mega sport events’ ability to build quality images and produce an effective developmental platform. However, events’ magnitude increase and the involvement of different parties seeking to benefit from their exposure create a perplexing resource environment. The investment on huge venues with uncertain viability and unsecured returns on investment has produced a lot of skepticism regarding the sustainable hosting of mega sport events. Realizing the difficulty in obtaining primary data, a secondary data, and reference analysis is employed here to enlighten the area of urban mega event planning. Published studies, research projects, and organizations’ documents become the main source of analysis with the main research focus placed on the conceptualization of the financial and policy implications of mega events. Aspects of urban regeneration and economic restructuring, tourism initiation and income, economic positioning, impact over-ambition, intentional cost underestimation, and lack of impact evaluation instruments suggest the main findings of the study focusing on the mega sport events post-event reality. Balancing resources to achieve effective planning and financing of the mega events and viable local future remain a challenging exercise for cities attracted by the mega event thrilling profile and promising dynamic.