1. Introduction
The organization of events and festivals is confirmed as a method of promoting destinations, attracting tourists, and addressing seasonality in destinations [
1,
2]. Events and festivals usually vary enormously in type and form (e.g., sporting events, cultural events, music festival, etc.) and offer a variety of entertainment opportunities for both local residents and visitors. However, the management issues relating to different events and festivals are often surprisingly similar [
3] and usually focus on the impacts they generate for hosting communities. While these large gatherings can give impetus to local economies, they can also cause some costs to people living in the area.
The same is the true of sporting events that are actually the most obvious manifestation of sporting activities, gathering both competitors and spectators. As argued by Getz [
4], any direct involvement in organized sport is capable of generating planned events. Accordingly, the number of large- and small-scale events as well as the number of hosting locations has increased over the years. Despite the many stakeholders involved (competitors, spectators, sponsors, etc.), the local community is recognized as a key stakeholder [
5,
6]. Therefore, the relevance of sporting events stems directly from their impact on local, regional, and national economies [
7]. More precisely, the costs and benefits sporting events generate for host communities is at the core of sport and event studies, and recent studies have consequently mostly examined the impacts of sporting events from the perspective of local residents. Most of the literature follows the triple bottom line approach [
8,
9] and distinguishes between the economic, socio-cultural, and environmental impacts of sporting events (e.g., [
10,
11,
12,
13,
14,
15]), although, as asserted by Dawson and Jӧns [
16], negative legacies are sometimes neglected when planning and evaluating an event.
While previous research has focused on success stories, that is, large-scale sports events that have been held in large and developed countries like Australia, Canada, Germany, the United Kingdom or the United States of America (USA) (see [
17]), event failures are difficult to document [
18], so insignificant effort has been devoted to studying the impacts of event failures or postponed or cancelled events. Post-event analysis can evaluate an event as a failure if it attracted fewer visitors and sponsors and generated less revenue than planned. However, the postponement or cancellation of an event can also be considered a failure. Event failures and sporting event cancellations can also have severe negative impacts for organizers and local residents as well as whole destinations [
19,
20]. Yet, extant research focusing on broad socio-economic impacts of sporting event failures is scarce. In this regard, this paper is concerned with the range of impacts, from the perspective of local residents, resulting from the cancellation of the international men’s cycling race Tour of Croatia (the 2019ToC), which was supposed to be held in Croatia in April 2019. In particular, this paper outlines two main research questions: What are the main impacts of cancelled sporting events from the perspective of local residents? Do people who are familiar with the cancelled event perceive its social, economic, and environmental impacts differently than people who are not familiar with the event?
This paper contains four sections. The first section provides a review of the literature on the socio-economic impacts of sporting events. The implemented methodology is outlined in the second section, while the results of the empirical study are presented and discussed in the third section. The paper finishes with discussion and concluding remarks.
3. Study Context
The international men’s cycling race Tour of Croatia was a major sporting event in Croatia. The first edition of the race took place in 2015, and since then, the race has entered into the World Bicycle Organization (UCI) calendar under the second HC (from the French “hors catégorie”) category. Six stages on a route of over 1000 km throughout Croatia hosted teams from the most senior rankings of classification, while images of Croatia were broadcasted on all continents. The route usually included both well-developed (mostly coastal) and under-developed (continental) tourist destinations. This sports project received support from the Croatian Tourist Board, the Central State Office for Sport, and some other telecommunication, media and hospitality companies.
The fifth edition was scheduled for April 2019. However, a disagreement broke out between two key managers and was settled in court, upon which they parted ways. In addition, problems with sponsors arose and, contrary to the plan, the race was cancelled a few weeks before its planned start. One of the key managers plans to organize another race under the name CRO Race in October 2019. This race is also in the UCI calendar. While this race organizer describes the event as “postponed” rather than “cancelled,” the event was considered “cancelled” because the 2019ToC was not run on the scheduled days, and the alternative event to take place a few months later has a different name. Therefore, following Kennelly et al.’s reasoning [
20], with the aim to explore local residents’ perspectives, we shall refer to the 2019ToC as “cancelled.”
6. Discussion
The factor analysis conducted on items relating to local residents’ perception of the impacts of the cancelled event revealed a conceptually clear and predictable factor structure with eight factors: community deconsolidation, environmental improvements, knowledge and entertainment diminution, community visibility and image deterioration, decline of terrorist threats, traffic relief, economic problems, and decline in socio-cultural exchange. As expected, this factor structure can be divided into positive (environmental improvements, decline of terrorist threats, and traffic relief) and negative impacts (community deconsolidation, knowledge and entertainment diminution, community visibility and image deterioration, economic problems, and decline in socio-cultural exchange). This is also consistent with many previous findings on the perceived impacts of sporting events (see [
1,
10,
21,
22,
24,
26,
28,
29,
31,
38,
39,
43,
44]). However, two minor deviations arise within the items. Loadings of the item “decreased opportunity for residents to meet new people” implied it should be primarily factored to community visibility and image deterioration instead of to the expected decline of socio-cultural exchange (as is the case in Kim et al. [
29]) where the loading was only slightly lower. A possible explanation is that local respondents saw an opportunity to meet new people as a possible way for word-of-mouth promotion of the event. Second, contrary again to Kim et al. [
29], the item “decreased disturbance from visitors (e.g., drunkenness, hooliganism, disorder, and vandalism)” was perceived as unrelated with terrorism and cyber risks. Instead, this item factored into environmental improvements, showing that local residents distinguished between terrorism risks and consequences of vandalism that, if not prevented, could be tangible and visible, especially in the degradation of public spaces. This linkage between security and pollution issues was also found in the study of Liu et al. [
39] investigating the expected social impact of the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympic Games.
Regarding the mean values of particular items, considering the fact that the studied event was cancelled, the results are quite expected and consistent with the extant literature in many ways. Because of event cancellation, at the aggregate level, respondents generally perceived more negative impacts than positive ones. It seems that the local residents’ perceived impacts related to community visibility and image deterioration and knowledge and entertainment diminution are more substantial than economic impacts and impacts related to community deconsolidation. While previous studies recognized improved image and greater visibility of the hosting community in the worldwide media as the most significant positive impacts [
37,
62,
63,
64], the opposite result found in this study, that the local residents’ perceived image and visibility of the hosting community were decreased due to event cancellation, is not a surprise. Similarly, the high mean scores of items within the factor Knowledge and entertainment diminution are consistent with Kim et al. [
29], who found knowledge and entertainment opportunities (of held sporting events) as being very important for hosting communities. Without the events, these opportunities decrease, that is, they do not happen. Negative consequences on socio-cultural exchange were slightly above the median value, challenging the previous findings on the high importance of this group of impacts [
29,
39,
65]. Further, while local residents usually consider that community spirit and pride as well as sense of being a part of the community will be reinforced by sporting events (see [
43,
63,
66]), the results of this study suggest that the opposite does not hold; cancelling the event does not reflect negatively on local residents’ perception of community consolidation and pride. The case is similar with regard to economic impacts. Although the economic dimension is recognized as an important positive impact of hosting sporting events [
10,
11,
30,
31], local residents considered that the cancellation of the 2019ToC did not cause major negative economic consequences.
On the other hand, a group of positive impacts was expected to emerge due to the 2019ToC cancellation. Contrary to expectations, however, local residents did not give much importance to them. The means within the traffic relief factor vary. Yet, it could be said that respondents found traffic relief as more beneficial than improvements in security risks or environmental issues. Traffic congestion has proved to be a major problem when organizing sporting events (see [
10,
11,
30,
37,
44]), and this study found that the decision to cancel the 2019ToC provided a relief to traffic participants but not to the extent it was expected. Respondents agree that road closures and traffic congestion across Croatia would be slightly decreased due to the 2019ToC cancellation but that it would not improve parking problems. This suggests that the 2019ToC and other similar sporting events are not the major cause for traffic problems in Croatia, especially when it comes to finding parking places, which are hard to find even without sporting events. In a similar manner, respondents did not see notable improvements in environmental issues. They perceived that only the amount of litter and waste in Croatia would be slightly less (in comparison to the “with event” scenario). This finding could refer to Hritz and Ross [
11], Ntloko and Swart [
67], and Twynam and Johnston [
64], who found no relation between sporting events and environmental impacts. It seems that Croatian residents also see environmental problems as permanent and not dependent on events. Finally, the means of all items within the decline in terrorist threats factor are low, suggesting that this study did not establish that risks of terrorism would be reduced in the eyes of residents. This corresponds with previous findings that local residents did not perceive a significant increase in the risk of terrorist attacks during and after sporting events [
29,
40,
63] although opposite findings also exist [
30]. Therefore, the fact that event cancellation will not change the perception of terrorist threats seems to be true. Unfortunately, terrorist threats are ubiquitous around the world, especially in large and developed countries like France, the United Kingdom, or the United States, and, in most cases, they are not related to sporting events. This means that, in general, risks of terrorism are more dependent on country image and contextual issues than on whether sporting events have been held or not.
Further analysis tried to examine whether local residents’ awareness of the event influenced their perception. What is the most obvious is that local residents not aware of the event, when compared with local residents aware of the event, had lower estimates, of most of the negative impacts and higher estimates of most of the positive impacts. Still, not all of these differences are statistically significant. More precisely, local residents not aware of the 2019ToC demonstrated a statistically significant lower level of agreement with all four items within the factor Community visibility and image deterioration than those who are aware of the 2019ToC. Hallmann and Breur [
28] and Kaplanidou and Vogt [
68] suggest that there is a common image capital of both the sport event and the hosting destination and that events can be used to strengthen the destination image. It can be assumed that Croatian residents who have heard about the 2019ToC event are more aware of its international appeal and marketing potential. Similarly, the residents aware of this event are also familiar with the opportunities the event provides, primarily opportunities to meet new people and entertainment opportunities, too (which are common consequences when being a part of the event; see, for instance [
13,
29]). On the other hand, residents not aware of the event have the somewhat unrealistic expectation that parking places would be easier to find due to the 2019ToC cancellation. The group of local residents was further divided on those who had not heard and those who had heard that the 2019ToC was cancelled. Local residents who had not heard of the cancellation, when compared with local residents who had heard of the cancellation, had lower estimates of most of the negative impacts and higher estimates of most of the positive ones. They expressed a statistically significant lower level of agreement with items within the community deconsolidation factor. In particular, residents’ awareness of event failure influenced community pride and sense of being a part of the community negatively. In other words, the higher the awareness of event failure, the greater the residents’ estimates on negative impacts regarding community cohesion and networking. Additionally, residents’ awareness of event failure led to more critical thinking about lost knowledge and entertainment opportunities as well as a decline in socio-cultural exchange. On the other hand, residents not aware of event cancellation expressed a statistically significant higher level of agreement with two positive items within the decreased terrorist threats factor, confirming the importance of terrorism issues when it comes to event impacts. However, this result contradicts the previous finding on the level of the whole sample that the perception of terrorist threats did not change due to event cancellation. On the contrary, it suggests that people who had heard of the event but not of its cancellation believe that the cancellation decreased the interest of terrorists.
7. Conclusions
In previous studies, the consequences of event failures, in particular from the perspective of local residents, have not received any particular attention, making a comparison of the results of this particular study very difficult. In an attempt to examine the broad economic, social, and environmental impacts of sporting event failures (the first research question), this paper has focused on the cycling race 2019ToC, which was supposed to be held in Croatia in April 2019 but was cancelled because of a disagreement between two key managers and because of sponsors who hesitated with financial support. This being a cancelled sporting event, the initial premise was that the cancellation of the event would cause impacts that are opposite to those of successful events. Therefore, a set of statements was proposed to measure both the positive and negative impacts of event cancellation from the perspective of local residents.
Factor analysis reduced the number of statements to eight factors (community deconsolidation, environmental improvements, knowledge and entertainment diminution, community visibility and image deterioration, decline of terrorist threats, traffic relief, economic problems, and decline in socio-cultural exchange). In general, based on the mean scores of particular statements, residents do not perceive much change in the triple bottom line regarding the cancellation of the 2019ToC. However, some subtle differences between statements exist, and it seems that negative impacts related to community visibility and image, and knowledge and entertainment opportunities are more substantial than negative impacts related to economic conditions, community consolidation, and socio-cultural exchange. On the other hand, local residents did not give much importance to any of the expected positive impacts. Additionally, the results suggest that, relative to local residents familiar with the event and its cancellation, local residents not familiar with the event and its cancelation perceive the majority of negative impacts as being weaker and most of the positive impacts as being stronger.
To summarize, the novelty of this paper is that it emphasizes the need to measure the economic, social, and environmental impacts of a sporting event failure from the perspective of local residents. This area of research is still under-researched and, therefore, the findings have theoretical implications in the field of sport management, event management, and event sport tourism. First, this study confirms the already established main groups of the broad social, economic, and environmental impacts of sporting events. The study, however, raises questions regarding linkages between community visibility/image and socio-cultural exchange variables, on the one hand, and between security and pollution issues, on the other. Second, the opposite direction of impacts, compared with those of successful events, contributes to the scarce literature on event failures. Additionally, these findings could have critical implications for event planners and managers as well as public sector administrators. Since many public and private organizers invest a lot of money in different sporting events abroad, it is important to know the true impacts of such events. On the other hand, in the case of sporting event failures, it is also important to know what opportunities were missed due to event cancellation. This would be important for all stakeholders involved, especially for hosting communities, whose support is crucial for an event’s success [
12,
41,
69,
70]. In other words, the more benefits local residents perceive, the greater their support. Consequently, in the case of the 2019ToC, if missed opportunities are significant, it is reasonable to predict that support for the event to be reestablished would be high. On the other hand, the public sector should develop strategies to balance the negative impacts of event cancellation, above all the intangible impacts (such as diminished international visibility of a country or lost opportunities for residents to enjoy and learn about sports) that often outweigh the economic benefits, as claimed by Liu et al [
65].
One of this study’s limitations arises from the fact that the respondents gave their perceptions/opinions, so their responses cannot be considered as facts of what really happened due to the 2019ToC cancellation. A different study would need to be conducted to determine and measure the actual impacts, both negative and positive, of event cancellation. The inclusion of some objective data (for instance, economic losses) and comparison with actual local residents’ perceptions would certainly improve the quality and scope of the analysis. Another limitation arises from the sampling method, and it is possible that a sample from some particular area of Croatia (a specific county, city, or municipality) would provide different results and conclusions. Therefore, for future research, it would be interesting to compare the results between local residents of two or more host and non-host cities. In addition, the socio-demographic characteristics of local residents are often found to have an influence on the perceived economic, social, and environmental impacts caused by the organization of sporting events [
37,
44]. Another possible limitation of this study could be the average age of the study’s participants, which is lower than in census data. Consequently, future papers should examine whether the socio-demographic characteristics of local residents, in particular age and education, influence the perceived impacts caused by event failure. Also, it would be interesting to test if the wealth (measured by monthly income) or occupation (connected to sport and tourism or not) of local residents guides their perception of event impacts. This refers to the possibility of splitting Croatia into individual regions according to the degree of development criteria and investigating whether people who live in more developed regions (e.g., the capital city is more developed than other cities; coastal cities are usually more developed than continental cities) perceive the impacts of event failure differently from those living in less developed regions.